When Laura was eleven years old, her mom brought her and her five siblings to our Home for Children. Laura’s mom was in a difficult financial situation and didn’t have access to housing.
“I remember exactly the day we arrived”
Laura told us, “My mother had been recommended to the El Sauzal Orphanage because it was a Christian place where the children were very well cared for. I thought it was a lovely place where we were given our own drawers to store our clothes, our own single bed. We never had our own beds or anything like this. I felt privileged and was greatly comforted! The founders were two wonderful human beings whom we called Mama Malena and Papa Ramon. There they taught us spiritual values, rules of coexistence, teamwork, respect, they educated us, they sent us to school and nothing was lacking. We learned a weekly Bible verse, and every day we chose a boy or girl to lead the verse and pray in front of everyone.”
Laura was twelve years old when her mom was again able to take care of her children. Laura wrote to Josue Espinoza saying that she didn’t want to leave the Home because she had found God there but that she needed to leave in order to tell her family about the Lord.
Today Laura and her husband David run a marvelous ministry called Campo de Esperanza along with David’s father Mayarino Escobar. This “Village of Hope” tucked in the middle of a farming area reaches out to extremely poor indigenous Mixteca families, migrants who come from southern Mexico to work in the fields. The ministry offers free daily community dining, vocational training workshops, sports for young people, health services, and construction of safe housing for some of the poor families. Laura and David’s dream is to offer a safe place where children, youth, and women learn about the gospel and to provide family development services that allow families to easily integrate into the adjacent communities.
I was privileged to visit David and Laura at Campo de Esperanza. There she told me, in the presence of my pastor and two others from my church, that it was the El Sauzal Home that helped mold her for her ministry. She deeply moved me. I’m proud of her, of her deep faith and her passion to serve the poor.
I am grateful first to God and then to Ramon and Magdalena for establishing a place for children like Laura to grow in stature but more importantly a place to find Jesus, their Lord and Savior. I am also grateful to the Espinoza children and grandchildren for continuing this loving ministry to needy children.
By Roy Ketring, III
