Featured Story
Healing for the Broken
Sue Leak and her staff share their struggles and victories ministering to street girls in Mexico.
May / June 2004
The article below was written by Sue Leak, the director of the Victory Center in Morelia, Mexico. The Victory Center is a ministry to street girls that is sponsored by Arms of Love.
Girls at Victory Center performing a worship dance |
I first met Maria (not her given name) at a local children’s club that I was leading. We were trying to establish our presence in several difficult neighborhoods around the city by going in on a weekly basis, having about 45 minutes of wild and outrageous games, 15 minutes of Bible story and then 5 minutes of scripture memorization.
Maria was a skinny little ten-year-old with an infectious smile and a tremendous sense of competition. But what I remember most about my first meeting with her was that when we were playing an especially competitive game, she hiked up her skirt so that she could run better. And in doing so we could clearly see that she had been beaten a number of different times. There were bruises and welts on her legs, all of them in different stages of healing. They didn’t seem to dampen her sense of fun or her deep desire to win. As a matter of fact, she didn’t seem to notice those horrible wounds at all. But I couldn’t forget them.
I quietly began asking around the neighbor-hood to see what I could learn. The neighbors all seemed to know the situation; “her father is a drug addict” one woman said. “Her step mother doesn’t treat her well,” said another. “Sometimes she screams so loud that we need to turn on the stereo really loud to drown it out,” said another. I was appalled at their apathetic approach to the suffering of a child.
Armed with the testimonies of several neighbors, went to DIF, the Mexican equal of Child Protective Services. I was shocked to learn that they would do nothing, not even a basic investigation, without an eyewitness who would confront the family, face to face. Everything that I had presented to them was considered gossip and hearsay. They admonished me not to interfere any further.
But I couldn’t leave it alone. My whole heart focus had been on caring for and protecting children in difficult situations and it was clear to me that no one else was going to try to protect or care for Maria. I went back to the neighborhood and spoke with the neighbors again. Each of them agreed that what was happening to Maria was horrible and needed to be stopped but none of them would step forward to report the family. They were afraid of what Maria’s father would do to them. I didn’t live there and I also had no family to protect, but after meeting Maria’s father one day, I could understand their fears.
Sue Leak receives flowers on her birthday |
With no other recourse, I committed the situation to prayer. But then news somehow leaked to Maria’s father that I had been asking questions about him and his treatment of Maria, and Maria was forbidden to attend our local kids club. Several months later, one of the neighbors with whom I had spoken to about Maria and her family sought me out. “I can’t stand to hear her screams and cries of pain anymore”, she said. “I will go with you to Child Protective Services and make the report.” My heart was overflowing with gratitude and awe, knowing that this woman was taking a great risk to help me (and Maria).
The DIF began an investigation. Unfortunately, we were a few days too late. Maria had run away from home. I looked every-where that I could think of for her. People in the neighborhood were extremely helpful, but we could find no trace of her. My heart was saddened to think of how much she had suffered at the hands of people that should have treasured her. And how the system and myself had failed her. My only weapon was prayer and I fervently prayed for her.
Two years later an old friend from that same neighborhood came to me and said that she had seen Maria and that Maria was asking for me. We went together to find Maria. She was staying at a house of prostitution. She wasn’t sure if she could trust me and she had no idea that I had spent so much time and energy looking for her.
With some convincing she came with me to live at the Victory Center. She was so different from the young girl I first met. She was quiet, cautious, and guarded. She was with me almost a month before she smiled and it was much longer before I heard her laugh out loud.
She resisted all ideas of a loving, giving God. She could not accept the love of a God who had allowed so many difficulties in her life. But she could not deny the love that she saw in the lives of the ministry team at the Victory Center. We were honest with her. We didn’t know why it was necessary that the things happened the way they had but we knew with all our heart that God had brought her to us. And that He was caring for her.
As the days and weeks passed, Maria’s heart began to open to the word of God. One glorious evening she prayed with one of the caregivers to receive Christ. She steadily grew in her faith for quite some time. What a joy to see the healing, caring hand of our Lord working in the life of the broken hearted.
Today, Maria struggles with knowing how to let God deeper into her life. She knows what she should do but doesn’t really understand what a personal relationship with the Lord is all about. Won’t you join us in prayer for all the girls of the Victory Center? We are praying that they will know the difference between religion and relationship.
