Dear Friends,
I have been promising an update on the Hope Center for months. Today we have 12 inches of snow and a good excuse not to venture out of the house. So I have finally taken the time to keep my promise.
At present we are waiting for the granule furnace to be delivered and installed. God provided, through you, the money to pay for the system. At present the girls have electric space heaters in their rooms. Winter has arrived. We are very grateful that we can look forward to the whole floor having heat.
As to the continuation of the renovation work, that has stopped. We have exhausted our finances. The two remaining spaces are about half finished. The main work/living space has wallboard, heated floor elements installed and concrete poured, waiting for some type of floor covering, and waiting for windows and door to the balcony. The other space which was to have an additional bedroom for the housemother and an office is about half finished. But my reason for this update was not just to tell you about the progress of the Straupe Hope Center home itself, rather about the girls which make up our family.
At present, we have 5 girls and 2 infants. I began Bible study with them this week and learned that of the 5, 3 have been baptized but feel no connection or have any understanding of its relevance. I asked them if I could share their stories in general, without identifying them specifically and they agreed.
1st girl – Let us call her Astrida.
She comes from a broken home. Her mother is an alcoholic and she grew up with her father and stepmother. The relationship with the stepmother was difficult and Astrida began straying and became a wild teen. She left home and eventually was put in a teen crisis center. There she lived for several years. She met a young man who professed to love her and she became pregnant. She chose to keep the baby. It turns out that this young man is the father of 7 children, most of them from different girls. This young man physically abused Astrida, but, like many, she continually forgave him.
Astrida came to our home, defiant, aggressive and often sullen. As she received our love and began to open up, she began to realize and regret some of her choices. She called her stepmom and apologized and asked her forgiveness. She contacted the father of her baby to see where things stood. He lives with another woman and when he agreed to meet with Astrida, called her a fat cow who he wanted nothing to do with.
Astrida’s future is very uncertain. She will give birth in the next few weeks. She will turn 17 on Christmas Eve. We hope that her continued presence in our home can equip her for life in the outside world. We are working on trying to get an apartment for her. She has changed dramatically from the girl that arrived in June. We hope that she will continue to learn, grow and mature and that we will be able to help her establish a new life for herself and her baby.
2nd girl – Let us call her Betty.
Betty is one of 3 children, all born with different fathers. She lived in the country with her mother and older sister. When she was 2 she fell out of a 2nd story window. She was lucky, she broke no bones, just had her tongue jammed into her teeth. This led to a small speech problem. Her mother was told to put her into speech therapy. The mother did not want to bother working with Betty so instead, put her in a special school for children with developmental problems because her older sister attended the school and it was easier for her mother to have both girls in the same school.. All of Betty’s life she was told by everyone that she was stupid, and she believed them.
When Betty was 14, her mother told her that she could no longer live with the family. That she had not been keeping up with the rent and that she and Betty’s little brother of 4 were moving to the country. Betty was put out into the street. She had no idea of where to go or what to do. She met two Lithuanian businessmen living in Riga and they invited her home with them. There she was expected to keep house and provide sexual services. She became pregnant twice and had 2 abortions. While the men were at work, she went back to her old school. One day, her teacher asked about her parents and Betty shared her present living circumstances. This teacher told others and soon Betty was the laughing stock of the school. She quit going to school and soon the police arrived and arrested her. They put her in jail for a week for not attending school. (When asked how you could put a minor in jail for not attending school, they explained that they could find no institution willing to take her. Finally, they found an orphanage. At the orphanage, Betty met a boy who became her friend. The orphanage gives pocket money to the kids. Betty divided her pocket money between this boy and her alcoholic mother who would show up everytime she knew the money was handed out. This boy was physically abusive, but afterwards always declared his love for Betty. When Betty realized she was pregnant again, the doctor told her that if she had another abortion, she could probably never have any children (at the age of 16!) So, Betty decided that she wanted to keep her baby. She finished the 9th grade and came to us at the end of June. Betty was withdrawn and immediately took on the role of the outsider, the one the other girls could boss around. We had been told that she was mildly retarded. It was only when one of the volunteers from the Danish Methodist Church worked with the girls, teaching them to sew, that we discovered that there was nothing wrong with Betty’s powers to learn or to follow instructions.
