She was 13
years old when she gave birth to her first born. She was a child herself when
she became a mother. Usually for a woman
to become a mother at this early age, it usually means one of two things: 1)
she was raped or 2) she became a young bride.
For Grace, it was the latter.
She is
disabled from the waist down. She wasn't
going to be able to bring in money for the family by working for them as a
house girl or by doing manual labour. She wasn't able to go to school. The next
best thing was to marry her off to a man, where the family could receive at
least some money for her, through a dowry.
This woman
can smile. She doesn't have much but
wow, does her smile light up a room.
Although she doesn't have much in ways of materialistic things, she has
a whole lot of joy.
Ruth & Grace |
Emmanuel |
Janton |
Ruth |
Dona |
Because of
her disability, Grace can't work. Most woman find jobs like weeding farms and
cleaning homes for other people to help generate an income to feed their
families but no one will hire Grace. They see her more as a burden than for the
joyful woman she is. Thankfully, Grace was given a wheelchair years ago and is
able to get around, rather than being cooped up in her home all the time. Grace and her children rely on their
neighbours to give them scraps of food or well-wishers to give her
handouts. There is a local church that
provides her with food each December and they send all the children, other than
Ruth as she's too young, to their school.
It makes us happy to see that the church, the community, is helping in
ways that they can.
We, O5M,
received a donation to help support a widow with a trade/schooling. We were told it was to go to whatever widow
we felt would benefit from this opportunity.
We discussed and prayed about it and felt that Grace would be the one
who would best be able to use it at this time.
She is only 26 years old and needs a fresh start.
We have a
few ideas of what types of trades/schooling she can do with her upper body that
will generate a great income for her in the long run where she will be able to
become self-sustaining. We will be
meeting with her again to see about the ideas and her thoughts so that we may move
forward.
However, in
the meantime, we would like to find sponsorship for her three children and
nephew for food and general needs.
Please consider sponsoring Emmanuel, Dona, Janton or Ruth. For a full sponsorship and one sponsor, it is
$50 per month per child. If you are unable to do a full sponsorship, you can
sponsor one of the children for $25 per month (there will be two sponsors as it
needs to equal $50 per month). This provides them with basic food, general and any
medical care (such as malaria meds) each month.
Because their schooling is already looked after, we can put a bit of the
sponsorship money each month toward new beds, blankets and mattresses.
You will
receive yearly updates on your sponsor child. Plus if you "like"
O5M's Facebook page, you will get random updates on your child when we post
pictures of deliveries or discipleship time.
Please look
at the website: www.one5ministries.com
for more details or email us at support@one5ministries.com.
In His
Service,
Meredith
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