Living the Love of Christ
The following article was written by Mandy Ross, a woman from Chicago who volunteered with the Victory Center for about 18 months. As Mandy and other volunteers return home, new volunteers are needed. Will you pray about committing yourself to this ministry for a season of your life? For further information, contact Robert Benson at 949-351-2651 or armsoflove@armsoflove.org
Playing Uno |
When I first heard about the Victory Center in Mexico, I knew that it was exactly where God wanted me to be. I had just graduated with a Master's degree in social work, I had been working in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in the Chicago area, and I had a heart for working with adolescent girls, especially since I had been to Costa Rica in the summer of 2000 and done research on child prostitution and its prevalence throughout Latin America. The Victory Center, to me, was a culmination of everything God had been preparing me for, although nothing could have prepared me for the actual experience I´ve had and continue to have on a regular basis here at the home.
I don´t have a typical job with regular days off and evenings to myself. I live where I work and sometimes even ten minutes of quiet can be a welcomed reprieve. For most people, when they hear that only six girls are living in the home, believe that my job should be easy, that six girls couldn´t possibly be the handful that I make them out to be. However, my job involves twenty-four-hour-a-day discipleship. It is constant mentoring to girls who have been abandoned and are reluctant to trust anyone, especially adults. My girls have been wounded by the very people who should have been protecting them. They have lived lives free of healthy limitations and, therefore, must be retaught the basics of repecting others, forming social relationships, and pulling their own weight.
When I first arrived at the Victory Center there were only three girls (I say “only three” with a smile on my face). To be honest, I was expecting to have to break up a lot of physical and verbal fights (I had worked in a gang-infested high school in the states so I was ready for that). However, what I did not expect was the very thing that initiated me into life at the home. I remember I had been in Mexico only two weeks when I had to scold a girl (for what I can´t say but it was probably something like doing her chores). This particular girl came from a very abusive background and, although she was only eleven, she looked like she was eighteen. This girl was upset about my reprimanding her and so she threw herself on the ground, beating on the floor and howling like a two-year-old. In that very moment I understood that I had my job cut out for me. Even though I was going to be working with adolescent girls, I was going to have to deal with two to five year old mentalities.
So this is my job. I raise teenage girls, unteaching them what they have learned on the streets and replacing it with moral values and a true relationship with Christ. In a predominantly Catholic country, the girls may enter with some knowledge about God, but He is sometimes lost among a host of religious customs that have taken the place of actually knowing who He is. We try to run the home in a way that exemplifies God´s will. When we screw up, we ask forgiveness and hope that the girls will also learn that admitting a mistake is not a sign of weakness but of maturity. We ask that everyone do their part in chores and school (most of our girls are currently being home-schooled by myself and another Mexican worker). We try to set an example of how to do things well in order that the home may be functional and that God is glorified by our service.
The best part of my job is seeing the growth in our girls. I won´t say they don´t have setbacks and they don´t struggle because the majority of their maturation is a struggle. We have one girl who entered the home with an explosive rage, that would consume her any time she became angry. Lately she has learned to calm herself down and pull herself together before doing or saying anything really regretful. We have another girl who has learned to ask forgiveness of the adults and the other girls when she has done something wrong. Her apologies are sincere and come without prompting. We have another girl who, for a time, had built up much confidence that won her privileges that the other girls did not have. Recently, she has fallen back a ways, but she has accomplished more here in school and otherwise than she ever did while bouncing around between family members.
Whether a girl is in the home for a week, a month, or a year, she will hear the Gospel of the living God. She will learn about a love that is unconditional and pure and unlike anything else she has ever experienced. The adults in the home do their best to try to emulate that love. Even in the midst of discipline we try to communicate that one can be angry and under control at the same time and that though we may be furious or frustrated, nothing could make us love them any less. This is a concept so foreign to our girls but one that they hunger for. The acceptance of love and the healing of spiritual and emotional wounds is nothing short of a miracle of God and one in which I get to take a direct part.
