Father´s Day with the Fatherless

When Mother´s Day comes around, we always handle the holiday with care, because we have a few kids in our ministry whose mothers have died. We are sure to include other kinds of mother-figures in our celebrations, like grandmothers and aunts. One way or another, all of our little ones find that woman in their life who has taken on the role of mother, and deliver their heartfelt craft, hug and kiss to her.

But Father´s Day is different.

Among the children we work with, you will be hard-pressed to find a child whose father is a part of their life. Sure, we do have a few great dads, those who still live with and support their families. But the majority of our kids have been abandoned by their fathers. Some have lost their fathers to alcohol or drugs, some have lost them to new wives and new families, some have lost them to irresponsibility and fear, and still others have lost them to death.

How do you walk into a room of children who have no father, and talk to them about Father´s Day? Do you ignore it? Pretend today is just another day? Do you happily make some craft for the day, hoping they will find someone to give it to? What would you do?

My girls made several little crafts for their father for Father´s Day, and we put them into a basket with small presents we had purchased and gave those gifts to him. We spent the day loving on him, doing things he likes to do, and eating his favorite foods. It was a day all about Daddy. I think about my girls, and how blessed they are to have a mother and a father, and then I think about the kids in our ministry, and it breaks my heart. There is a Mother´s Day and a Father´s Day, but is there a Fatherless Day? An Orphan Day?

The reality of the lives of these children keep me up at night. They break my heart, they infuriate me, they fill me with frustration because there is so little I can do. But the truth is that these children do have a father. They have a father who loves them, a father who will never abandon them, a father who cares for them, a father who gave everything to be with them. They have a father, and if there is nothing else I can do, I can spend the time I have with these little ones helping them get to know Him, because He is my Father, too.

This Father´s Day, please do celebrate the wonderful fathers in your life. Having a father is a blessing and privilege, and they deserve to be pampered and spoiled and loved on and celebrated. But somewhere in your day, say a prayer for the many in this world who are fatherless, and think about how you might be able to bless them, so that they can have something to celebrate, too.

Motivation

God has been doing so much in the past months that it has been difficult to do anything other than hold on for dear life. The words to describe all that is happening just don´t seem to come, and the time to sit down and find them is scarce. We are so busy, and when we get to the time of night when I usually find time for things like blogging, I have trouble keeping my eyes open at all. I´ve roped my fellow team members into writing blog entries, so in the next few days you will hear from them (which I think will probably be much more interesting) and I won´t feel like such a slacker!

My brother is big on Motivation. He loves finding things to motivate himself--it´s his personal motto, I think. So I want to share one of those motivating things with all of you, one of the moments that is burned into my memory and that motivates me in the many, many moments where I´m sure my strength will fail.

Meet Fernanda (pictured here with our Bella). Some of you will remember that we were praying for a mother of 6 who was fighting uterine cancer, who passed away this past August. Fernanda is one of her daughters. Her two older sisters (15 and 16 years old) each have a baby and are living on their own, which means that Fernanda is the oldest of the 4 that are left at home. Her father relies on her to keep track of the money and her younger siblings, while he works long hours and spends his evenings sometimes with his children, sometimes with his new girlfriend, and sometimes drinking. Fernanda is 12 years old.

When we did Share Christmas in Quito, Fernanda was there with her siblings, and from the moment she walked in I could tell something was wrong. Fernanda, despite all of the burden placed on her by her circumstances, is a generally happy girl, but she walked in looking completely heartbroken.

After Share Christmas was over, I called Fernanda over to me and took her aside, asking her what was wrong. She started to cry and told me that she missed her mother, and wished she could spend Christmas with her. I hugged her and comforted her as best as I could, knowing that there was really nothing that I could do to take away that pain in that moment. It broke my heart.

Fast forward to this past Saturday, our first Kid´s Club meeting. Fernanda and her siblings were there again. They all looked sad, but content enough to be with us. As the day unfolded, I watched the kids from my vantage point as director, (one of the perks of being director is you get to be a part of everything) and I noticed something. I watched Fernanda learning the praise dance we were teaching and I saw her smile. A real smile, born of real happiness. I saw her in her class, learning her memory verse, laughing with the other kids. For a little while, I saw Fernanda become a kid again. She wasn´t thinking about what she would cook for dinner, or how she would corral her siblings back home, or how she missed her mother terribly. She was just a happy, carefree kid.

