The inspirational story of a 10-year-old boy with full-blown AIDS.
Montana de Luz
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
On a Honduran mountainside overlooking vast fields of sugar cane, a six-year-old boy named Marlon dreams of becoming an artist. Twelve-year-old Inri dreams of attending university. Little Yorleni simply dreams of having a family. Meet the children of the Montana de Luz orphanage, their lives a living testament to the beauty and innocence of childhood in the face of adversity beyond their years. With artistry and honesty, the camera paints a stirring portrait of a loving community where nothing is truly certain but home, and where each birthday is a celebration of dreams fulfilled and dreams to come.
Honduras has the highest rate of AIDS in Central America, and its saddest victims are children and youth. Born to women who are HIV positive, they not only bear the burden of the disease themselves, but many will soon be orphaned, often abandoned to the streets. At Montana de Luz (Mountain of Light) they find love, care, education, companionship and most importantly a place where they will not be scorned and discriminated against. At one time the project was thought of as a hospice, where most residents would eventually die, but new anti-retroviral medications mean that these children have a future. The building that was once planned to be the morgue is now a busy and happy computer center.
Citation
Main credits
Leahy, Matthew (film director)
Leahy, Matthew (film producer)
Leahy, Matthew (editor of moving image work)
Other credits
Editor, Matthew Leahy; cinematography by Elisa Stone; music by Peter La Grand.
Distributor subjects
AIDS Caregivers; Adolescence; Central America; Closed Captioned; Cross-Cultural Issues; Death and Dying; Fanlight Collection; HIV/AIDS; Healthcare; Healthcare History and Policy; Honduras; Latin American Studies; Psychology, Psychiatry, Social WorkKeywords
WEBVTT
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Project Psychologist
This began as a hospice…
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Children were given an
estimated 5 years of life,
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for those born infected by
their mother\'s bodily fluids.
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Volunteer Administrator HIV AIDS in Central America is
very, very bad. It has pretty high concentrations in
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most of the populations and
Honduras has a higher concentration
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by far than all the other Central American
nations. Project Director What the virus does is
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basically kills their immune
system umm… which means that they
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can… any sickness they\'ll get it.
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So Montaña de Luz at this point
is a home for children with HIV
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where they can get basic nutrition,
clean water, uh… go to school
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and be looked after.
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All authority figures
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are… are referred to as tia
or tio and… or aunt or uncle.
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To date, over 30,000 people
have died of AIDS in Honduras
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and between 70 and a 100,000
people are infected
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in Honduras alone. One can only
estimate that 10 to 15,000
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of those will be children.
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[sil.]
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Montaña de Luz is located in a
neighborhood called Nueva esperanza,
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which means new hope.
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[sil.]
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We are surrounded by a
sea of sugarcane fields
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uh… on basically all sides.
They burn the sugarcane fields
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every harvest season and that
the entire process takes about
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week and a half, two weeks. The other 10 and
a half or 11 months when the cane is growing
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there is really no work for anyone.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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Marlon\'s home is a
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mud house; they do not have running water.
They have no electricity. His parents both his
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mum and his dad are HIV positive.
They have four children
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and Marlon is the only one
that is HIV positive.
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[sil.]
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He was very malnourished. He
had terribly poor hygiene.
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Uh… he had pink eye and had a type of a
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parasite involving worms that would
crawl out of his skin. He had a
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fever of 104 and for a couple of nights, we
were really worried about him wondering,
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you know if he was even gonna make it through and
all of this on top of a compromised immune system.
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[sil.]
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At his house basically,
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his life consisted of sitting
in the dirt, playing with rocks
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and that\'s about it.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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A lot of what the children had experienced
before they came here was not just poverty,
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it was not just sickness in general. A
lot of what they experienced was death
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in the way of HIV AIDS, whether it was
a mother, whether it was sibling or
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a father or all of the above and
they are almost from birth, aware
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that the virus within their
blood is the same as death.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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Dilma is the
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oldest child at Montaña de Luz, uh…
she\'s actually 24 years old and…
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but developmentally she\'s on a
seven or eight-year-old level.
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Sometime in early childhood the
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stepfather sexually abused Dilma
and she in turn contracted
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the HIV virus.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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José Santos has a grandma and
grandpa and a great grandma.
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[non-English narration]
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His grandma and his great
grandma are both blind. Uh…
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when José Santos lived with them he actually
walked around with them on the streets and
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was begging for money to… to help them.