Betty has blossomed. She is now one of our senior members. She will give birth next week. She will turn 17 in December. Betty very much wants to learn to be a professional cook so that she can earn a living for herself and baby, but fears that no cooking school will take her having graduated from a special school. We are working on finding a school to enable her to have the professional education that she desires. Betty loves her mother and willingly gives her money whenever she has any. Our fear is that her mother will come back into her life just long enough to get Betty’s baby allowance and then disappear again.
Girl #3 which we will call Chris.
Chris’s mother is also an alcoholic and drug user. At present she is in jail. Chris’s mother would disappear for weeks at a time leaving Chris to tend for her younger brother – a toddler. The mother would lock them into the apartment and Chris and her brother would often end up with no food. One day the police showed up at the door and discovered the children. They were put in separate orphanages. At this orphanage, Chris got into a gang of young people who were living in cars and running a prostitution ring. The other girls would often beat up Chris and take whatever money she had earned. One of the boy from the orphanage told Chris he loved her and she became pregnant from him. He is physically abusive and also tried to control her by withholding food. The Social Services asked us to take Chris because they felt that with this boy, she would either starve or be beaten to death. Chris thinks she loves the boy and says that often it was her fault that she was beaten. The police brought Chris to us at the end of August. Chris was like a frightened deer, withdrawn with a terribly sad look all of the time. The first few weeks with us were spent crying. She did not interact with the girls. Finally, she began to feel more comfortable and started to react to her surroundings and the other girls. She finally became part of the family. She became so comfortable that she was allowed to use the phone. We had denied her the use of the phone because we were afraid that she would call her abusive boyfriend and tell him where she was living. He had filed an official request with the police department that he, as the baby’s father, had a right to know her whereabouts. Anyway, as we had feared, she called him and he showed up drunk. He asked to talk to her in private and took her to his car. There he tried to persuade her to return to him. She refused and he started hitting her. She ended up in the hospital for a week. While in the hospital, she was told that her baby was abnormal. The head too big, heart problems and the small intestine developing outside the baby’s body. The Doctor said that she hopes that God aborts the baby. We do not know how much Chris understood, past knowing that her baby was in trouble. Three hospitals and many tests later, we learned that the heart was ok, the intestines can surgically be placed into the abdomen and the enlarged head, a wait and see issue. Oh, how thankful we were that God had given us the opportunity to be with her and put our arms around her and whisper words of encouragement, to this young, lost girl, so alone in the world. Chris will have her baby in January. We will continue to pray for her and look for possible ways of helping her to a brighter future.
Girl #4-we shall call her Dee
Dee has called us numerous times looking for a place for herself and her baby, but we have always told her that our mission is to young pregnant girls, not to young mothers. Dee found a place in a shelter for girls and women. There she had a very difficult time because the teenage girls would make so much noise that Dee’s baby kept waking up. When Dee asked them to quiet down a fight erupted and Dee was thrown out of the shelter. The house mother said she had no right telling others to keep quiet, who did she think she was? So Dee walked the streets with her toddler during the day and slept in the bus terminal at night. The baby got sick and Dee became desperate again. She called us and with a sick baby, we could not refuse. The baby is a bright-eyed 13 month old girl. It turned out that she had the chicken pox. Dee is very different from the other girls. She is 20 years old and very determined to make it on her own. She has put the baby’s name on a waiting list for day care and hopes to have a spot by January. She is hoping to live with a friend who has a 2 year old and the two women would take turns watching the children, enabling both to work and earn enough to live on. At present, the friend has not found an affordable apartment, but Dee believes it is just a matter of time. Dee is the only one living with us who does not get any money from the Social Services. We are allowing her to live with us for free.
