Rachel Remembers it's a New Day: Making Special

Rachel Remembers it's a New Day: Making Special: She spilled beans and orange soda down the front of her white flower girl dress. I took her into the kitchen and rinsed her down the best...

Infographic of Paudalho

Rosineide's Birthday Picnic

We are so grateful to the two short-term missions trip groups that left us with party supplies--and a whole bucket of double bubble gum!:)

And, of course, the winning bubble:

Alexandra

Here is the youtube video, if you prefer watching rather than reading:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5YR2yvtk6s

Life piles on you like trucks that arrive with more trash. And sometimes, you forget to keep hoping that someday you will see a difference.

From 2007-2009 I had the opportunity to work with almost 150 children at Living Stones in Paudalho, combined with the local government program PETI (Program to Eradicate Working Children). But we didn’t just work with at-risk children and their families, we worked with whoever walked through the doors of the church.

One of those children, who wasn’t even registered with the government, was Alexandra. A bushy-haired fireball that I personally kicked out multiple times for violent behavior. Her mother was a prostitute in another town. Her father was a drunk in another. She and her brother lived on the street or in abandoned houses. She thinks she was born in 1996. She doesn’t know her birthday.

When I first met her, she was (around) 11, and I wrote this: “Alexandra always wear a dirty baseball cap. When we finally got it off her head one day, we realized why—she had the worst case of head lice I have ever seen, with open sores on her scalp. We find her decent clothes to wear, because she runs around in a miniskirt and tube top. But she doesn’t have any soap to wash them. She doesn’t know how to wash them even if she did. She does what she can to get food, and is known for trading sexual favors for bubble gum.”

As she grew up, she came to Living Stones less frequently, and in 2011 I heard she was pregnant. I went from house to house, asking where she was, wanting to offer help. Her friends came back with different stories: she tried to self-abort the baby. She was living with a woman who drank too much. She was living with the family of the father of the baby. Every time I went to the place they said she was, she had just left. And so I let it be.

But I continued praying for her. I ran into the father of her baby once, who said the baby was alive and healthy. I asked people to pray, I kept her picture on my wall. But I figured, as with many of the children, that they had made decisions, and I had to let that go.

Four years passed since I last saw Alexandra. So when I turned around in church, I was not looking for her face. But there she was, glowing, as she called out “Tia Rachel!” and bounced her daughter on her knees. I blinked first from surprise and then from tears as I ran to hug her, no knowing where to start.

 

She and her daughter are healthy. They have a more permanent home, and she is friends with a woman from church that brought her. Her smile was real and her hair was the silky black it should be. Her daughter’s name is Stephanie, and yes, she is happy and wants to keep learning more about Jesus. And I couldn’t ask for more.

The children I work with might not turn out like I think they should, but that doesn’t mean I failed, or God forgot. You never know what God has planned. And over and over He taps me on the shoulder and grins, saying, “See? I told you so. I told you I loved those children even more than you do. I got this.”

Josefa from Paudalho

While Living Stones in Paudalho had to close down in 2011, we still keep in contact with the children through Birthday parties and the $10 FOR THEM program--especially Josefa's family. Take some time to pray for them today:

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