October 28, 2009

what makes a little girl smile


this is lizeth, she is eight years old. i met lizeth and her two younger sisters a few weeks ago on a trip to mexico.

lizeth is a serious little girl. before coming to live at casa hogar de gozo she had a lot of responsibilities. her mom went to work very early in the morning and did not come home until very late at night, so lizeth was in charge of taking care of herself and her sisters most of the time. she made sure they were dressed and fed, if there was food to be had that day. recently the three girls were invited to come live at the orphanage run by a couple named pedro and zoila.

during our visit, we noticed that lizeth and her sisters had pretty bad cases of head lice. so when we went shopping to get some toothbrushes, toothpaste and some other items to leave for the kids, we picked up some lice shampoo as well. to be honest, i wondered if it would even make a difference, knowing that it would be difficult to get rid of the lice altogether. before we left, we made sure zoila knew what the shampoo was for and we said our goodbyes.

yesterday our team received an e-mail from the missionary we traveled with. he wanted to tell us this story. last friday lizeth was looking in the mirror with a smile on her face as zoila fixed her hair for school. zoila asked her why she was smiling so big and lizeth said, "this is the first time in my life i do not have any head lice and the kids can't tease me anymore!"

it doesn't take much to make a little girl smile.


on that same trip i also met ruby. she is eighteen. when we were visiting i had a very hard time getting ruby to let me take her picture...and now i know why. ruby has a bad front tooth and recently told zoila that she is really embarassed about her appearance and smile. it will cost $950 american dollars for two years of braces to fix her teeth. to me, that's a lot of money...but to ruby, it's unthinkable. i want to help change ruby's life, and maybe you will too.

1 comment:

Joy said...

i want to help change ruby's life. what are you thinkign?

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