Families living in developing countries around the world often live in crumbling mud and stick shacks or huts pieced together from scraps found at the local garbage dump.
I recently returned from Guyana, where I visited Sr. Leonie and the spunky group of girls living at St. Ann’s Orphanage in the capitol city of Georgetown. At the home, orphaned, abandoned or displaced girls are educated, cared for, and raised in the Catholic faith.
Theresa is a 62-year-old chronic alcoholic street person. Her face is so weathered she looks like she’s lived three harsh lifetimes. A public restroom in the center of small town Charity, in Guyana, was her ‘home’.
At this time of year, we receive Christmas cards from our mission partners in the field. We are continually blessed by these handmade cards and personal notes from orphans we support in Haiti, students in the Philippines, and the Catholic missionaries we support in Latin America and Africa.
Don’t believe in second chances? Meet Sherry Joseph – a polite, hardworking, well-adjusted young woman from Georgetown, Guyana. At first appearance, you’d never guess this person was raised in an orphanage, or that she was sent there because her parents went to prison for drugs when she was only 8 years old.