A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.

About 3 months ago a man from the community named "El Suave" had a motorcycle accident on his way to La Vega (a city about 30 min from where we live). Since then he has been in the hospital basically as a vegetable. Every once in a while he would show some emotion or move a body part giving his family hope. His wife Francia stayed faithfully by his side the entire time. But then last week he died. They brought his body up to El Callejon and passed the next few days doing visitations, the funeral, etc. The community has been in mourning all week.

Then today the Social Work site had a Christmas party for the women. We spent half of the time in prayer and worship, and the rest of the time giving gifts and eating. Every year we have a basket in which each woman brings a small food item (i.e. rice, onions, etc) and then we raffle the whole thing off to one of the women. Daisy (my co-leader) and I were talking the other day and had the idea that instead of raffling the basket we would give it to Francia. But we were really nervous about the reaction of the other women because knowing how they are, we knew that some would say that they also have a lot of needs and that Francia shouldn't be held in a higher regard than everyone else. So when we announced at the party today that we were giving the basket to Francia, the women burst out in joyful applause. I was so shocked and overjoyed that it brought me to tears. What a beautiful thing that a community that has so little was so willing to give generously to their widow neighbor.

Please pray for Francia and her children during this time. Pray that God will use this tragedy to bring glory to himself. Pray that this family will be strengthened and full of faith now more than ever.


Francia


Their daughter Rosana with a student


Their son Hidalgo