Andrea's Story

Andrea is two-years-old, with a beautiful tear-stained face and suspicious acid burns on her feet. When we arrived at her house after crossing a creek of raw sewage and clambering down a dirt embankment to the despairing shack, we found their cross-dressing homosexual landlord at home with the kids bathing Andrea's one-year-old brother (who due to malnutrition was the same size as my three-month-old daughter). None of the children had shoes, and we learned that many days they only ate what their poor neighbors could afford to give them.

Their mother, who suffers from chronic vomiting and diarrhea that usually prevents her from working, was out in town looking for a way to earn some money. Their rent was due the next day and she couldn’t afford to be thrown back out into the street again. The last time that happened, out of options and money, she was forced to move into their current situation.

Here in the southern slum of Cazuca, there aren’t policemen or soldiers on every corner like there are in the rest of Bogotá. In fact, most of this slum isn’t even built on legally owned property, it has been settled over the years by squatters and displaced people fleeing the violence from the countryside. The paramilitaries are the law, making and enforcing their regulations at gunpoint. They think of it as tough love – really tough love.

Appalled by the horrendous living conditions of the children and particularly the unwholesome presence of the landlord, the local branch of the armed paramilitary group that controls their neighborhood finally sent the mother an ultimatum: “Unless you immediately find a way to improve the lives of your children, we are going to kill your whole family. Your kids would be better off dead than living like they are now.”

Thankfully, the oldest boy, a young kid about seven-years-old, attends the local CDA school and through this link with the organization, the CDA social worker and chaplains have been able to intervene. On the day we visited, Andrea, with her mother’s consent, was picked up and taken to the Girl’s Home in Tenjo where she has begun to receive the love, food, health care and protection that she needs.

Through some money donated by the short-term mission team from the US that was with us that day, the mother and the two sons have been moved to a new house closer to the CDA school where they will be safer and CDA will be able to better help them as they strive to rebuild their lives.

Stories like this are unfortunately all to common in the slums surrounding Bogota. And this is the story of just one of the many girls at the Home in Tenjo where Jessie and I will be working. Please continue to pray for each of the girls that God has delivered in to CDA's care at Tenjo. They have been neglected, abused and unloved and all of them are desperately in need of Christ's restoring grace. Pray for both the girls and their parents that they will be healed, that they will be able to ask for and give forgiveness and that they will turn to the Lord to restore their lives and families.