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They don\'t have anything, they\'re very poor
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and he doesn\'t care if he doesn\'t eat
all day, if that\'s what it means to
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be with his grandma, that\'s the
most important thing for him.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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2002 is when uh…
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the anti-retrovirals were available here in
Honduras. The children stopped dying, started
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living and with anti-retrovirals
they can live… well nobody knows
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really how long.
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[sil.]
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What it is look like for orphanages and
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homes all across the world who are
once barely holding on everyday
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watching children die, till now trying to
figure out what they are going to do with
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children that are growing up. Children
that now are in need of education and…
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and bigger clothes. When
Montaña de Luz was a Hospice,
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the children had no responsibility, they
weren\'t expected to learn, they weren\'t
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expected to prepare for a future,
they weren\'t expected to do just
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normal household chores, washing
their clothes or cleaning their
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rooms making their beds anything.
You don\'t teach dying children how
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to do chores you know invest in
that because its not necessary.
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We now have four-year-olds
and five-year-olds that are
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already washing their pyjamas and that\'s their
job, and in the morning to wash their own pyjamas.
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It\'s something that the tios and the
tias here have really encouraged the
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children saying, you know, \"nobody is going to
do this for you. When you\'re older you need to
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know how to do it and now
it\'s the time to learn.\"
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[sil.]
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José Santos
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will go and… and help Doug
feed the pigs or the chickens.
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[sil.]
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(inaudible)
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and his wife are really wonderful
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example for him.
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About two weeks ago, José
Santos took the time just
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to say \"I love you too and you are
my dad and you are the only dad
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that I\'ve ever had, and no matter
where you lived you will always be a
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dad to me.\"
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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After being at Montaña de Luz there were
notable changes in… in Marlon\'s health,
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the consistency of getting his medicine,
being closely monitored by our
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nurse and having a balanced diet
really takes to everything for Marlon.
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[sil.]
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Whether or not we think that the
children see us as role models,
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you know they\'re always watching us
and taking from what we say and do
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and to get them hope is very important.
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Giving them a chance for dreaming.
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[sil.]
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We are all piling into the back of
the pickup truck and we were down
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to the cemetery to put flowers
on all the graves, and Molly
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and I, we both just sat there on the slope
of the cemetery looking down at the
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four little grave sites
of the children. They had
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died earlier years and we just kind of
looked at one another and looked at all of
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the healthy children that we were there
with, we actually said, \"you know are so
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grateful that we are never
going to have to (inaudible)
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with us. We never had to put one
of these kids in the ground.
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So, just three
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months later we ended up having to
go down there and dig another hole.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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Many times we had taken him on emergency runs
to the hospital and he was just crying and
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he was actually with one of the tears, and he
said he didn\'t want to go to hospital anymore.
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He didn\'t want to be there anymore
and… and she said to him, \"Deybi, if…
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if you\'re done fighting and if
you want to rest, you can rest.
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You can go to sleep right now
if that\'s what you want\" and he
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just looked at her and then he
just closed his eyes and he died.
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[sil.]
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I had never been that close to that before.
To just to be
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able to touch him and hold him, even though
he was already gone and he was still warm.
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He was just a
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light for us.
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He was very revealing how the kids
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acknowledged death at
one their own funerals.
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Some kids didn\'t want to go in
at all, others were little bit
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more sensitive that you know more
of in a dilemma who taught us
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all what grieving looks like.
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She asked everyone to go to the casket
with her to look at him and she would talk
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about him and tell stories about them and
what… what they used to do together,
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and then she would look at me and say,
\"Why… why is he gone? He is my friend.\"
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She kind of went up and just
hugged the casket and just
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cried and cried. And I thought
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why can\'t we cope in that honest(ph).
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I feel like I had (inaudible)
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than that.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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We are just participating in that
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kind of great big movement
from death to life.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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Little one are you tired,
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baby are you tired? Sweet
child if you are tired,
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take your rest, take your
rest, take your rest.
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You don\'t have to fight.
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Child it\'s alright,
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I\'ll hold you through
the night take a rest,
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take your rest, take your rest.
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Because I am proud of you,
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it\'s nothing
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left to prove.
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If nothing else to do
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take your rest, take
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your rest, take a rest.
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Child close your eyes.
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Jesus come beside, now baby I won\'t cry
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take your rest, take your
rest, take your rest.
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A whisper peace to you,
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a whisper love to you,
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your sufferings through take a rest,
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take your rest, take your rest.
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Because I am proud of you,
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it\'s nothing left
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to prove,
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if nothing else to do,
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take your rest, take your rest,
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take your rest oh… take your rest,
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take your rest, take your rest,
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take a rest.
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[sil.]