Girl # 5 – we shall call her Ellie
Social Services called us and begged us to take Ellie. She also does not fit our client profile. Ellie is an orphan. At the age of 8 she was abused by a 16 year old. He was put in jail. Eight years later, Ellie met him and they started having a relationship. Ellie’s parents had died earlier and when her extended family heard that she was with the boy who had abused her, they severed all ties with her. This boy, who now is a man of 27 has also been the victim of a terrible life. He was abused, tied to trees, beaten, been in jail, and suffered in a fire. His face and hands are terribly scarred. This man is now Ellie’s civil husband. Social Services has given Ellie an apartment(one room) in one of the buildings. The rent is minimal and she has been told that if she is faithful with the payments, she will be given a normal apartment. (She has not been making the payments). Ellie is the mother of a 5 month old little girl that she has no idea of how to take care of. The baby is undernourished and unwashed. Ellie lives in this one room as a virtual prisoner. She did not want a baby because she did not feel that she could properly take care of another life. Her common law husband cut a hole in the condom that Ellie always insisted he use. When she learned she was pregnant, she stayed in the room for five months in a drugged state. In this Social Welfare apartment building Ellie does not use the common bathroom at the end of the hallway. The common bathroom is full of addicted rough men and she is afraid to go there. She takes care of her needs using a night potty. There is no running water in the room and she must use a wash basin in the hallway. She is afraid of that too. When the visiting Dr. told Ellie that she must add cerealto the baby’s milk since the baby was not getting enough to eat, not knowing better, Ellie cut of the top of the nipple so that the cereal would go through.
Ellie’s husband is an epileptic. She has been taking his medication for months so that she can sleep and lives in a mild stupor. The “ husband” earns an ok income installing anti-theft devices in cars. He however says he has a lot of debts and therefore there is no money for rent or food. Social services persuaded Ellie to come to our home so that we could teach her how to take care of the baby and herself.
Ellie is undernourished as well as the baby. She is rail thin. She came to us owning one pair of jeans, and underwear that should have been thrown out years before. She had not washed in ????? and the baby was also filthy.
A week after her arrival, Ellie announced that she had not had her period since August. She said that she can not be pregnant because she has always insisted that her mate use a condom. She was pregnant and when the husband visited Ellie, who ended up in the hospital with severe flu, he told us that he wants lots of children and wants Ellie at home with them. He told us that he had cut holes in the condoms to get the first baby and did so again to get Ellie pregnant. This time Ellie defied him and insisted that she can not possibly give birth to another child at this point in her life. She chose to abort the pregnancy. The “husband” was mad, but said it did not matter because when she returned to him, he would make sure that she got pregnant again and gave him what he wants.
Ellie must have time to learn to be a mother and to gain some self-confidence. We hope that we can help her find some solution that will not entail her returning to the drugged life in that one room Social Welfare building.
I thank God that we have been able to help these lost children of God. It is awful to think of how they would have gone through this time on their own, alone and abandoned.
I want to share a wonderful moment we will always cherish. When Ellie came to the house, we had to ask one of the girls to share their new room. Chris, wounded Chris, who had just come out of the hospital and had had the terrible news of her baby, said immediately, I want her to come share my room, I have lots of space. And when she saw that Ellie had only one pair of jeans, she proudly shared her clothes. She said, she has so little and I have so much.
We have found a psychologist who is willing to work with the girls. They all come from abusive relationships and all are in that vicious cycle of “he won’t do it anymore, he loves me, it was my fault.”
Each of these girls are in desperate situations and have found a loving home environment for a short time. We do not know what will happen to them, but that is in God’s hands. We will use all of our skills and knowledge to help them start a new life. They are all so young and have experienced so much. Love and caring has been in short supply. All come from dysfunctional families or no families. We hope that the time they spend with us will give them a glimpse of what life can be like. Life lived in an atmosphere of caring, trust and mutual respect.
Not counting the girls in our home now, already 4 young girls have brought their babies into the world with our house mother Rigonda holding their hands and whispering words of encouragement. Four young mothers have learned how to take care of their babies and have themselves been helped through postpartum depression and these 4 and their babies have gone on to a new lives. Nine young women and 6 babies lives have been changed in the 10 months of our existence. I pray that God will continue to bless our Hope Center home.
All of you have been a part of the Hope Center, either by your prayers, good wishes, donations and/or physical help. I wish I could write to you individually, because you are all special friends. But, if I were to write individually, I do not know when you would receive this update.
May God continue to shower His blessings on you and your families,
Gita
