Good Cries, Good Prayers, & a Jar of Nutella

This wasn’t true, everyone doesn’t hate her, but for you to understand why she thinks that I need to share a bit of her story with you. Nicole is her mothers third child and doesn’t have a father. Her older brother Luis lives at the property and her sister Fani lives with her grandmother. Their mother is abusive and has made mistakes, just like we all have, but Nicole has to deal with the repercussions of her mothers actions all alone. The way that Nicole acts when she’s on the property it is evident that she doesn’t get much attention at home and she can be hard to handle sometimes. So when she was saying everyone hated her it made sense, because often she doesn’t feel very loved.

As we were sitting with Nicole two more of the girls, Dania and Amalia, came down to see what was happening. Dania is another one of the girls that Cassie works with and she has four siblings. Her oldest sister is married and has a baby, her brother Ronnie lives in Los Pinos, Arielle her other brother lives at Zion’s gate, and her younger sister Amalia lives with her and Ronnie in Los Pinos. Dania has taken on a “motherly” role with the younger girls and immediately she began to comfort Nicole as she cried. This day also happened to be Amalia’s birthday so I started talking to her and asking how her day was. She sat in my lap and teared up and told me it was bad, and there was nothing to celebrate.

Their family lives in a one room shack in Los Pinos and about six months ago their mother Naomi walked in to find her husband had hung himself. This wound is so fresh and raw for the girls and Amalia really missed her dad on her birthday. As I was talking to Amalia about it Dania began telling me how hard it has been since their dad died. She was telling me how they can’t sleep at night because there is no peace in their house. She was telling me that she’s been having really dark thoughts, scary thoughts, and that spirits were attacking her. Then she told me that Amalia had experienced it too, but she had physically been feeling things grabbing onto her and holding her legs. Dania said that Naomi hadn’t slept in a month.

Then Sandra came down to see what her cousins were doing. For the past few weeks Sandra has been so sad and depressed because her grandmother Mina is in the hospital. Sandra’s parents abandoned her and she has a couple siblings that have been adopted and live in the states but she lives in Los Pinos with Mina. Sandra is cousins with almost all of the kids that Zion’s gate works with, so she has a few aunts in Los Pinos but none of them want to take her in. For a little bit Mina wasn’t doing well at all and Sandra wasn’t even allowed to go to the hospital and visit her. She has been so worried and sad while Mina has been sick, because Mina is all that she has.

Before we knew it all of the Honduran girls had started crying and I held Amalia in my arms. Then Carly, Sami, and Kacey came down and started loving on the girls. We couldn’t really say anything to them and didn’t even know what to say so we just started praying. I can’t even describe how I felt in that moment. It was like I felt all the weight and the sadness that these girls had been dealing with and it completely broke my heart. As we held them and prayed for them it was all I could do not to sob. I can’t even imagine all of the things that they have seen and been through. It’s not okay for Nicole not to feel loved or wanted, or that Dania and Amalia feel haunted and can’t sleep in their house, or that Sandra is scared that she may lose her grandmother and be homeless. I can’t do anything to change these girls situations, but I can love.
I have so much love to give, I have hope to give, I have peace to give, and that is my job. These girls aren’t just ministry, or some girls we fed or gave tracts too, or spent an hour with once, but these girls are my friends and sisters. They are why I’m here, and I think that this is the way that ministry is really intended to look.
 

Written by Katie Emery. Read more of Katie's stories at katieemery.com