The Lord has given me a huge blessing… a social worker named Norma and a man named Leo. They work at IHNFA, basically child social services, and are wonderfully supportive of Puerta de Esperanza. I think they may have the hardest jobs in the world working with social services here in La Ceiba, but more on that later. This morning they took me to meet two different girls who are candidates for our project.
We drove up the mountain to a neighborhood with a beautiful view, but that was all that was beautiful about it. We literally slid down the mud to a little, tiny shack where a grandma lives with 5 of her grandchildren. At least one other little one was removed from the house and is living in the hospital because he was dying of malnutrition and the others are headed that direction. This is where our first candidate lives. She doesn’t know how old she is, maybe 16/17?!? She doesn’t know when the baby is due, Erin guessed she’s about 7 months along. A man got her pregnant and then went to the states and she will never hear from him again. She has never been to school and looked terrified to be meeting us.
We came in with a great offer of a hope and a future and a different life… and she was so scared. And I get it. Here comes a brigade of 4 social workers and gringos wanting to take her away from her family and everything she has ever known. She didn’t know what to make of us. So we took time to explain everything and asked her and her grandma to think it over and we’ll be going back later to talk more. Please pray for wisdom and that the Lord would allow them to trust us.
The second girl was a different story because she is already in the system. To my best understanding, her mom died and her dad is not in the picture. She has an older sister but the sister is fighting to get money from her that their mom left and trying to take away her baby as well. This girl is 17 years old with a 9 month old son. She lives in a foster home with 8 other children. She was very interested in Puerta de Esperanza, but wants to make sure there is no hope of being reunited with her sister before she would choose to come with us. She will find out on Thursday what a judge has to say. The social worker doesn’t think she realizes how badly the sister would treat her. She has education up to 6th grade and seems to be a loving mom to her little baby. She lives well in the house with the others and I’ll be going back to talk to her again next week. So pray for this as well.
This is going to be a huge exercise in faith and trust for me as I meet all of these girls and really pray for guidance and direction from the Lord. Even as I write these two stories, I know that I may not get to work with these girls and its hard because they have so much need. So pray for clarity.
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