Featured Story

Three Years Of Blessing
Reflecting on our progress in 2002 and looking ahead to 2003
December 2002

Written by Robert Benson.

As we conclude our third year of ministry, we feel incredibly blessed by all that has been accomplished through Arms of Love. We have accumulated significant knowledge and experience in the establishment and operation of the unique type of children's homes that we originally envisioned, and we have been incredibly blessed to see that vision successfully implemented on multiple continents.

One New Country Each Year

Up to and including this past year, we have opened one new children's home each year. Our first children's home in Managua, Nicaragua, began receiving children in April 2000, and now cares for 24 children in two locations. Our second children's home in the Philippines began receiving children in January 2001, and now cares for 23 children in its first two homes. Our third children's home began receiving children in Morelia, Mexico, in May of 2002. And we have laid the foundation for our fourth children's home to begin receiving children in Senegal sometime in the early months of 2003.

In the coming year, our goal is to continue to develop the children's homes we have already established in Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Mexico, and to receive at least eight new children at each location during 2003. We also plan to begin receiving children into our fourth children's home, in Dakar, Senegal, as soon as the legal processes have been completed. By the end of 2003, we hope to be caring for more than 80 children between our four locations.

As we go forward into future years, it is our vision to continue blessing greater numbers of children, both at our existing locations and in new countries as God provides the relationships and the opportunities.

A Unique Model

The model of care that we are employing was not originally devised by Arms of Love, and is being used by many other ministries. Nevertheless, we have discovered that our model is unique in each community that God has called us to minister within.

In Nicaragua, for example, the government has previously recognized two types of facilities: a "substitute home," in which an existing family cares for just one or two children (akin to a "foster family" in the U.S.); and a "shelter," in which a staff cares for a large number of children who need temporary or long-term care. Arms of Love, however, has taken the concept of a "substitute home" -- with a substitute mother and father -- and has expanded it to include the care of 8-10 children. Arms of Love then provides additional, quality staff to help the substitute parents care for the children in their home. At least one full-time assistant is dedicated to each home, while other professional staff (teachers, psychologists, social workers, and administrators) work with children in multiple homes. In this manner, we maintain a high standard of care for the children in each "substitute home" with a 3:1 children-to-staff ratio.

We have been told by government officials that we are working with in Managua that we are the only organization employing this model. Accordingly, a new category is being developed with reference to our model, which officials are starting to refer to as a "collective substitute home" to distinguish it from the more traditional "single family substitute home."

By employing this unique model, Arms of Love provides the higher standard of care that is more typically found in a "substitute home" that has received just one or two children, and applies it to a much larger number of children while still maintaining the structure of a family.

As a result of our efforts, the children's homes sponsored by Arms of Love have come to be recognized, by local government officials in Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Mexico, as one of the best residential programs for children at risk in each respective city or area.

Admittedly, Arms of Love invests more money per child than most humanitarian organizations. However, by emphasizing quality over quantity, we are maximizing the probability that each child -- no matter how abused, scarred, or misused -- will grow up to lead a normal, healthy life with the same or greater opportunities as other children in their local community.

Children who have lived lives of prostitution or incest, children who have been physically beaten and abandoned, children who have lived homeless on the streets for years ... need more than food and shelter. They need a loving family, a stable home, healing of their emotional scars, special care for their physical and psychological needs, and educational acceleration.

Perhaps more importantly, by striving to achieve a high standard of care, we are seeking to carry out the commission of Jesus: "whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me," and again, "whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me."

We strive to care for each child the way Jesus would. And we seek to care for each child as if we were caring for Jesus himself.

Nicaragua

In Nicaragua, we focused our efforts this past year on strengthening our existing ministry. Following my visit to the project in December 2001, I decided that some significant changes were needed for the children's home to progress from "adequate" to "excellent," beginning with the staff. As the new directors of the children's home, Emilio and Gladys Padilla have brought fresh vision and enthusiasm to the project, together with more than 30 years of administrative experience. The new psychologist and social worker, Maria Luisa Gomez Estrada, has more than 23 years of experience in social work, planning, supervising, investigating, and counseling street children and other children at risk. The newest houseparent, Aldo Cesar Jarquin Martinez, has done post-graduate work in natural resources and ecology, and in addition to coaching sports for the children, is assisting in the landscaping of the project site and is developing a new vegetable garden. We also expanded and improved our physical facilities by renting a new home in a middle-class neighborhood to serve as the permanent girls' home, giving us substantial facilities at two separate locations. These and a myriad of smaller changes have helped the overall project progress significantly.

The time and energy we have invested into the Nicaragua project over the past year has yielded tremendous dividends. The government Ministry of the Family, which supervises such facilities, is now referencing our standard of care as that which should be attained by all residential facilities in Nicaragua. Despite the fact that we lack the more extensive funding and facilities of certain secular projects, government officials have recognized Arms of Love as being one of the best residential programs for children in Managua. Local businesses are also becoming more involved in supporting the project, and as a result, we recently received favorable coverage in the media (television, radio, and newspaper).

