Aid for Add
There's a Thai lady that Mark and Sharon know very well and whom they have been helping for many years. She's a 70 year old widow who looks after many of the children in her community; sometimes without ever being paid. Some parents have just dropped their kids off with her, never to return. Some leave them with her for weeks and some actually pay her for her service. But regardless she keeps looking after the children taking on a 24/7 job because it needs to be done and she loves the children. When Mark and Sharon first met her she was living and taking care of these kids in a tin shack that provided minimal shelter for them. They rounded up some support and gave her a new home. (Click on the link to watch a video showing the making of Add's new home in 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2wW8ZZJNAM&feature=player_embedded) That was almost three years ago. She's still looking after the children, still getting ripped off, and still loving Jesus; only now she's got some health problems that make it hard for her to keep up. She just got out of the hospital because she's got some heart trouble from all the stress and anxiety she has. That's where we came in today. We got the pure pleasure of clearing her pathways, getting all the weeds and grass out of there, doing her dishes, cleaning up, getting her some drinking water, and just being there to talk and to listen.
At one point while I was hoeing I look up and she's crying with Lauren; I went over and she began to say how it makes her so sad because she sees us come and we have such good heart and she hates not having any food or drink to give us, she hates not being able to pay us or do the work herself. She told us how she used to be such a hard worker and such a strong woman but how she cannot anymore. She voiced how it makes so sad to not have money for food or water, to be constantly ripped off by parents but she can't say no because the babies she watches see her as their mom and not their actual birth mom. It broke my heart seeing this woman so helpless and so beaten down by poverty and circumstances that are out of her control. I just hugged her and told her that she's a good woman and she has a good heart. I told her how she's a daughter of God and we are daughters of God so that makes us family and this is what families do, they look out for each other and they help each other. We encouraged her to just rest and not worry that we were happy to come and continue to help as long as we are there.
Talk about eye-opener. This woman lives in real deal poverty; poverty you nor I can imagine. Seeing it and how she lives opened my Western eyes a lot but I'll never understand what it's like to have that be all you know and probably all you'll ever know. She loves the Lord and it's not right that she be abandoned by her family like this to fend for herself and it's not right for her "God family", as she called us, to abandon her now. I saw my own Abuelita in her and it made me love her all the more. So Abuelita I made sure to give her a big Stephanie hug in your honor.
Please say a prayer for Add that she would be healed and that the Lord would provide for her every need.
At one point while I was hoeing I look up and she's crying with Lauren; I went over and she began to say how it makes her so sad because she sees us come and we have such good heart and she hates not having any food or drink to give us, she hates not being able to pay us or do the work herself. She told us how she used to be such a hard worker and such a strong woman but how she cannot anymore. She voiced how it makes so sad to not have money for food or water, to be constantly ripped off by parents but she can't say no because the babies she watches see her as their mom and not their actual birth mom. It broke my heart seeing this woman so helpless and so beaten down by poverty and circumstances that are out of her control. I just hugged her and told her that she's a good woman and she has a good heart. I told her how she's a daughter of God and we are daughters of God so that makes us family and this is what families do, they look out for each other and they help each other. We encouraged her to just rest and not worry that we were happy to come and continue to help as long as we are there.
Talk about eye-opener. This woman lives in real deal poverty; poverty you nor I can imagine. Seeing it and how she lives opened my Western eyes a lot but I'll never understand what it's like to have that be all you know and probably all you'll ever know. She loves the Lord and it's not right that she be abandoned by her family like this to fend for herself and it's not right for her "God family", as she called us, to abandon her now. I saw my own Abuelita in her and it made me love her all the more. So Abuelita I made sure to give her a big Stephanie hug in your honor.
Please say a prayer for Add that she would be healed and that the Lord would provide for her every need.