There have been lots of magical moments like those in the past months. God is moving. His presence is healing the children we work with and our workers. He is opening doors, providing, and moving in our hearts. He is pushing us forward, giving us strength for the moment and somehow, in the midst of all the craziness, giving us rest. It´s hard to put into words for the people who aren´t here, experiencing it first-hand, and I wish I could bring you all here, and just let you soak it all in. And I hope you know that you are partners in our joy, those of you who lift us up in prayer and support our ministry, because without you, we would not be able to do what we do. Thank you is not strong enough to express the gratitude we feel for all you do, and even more, the gratitude in our hearts for God, for allowing us the privilege of serving Him.

Ashley Rodrick
Director, Revolution Infantil

Some of our kiddos playing outside during kids´ club

Some of our kiddos playing outside during kids´ club

The view from the park behind our building

Some of our kiddos playing outside during kids´ club, with team members Jairo, Victor, Nancy and Jhonny

Some of our kiddos playing outside during kids´ club

Victor and Jhonny explaining the game

A Whole World in One Room

Yesterday we went to visit Alisson and her family.

Meeting Alisson (and showing her pictures on our iphone)

 With every visit, every ministry day since we got back from furlough, I am overwhelmed with the world that God is showing me. Being a missionary to Ecuador for years, you think you know poverty. You think you know pain and suffering. You think you know hopelessness. But all of these things exist in different degrees for different people, and God is peeling back the layers, showing me that it goes deeper and deeper. It´s like I´m standing at the threshold of more pain, sadness, need, poverty, and desperation than I have ever known, and God is issuing an invitation: Will you come in? Will you enter into their world?

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelation 3:20

This is the very heart of the gospel. God saw our miserable state, and he decided to enter into it. Even now, His invitation to us is simply to open the door to our world. If we open the door, He will come in, and He will join us there. He won´t just pass by. He won´t say a quick ¨hello¨ and be on His way. He will come in and fellowship with us. He will become a part of whatever life we have. 

When Alisson´s family opened the door to their world, I didn´t realize that it would be one little room.We went to pick out a little toy to give to Alisson before we went to meet her. We talked about what she might want. We almost got her some play dishes and food, before deciding she was likely to already have those kinds of toys, and getting her a little play jewelry set instead. I don´t know what I was worried about. There were no toys in the room.

Alisson playing with her new toy

This family´s whole world fit into one tiny room. Two beds, a dresser with a small TV, a stove (which also serves as an end-table when not in use, while the oven is the bookshelf for Alisson´s brother, Alexander´s school books), and an unplugged refrigerator (unplugged because they had no food, and the refrigerator uses electricity, which costs money that they don´t have). 

They are a small family living in a tiny house at the top of the city of Ibarra, where neighbors are scarce, and the world could just forget that these people, and their one-room world, even exist. But I can´t forget, because they opened the door and invited me in. Into their world.

Alisson´s house

I can´t stop seeing their one-room home in my mind, every time I close my eyes. I can´t stop seeing Alisson´s dad, Edison, getting out of his wheelchair and onto the bed for a family picture, his catheter an obvious reminder of how drastically his life has changed. I can´t stop seeing the tired smile on Alisson´s mother, Elena´s face as she tries to make the best of an impossible situation. And I can´t stop seeing Alisson´s beautiful, enormous smile and chemo-short black hair.

Alisson´s smile

Alisson and her mother were stranded in Quito for three days because they didn´t have the $3 for bus fare back to their hometown. When we found out, we sent one of our team members to find them and give them money to get home, but they travel to Quito every week to get chemo and transfusions for Alisson. They get lunch at the local homeless shelter every day. But still, they smile.

As we tried to encourage them with the Word of God, and our own words of kindness and love, Elena told me: ¨I only turned away from God once since I became a Christian, when I found out about my daughter´s illness. I didn´t want to hear anything about God. I was so angry. I lost my first baby when she was two months old, and I just couldn´t imagine losing another child.¨ 

One child in heaven. Another with leukemia. A husband left paralyzed after an accident while working on their property. Lunches at homeless shelters. Stranded without even $3 for a bus. A whole world in a one-room house.

And as I sit here in my three-bedroom apartment, that by American standards would be considered very small, I think how very big it is after all. We have no shortage of toys, clothes or food, and on days like today I think maybe we still have too much. I wonder why people like Alisson´s family can live in a one-room house with no money for food while I just ate two pieces of bread and two cups of coffee for dinner. And I think that no amount of sacrifice, work or service will ever be enough, because there will always be hundreds more like Alisson. 

I´ve realized that opening these doors and entering into these lives has opened a door in my heart that will never close. I can never go back to the way things were before, and I wouldn´t want to. I want to go deeper--deeper into the pain and the hurt and the poverty and the suffering and the sorrow. I want to shine the light of the gospel in dark places and bring hope to the hopeless. I want to pour out every last ounce of my strength for the One who poured out every last ounce of His life for me. And for Alisson. 

