What We Do: Children's Testimonies

 

Testimony of a Boy in Managua, Nicaragua

Greetings! I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Throughout this year I have seen many changes and accomplishments. Since I was placed at the first children’s home in San Judas, I felt myself happier than I was before. Now I feel perfectly well at the boys’ home in Las Palmas. When we moved to our new home in Las Palmas we found better housing conditions and a new challenge to face at the school level, as the classes were more advanced and the school was a more expensive one.

I want to share with you my expectations and goals I have set ahead for my future by defining what I want to become and how I want to be prepared to face my future life as an adult.

First of all, thanks for supporting me until now. I firmly believe this is a great opportunity for me and that if I take advantage of it, everything I learn here will be useful in my future life. I want to prepare myself for that life. My present plans are much wider and better than those I had before. I want to participate in all the plans that the people who take care of me are planning and presenting to me. I want to recover all the lost time I have wasted before, as I have come to understand that I will not find another opportunity like this anywhere.

I give thanks to God and you all for giving me the opportunity to improve myself. My life and ways of living have changed. I have learned better manners and I want to keep improving myself.

Receive please all my regards from myself and the rest of the boys who live with us. I wish you again a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Juan Martinez

 

Testimony of a Girl from Estelí, Nicaragua

Juana never knew her real parents, and no one knows anything about them. We do not know her given name. She was abandoned by her mother in a garbage can, when she was eight days old. A new couple began to care for her, but when she was about six years old, her adopted mother started physically abusing her. After being removed from the home of her adopted mother due to the abuse, Juana had no place to live, and she was one of the first eight children Arms of Love received in April 2000.

Hello! I hope that you are all in good health in the company of your families.

I was born in Estelí, a city in the northern part of my country, Nicaragua. When I was a very young baby, I was adopted by an older couple who are my adoptive parents. I was badly mistreated by them, especially by my adoptive mother who suffers from a variety of chronic sicknesses. She was very mean and used to tell me ugly things that hurt me a lot. What used to hurt me the most was when she told me that I had no value at all and was unworthy of receiving any care or love, as I had been given away by my real mother.

I reacted to all of this by being violent, speaking back, misbehaving, hateful, etc, and did not attend church at all as my adoptive parents were not Christians. My former years of life were a hard living experience and I suffered a lot, enduring a lot of ugly things.

In 1998, I was taken from my home by the Family Ministry MIFAMILIA and placed at a S.O.S. village home in Estelí, but I was not there too long because my parents took me out. But just a few months later, due to their continuing mistreatment, I was brought to Managua and placed at an orphanage run by the Divine Face nuns, located at El Crucero, located on the colder hills that oversee the city of Managua. But I behaved badly while I was there, so I was brought to the Arms of Love home, located in Lomas de San Judas. There I misbehaved as I used to do: hatefully, disrespectfully, not getting along with anyone, but after some years there was appointed as Director of the Home my “Abuelito Emilio” (grandpa) alongside with my “Abuelita Gladys” (grandma).

At the beginning I thought they were too stern and I thought the worst about them. So I continued to misbehave, did not want to study, acted irresponsibly and did not find joy in anything. But later on, I started to see things in a different way. Now I would like to legally have their last name so they are really my “Abuelitos” (grandparents).

Nowadays, my life is the best of the best. I am getting ahead with their help and support, and my self esteem is completely different than before. My behavior is super, and I have a lot of expectations in life that I hope to accomplish with your and my “Abuelitos” help and support. This year I passed the eighth grade, and my goals for next year are to study and upgrade my academic grades. I would like to learn some practical skills and graduate from high school, and then I would like to study business administration and psychology.

In relation to my spiritual growth, I have improved a lot. I am going to the Vineyard church here in Managua, and I like the love and care that the pastor and the members of the church have shown for me as they have supported me a lot.

I am in good health. I am presently very happy because I have been enrolled in an even better school this coming year. I give you thanks for the generosity you show in supporting me. I know, being the oldest girl here at the home, I cannot stay indefinitely, but no matter what happens I will have a future if God allows it.