The Arms of Love Children's Home in Nicaragua hit a peak occupancy of 28 children in March of this past year. In June, the government Ministry of the Family decided to reintegrate one group of four siblings with their relatives, and the children's home has had a continual occupancy of 24 children since that time. We are currently readying a new transition home to receive children in the coming year, and we hope to receive at least 8 new children in 2003, bringing the total to 32 or more.

The Philippines

The Arms of Love Children's Home in the Philippines continued to grow and mature throughout the year. At the outset of the year, 16 children were living in the first two homes, and that number grew to 23 by the summer. As we look forward to the coming year, we hope to open a third home and begin receiving another group of 12 children, but such further growth will depend in part upon new funding that is needed to increase our existing infrastructure (e.g., to purchase a second jeepney and to build new facilities).

The most recent operational report we received from the Philippines describes most of the children as "jolly." The children "love to associate with others," and yet they continue to have emotional and psychological "problems they keep in their hearts," which can only be addressed by giving the children significant amounts of time, attention, love and communication. The relationships between the children and the staff continue to grow, and the children are described as being increasingly open with their emotions and willing to follow the guidance given to them by the staff. The children have developed a good work ethic, waking up early in the morning, following the rules of the home, and completing their daily chores as reflected on the schedule.

The children are also learning to excel in what they do and are becoming achievement-oriented. Many of the children are years behind in their education at the time they arrive at the Children's Home, but through the diligence of the staff, seven of our children are taking an acceleration test this month that would allow them to skip a grade in school. The children also participate in a self-defense class on Saturdays that is taught in a Christian context, and four of our children have been selected to represent the province of Bohol in the Philippines' national tournament. These children are traveling to Palawan for the competition at the government's expense. In these and other ways, the children are learning to compete, achieve, and excel in all that they do.

Mexico

This past year saw a long-time dream and vision come true in Morelia, Mexico. When Sue Leak first moved to Morelia and began working among young girls who lived on the streets and supported themselves through prostitution, she found that she could accomplish very little in changing the girls' lives unless she had the ability to care for them away from the streets. She could offer limited assistance in food and clothing, and she could talk about how much she cared for them, but with such talk came an expectation among the girls that she would help them get off the streets. When they then perceived her inability to accomplish this, they turned away from her and became more cynical than before.

As a result of this experience, Sue ceased her street outreach and began focusing her attention on the construction of a residential facility that could care for such girls on a long-term basis. This past year, due in large measure to the support of Arms of Love, that vision finally became a reality. A transition home for street girls opened in May of 2002, and in September, the first several girls moved into the permanent children's home, a facility on the outskirts of Morelia that is designed to accommodate more than 30 girls and staff.

There are now four girls living at the Children's Home. Two are in the sixth grade and are doing reasonably well in school. The other two girls are younger and had never been to school before, so they are just beginning to learn how to read. All of the girls are studying hard, even though they sometimes have difficulty focusing on their homework. Sue writes, "There are times when the tension in the house is so high that I think we will all explode, but by God's grace each day has ended with a prayer and a hug and a kiss. He has been so incredibly faithful to us. I am blessed."

Senegal

When we first began developing relationships in Senegal in early 2000, we truly had no idea what was in store for us. Heading into a new country where we had no pre-existing relationships, we had to devise a strategy for building a strong foundation for our work in Senegal, drawing upon our past experience in other countries. As a first step, we spent a year developing initial relationships with a few Christian leaders in Senegal. We then organized a teaching and ministry conference for all of the pastors in Senegal, held in May of 2001, as a means of introducing Arms of Love and the Vineyard on a broader basis, and as a means of building new relationships. Following the conference, we designed a training program for five individuals who expressed a desire to partner with us. This included four months of training with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Tagbilaran City, Philippines, and the Arms of Love Children's Home on the island of Bohol. When that training period ended in January of 2002, the team returned to Senegal, where the training continued for several additional months.

As a result of this training, we decided to partner with Raymond and Sylveria Njoku to plant a new church in Dakar, Senegal, and subsequently start the Arms of Love Children's Home. Because it is a core part of our vision to connect each children's home with one or more local churches, we determined to plant the church first, and start the children's home on a small scale only after the church had already established a core group of people. After months of legal bureaucracy, the church began meeting for Sunday worship in September 2002, and now has more than 20 new members. As the church continues to grow, we anticipate opening the Arms of Love Children's Home in Dakar in early 2003, at which time we will retain one houseparent couple and begin receiving an initial group of 8-12 children into the home. As this will be first Christian children's home in the country of Senegal, an economically poor country with a Muslim population of about 10 million, we are excited to have the opportunity to begin reaching the abandoned and the homeless street children of Dakar and to model our values in caring for such children.