Welcome to my world
L. John Bueno, founder of LACC and now AGWM executive
director, presents Beatriz with her diploma.
By Beatriz Klaehn
Strike one . . . born into a squatters community.
Strike two . . . alcoholic father.
On the outskirts of San Salvador, El Salvador, I started out life with two strikes against me.
My mother couldn’t read or write. She tried to earn money selling food on the street.
Life was hard. I knew hunger — and the violence associated with alcoholism.
Welcome to my world.
When an evangelical church near our home began to build a school, my mother saw a way out for me and enrolled me in the first grade.
I had a sponsor, so I could study and receive a daily meal . . . but there was more to this school, which was sponsored by the Assemblies of God World Mission, Latin America ChildCare.
I learned stories from the Bible, sang Christian songs, began attending church, and learned about a God who loved me.
My mother wondered what it was all about, and finally she began to attend church with me. Soon, she and my father both came to new life in Christ. What a radical transformation!
Living with his new values as a Christ-follower, Dad began drinking less, thinking of his family more and working harder. Within a couple of years, he was able to buy a real house in a middle-class neighborhood.
Although we moved away from my Christian school, it was a move for the better, and the gospel that had been planted in our lives continued to bless our home.
I only attended my LACC-sponsored school for two years, but it was two years that totally transformed my destiny and that of my entire family.
I went on to study at a Christian university in El Salvador, and then to North Central University in Minneapolis. There I met Daniel, my husband. Today, we are missionaries in Nicaragua, teaching at the Bible school and training ministers.
Who would have thought — with all those strikes against me back in the squatters town — that I would one day be teaching at the university?
Daniel and I are now Latin America ChildCare sponsors ourselves, helping a child here in Nicaragua experience the new life and hope that my sponsors once made possible for me.
The power of God’s love, expressed through Latin America ChildCare, has come full circle in my life. How grateful I am for this!
Anyone can change the destiny of a child by sponsoring a child through Latin America ChildCare.
Ken Dahlager, the director of LACC says, “The investment of just $32 a month makes all the difference in the world for a child in Latin America and the Caribbean. You just might be investing in the next Beatriz who will share the gospel story around the world.”
Visit the LACC Web site at www.lacc-4hope.org to learn more about this ministry to needy children.