Please receive my sincere thanks and greetings. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Juana Maria Gutierrez Espinoza

 

Testimony of a Girl in Morelia, Mexico

The following testimony was written by one of the first girls who came to live at the Victory Center in Morelia, Mexico. Although she was 14 years old, she only had a third grade education at the time we received her. After several months of tutoring, she successfully tested into the sixth grade. Here is her story.

Hi, I live in Morelia, Mexico, and I'm 14 years old. Right now I live in the Victory Center, a home for children who need some place to live. I am very happy here, but my life has not always been easy.

My mother abandoned me when I was just a baby. My father took me to live with an aunt when I was only a year old. I was very happy living with my aunt. I felt secure with her, but I remember that whenever I was with my father, I never felt very good.

My father took me away from my aunt when I was three years old. I remember that there were many women in our lives, and my father told me that each one was my mother. I lived with my father until I was five years old, and then he gave me back to my aunt, who cared for me until I was nine years old.

When my father took me back again, I discovered that he had yet another woman living with him. For the first week or so, everything was fine, but then the problems started. My "stepmother" started to tell my father lies about me, and my father believed whatever she said and would hit me. For example, my stepmother said that I gave glass to a 3-year old boy and that I tried to throw a child off the fourth floor of our building. There was also a time when my father would go to work for the day and leave me chained in the bathroom. Things didn't change until I ran away and went to live with my godparents. They lived very far away, and I had to search throughout the entire city to find them. They accepted me and wanted to adopt me, but it didn't work out.

When my father found out that I was with them, he came for me and brought me back to the house where my stepmother and her children lived. However, they continued to hit me for things that I didn't do. I won't lie, because sometimes I did disobey. But finally I could not take it any more, and I ran away again because of the mistreatment that I received from both of them. I ran away many times, and each time he would find me and drag me back home and beat me.

My relationship with my father wasn't very pretty, but ugly. He drinks too much, and as a consequence, he has an incurable liver disease. I had an ugly experience with my father … I am not a virgin any more, my father took my virginity when I was 10 or 11 years old. One night my father came home drunk and he had a fight with my stepmother and the rest of the family. He hit my stepmother and me, and we left the house and went to sleep at my godparents' house. But my father followed after us, found me, and raped me. Because of that, I have a venereal disease called gonorrhea. He woke up the next day and acted as if nothing had happened. My father raped me on more than one occasion. But when I returned to my godmother's house, although I was hurt, I did not tell them anything about this.

Well, the days and weeks went by, and I was able to hide from my father and my relatives for 2-1/2 years, almost three. I stayed with my godparents during some of that time. During that time, I got sick and needed an operation, and my godparents paid for it.

My godmother also drank a lot, and there was a time when she spent 16 days drinking day and night and wouldn't eat anything. She joined a group of Alcoholics Anonymous and was rehabilitated for five months. Afterwards, she had a serious relapse, and she died the 17th of February, a Sunday, at 8:30 in the morning. I made a great error, I left her alone, completely alone, at the time that she died, and I felt responsible for her death. I left because I feared that her family would kill me. I then went to my stepmother's brother's house and they took me in. To this day, I miss my godmother a lot, and I'll miss her for the rest of my life.

Soon after my godmother died, I began to look for Susan Leak, whom I had met a couple of years before. When I found her, she invited me to live with her at the Victory Center, and since that day, my life has changed completely. Everything is better now. I feel secure, I feel well, and I feel like I belong to a family. Sometimes I think that my godmother died so that I could come here, because it is such a blessing to be here, but this makes me feel both bad and good at the same time.

I have lots of plans for when I'm older, but for now I want to finish school and the tasks that I'm presented with. Some day I hope I will be able to support this center. I want to work hard and move forward, leaving old things behind and remembering the best, like the presence of Susan in my life. Susan has been a sweet blessing and I will never stop being thankful for all of the help I have been given and the affection that has been shown towards me. I have been encouraged and with your help, I will be able to push ahead. You won't regret it.