-Ashley Rodrick
Director, Revolution Infantil

Alisson´s family (including her grandmother)

Getting Our Hands Dirty

God is funny. My plea upon returning to Ecuador was that I was desperate to do more, I wanted to make a real difference: I wanted to really get my hands dirty.

I don´t know how many doses of hand sanitizer I have applied today, but I have to laugh in the midst of it all. This isn´t exactly what I meant, God. But yes, my hands are dirty.

I don´t know if you have reached a moment of desperation, but I did, yesterday. We finally got to visit one of the families I most wanted to see. The mother just two months ago passed away from uterine cancer (while we were in the US on furlough), leaving behind six children, the oldest of whom (16) just had a baby and the second-oldest (15) is pregnant. The father struggles with alcohol addiction and cannot provide for his children with his job of working at the garbage dump.

Wrapped up in this family, tucked up high in one of Quito´s worst neighborhoods, is the very core of why I am here, in Ecuador. Poverty, pain, suffering, injustice, hunger, addiction, heartbreak, hopelessness...meet: Jesus. And in the midst of it all, we sing praise songs to the sound of my husband´s tattered old guitar and we thank Him, because even when we feel there is nothing to be thankful for, we are thankful for Jesus.

I looked into the eyes of these children and I saw that they were not the same children that I knew a year ago. They are bigger, taller, and more articulate, but that isn´t what really changed. What really changed in these children is their eyes. Where there was hope, now there is pain. Where there was innocence, now there is loss. Where there was laughter and joy, now there are tears.

In Spanish, when a child loses a parent, in this case the mother, they say of the children that they were ¨orphaned by their mother¨. Even though their father is still with them, these children were orphaned, and they will never be the same.

We cried with them, we sang with them, we ate birthday cake with them (It was the oldest daughter´s birthday just a few days before, so we brought cake), we gave them gifts from the US (USA bracelets, candy and photo albums I made for each child with all the pictures I could find of them with their mother), and one by one they took turns formally thanking us for our love and support, as they (and we) struggled and failed to hold back the tears.

My oldest daughter joined the children as they went to play and we sat down for a serious talk with their father about how we can help him get his life back together. As we talked, I saw his heart laid bare right in front of us. He was orphaned, too. He feels totally alone, and while he knows he can´t raise his children or provide for them, he also knows that he can´t live without them. They are all he has left.

 

We decided to think and pray and meet again next week to decide what can be done to help the children, and help the father, too. But that is not enough. In this moment, I feel useless. I want to help, but what can we do to make these lives better?

Hence my dirty hands. I asked a question, and the answer gave me a way to help, a way to get my hands dirty.

¨Do you have a washing machine?¨

He works 7am to 8pm. He has 6 children, 1 grandchild, and another on the way. He has no washing machine.

I can´t fix this family´s problems today. I can´t even buy them groceries; it´s too late at night. But I can fix this. I can wash these clothes.

We agree to pick up the clothes in the morning. On our way, we stop to buy them groceries, too. We go to their house, drop off the groceries, and pick up the laundry. I wish I had taken a picture. The clothes were in a huge bag, which took both my husband and our worker, Victor, to carry. We had to walk quite a way before we found a taxi.

 

We got home and started separating the clothes. If I wasn´t yet totally heartbroken for this family (I was), now I had even more motivation. Each piece of clothing seemed to be worse than the last. Torn, tattered, stained, dirty, and oh so foul smelling. Anyone who is reading this would probably have thrown these clothes away long ago. Actually, someone probably did. Most of this family´s belongings are things the father has found at the dump. (Just yesterday he was content to show us the beat up old sneakers he found while working, patched up and clinging to their last few miles of life.)

It ended up being six loads of laundry. And half a bottle of stain remover. And a lot of hand sanitizer. I only gagged a few times.

I was amazed that some of the clothes actually came out smelling clean. (Some I washed twice.) A few even looked in decent shape.

When Jairo went back to drop off the clothes, he found the father had been drinking, but was still mostly sober. They talked for a long time, and the father once again opened his heart to Jairo. And in the midst of the conversation, and the apologizing for having had yet another drink, and the thanking us for our help and care, the father said,

¨I have been to a lot of churches, but you guys are the only people who have ever really showed me God´s love, and made me feel like I´m worth something.¨

Ok, God. You win. When I said I wanted to get my hands dirty, this is exactly what I meant.

-Ashley Rodrick
Director, Revolución Infantil