What´s more, when I came to this ministry I was a fairly young Christian, having accepted the Lord only two years beforehand. That being said, by answering God´s call and obeying His will for my life, I have been able to grow alongside the girls to whom I minister. I have seen the Lord increase my patience, and even the girls say the same! I have been blessed with the opportunity to see a different form of worship than what I was accustomed to in the States and it has expanded my vision of the Lord and what He is able to do (which is everything, by the way). I have learned a humility that before was completely overshadowed by a prideful heart; in order to teach the girls how to admit wrongdoing and simple mistakes, I find myself saying almost daily, “Oops, I made a mistake” (and meaning it). As a soccer coach and now as a teacher, I find I learn a great deal more about a subject whenever I have to teach it to another. By being a discipler and a mentor to the girls at the Victory Center, I have been gifted with a better understanding of my own personal walk with the Lord and how I can do my part to enrich that relationship on a daily basis.
Slavery and Freedom
Reflections on a year of service at the Victory Center, by George VanderBeek
"Think of [your spiritual inheritance] this way. If a father dies and leaves great wealth for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. And that's the way it was for us before Christ came. We were slaves to the spiritual powers of this world. But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because you Gentiles have become his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father. Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, everything he has belongs to you.” Galatians 4:1-7 (New Living Translation)
Potluck for Sue Leak's birthday |
In many ways the girls who reside at the Victory Center are not unlike adolescent girls anywhere in the world. They like to play games, eat sweets, interact with others and watch videos. They tend to focus most intently on their own needs and desires and have difficulty empathizing with the needs of others. They generally don’t like doing chores or homework, eating vegetables or being disciplined. Sounds relatively normal doesn’t it?
What strikes me as “unusual” about their situation is the wide variety of oppressive obstacles they face in their lives. Some obstacles, such as learning disabilities, difficulty hearing or speech impediments, are personal. Some, such as gender role expectations and widespread corruption, are societal. Others, like psychological, physical and emotional stunting, result from various levels of neglect and abuse. Still others, such as a blindness to the abundant opportunities afforded them at the Victory Center and their inability to see -- let alone enter into -- the “spiritual inheritance” God offers them, are obviously spiritual in nature. Actually, slavery “to the spiritual powers of this world” (vs. 3) can be seen behind all of the above obstacles.
It is a sad fact that society expects and offers little to girls like these. The product of broken and dysfunctional families. Often the involuntary witnesses of alcohol and substance abuse. Shuffled from relative to relative or from crowded home to crowded home. Sometimes with nowhere to go, left to fend for themselves. Mentally and verbally degraded, living with low expectations and self-esteem. Some physically and sexually abused. Lacking formal education. Swept aside to the corners of society.
What would the future hold for such as these? Perhaps a life spent in a home eking out a minimal existence . . . or saddled with an early marriage with little chance of improving lifestyle or station . . . or out onto the streets begging and selling oneself with the looming likelihood of addiction, abuse and disease? A variety of slaveries.
It is into this difficult and imposing context that God has led Susan Leak to undertake the redemptive work of the Victory Center. This home offers the girls not only a safe place to live, learn and grow but also a hope for an educated future and a role as responsible members of a better society. Time spent at the Victory Center provides an opportunity to free these lives from the slaveries that ensnare them. It provides a window to shed the light of Christ onto the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs of these girls. Ultimately it also provides opportunity to point them toward the freedom and inheritance that can be ours through a saving faith and personal relationship with our Lord and Savior.
That, however, is not a work that “the spiritual powers of this world” succumb to easily. Their grasp on the minds and spirits of these girls is not easily loosened. Every day is a battleground wherein the staff members seek to balance discipline with caring, spiritual warfare with mental and emotional growth. It is an exceedingly difficult, tiring and often discouraging work. The various insecurities run so deep and the baggage of the past weighs so heavily that progress toward healing is painfully slow to emerge. And yet signs of hope do come. A moment of carefree laughter. A genuine plea for forgiveness for a wrong done. An act of consideration toward another. A new concept grasped in Math or Science. A humble expression of gratitude. A Biblical principle learned and applied. A prayer from the heart. Baby steps toward an eternal inheritance.
Please join me and the staff of the Victory Center in praying for a significant spiritual breakthrough among the girls residing there. It requires a power beyond what we, in our best effort, can offer. A spiritual power to free from slavery . . . available only to heirs. Pray that the girls will find ultimate belonging in the presence of a dear heavenly Father . . . as his child and heir . . . rather than looking for it within their sin riddled earthly families or peers. Oh, what freedom and security that would bring!
Please also pray for continued strength, wisdom and patience for Susan and her staff as they work to train, free and heal those whom are entrusted to their care. It truly is a daunting but worthwhile task that deserves our support on various levels. May freedom reign!
In Christ, George VanderBeek
