By Damon Guinn
It’s almost beyond belief. There, in a row of solid, utilitarian homes, is a startling sight to behold.
Lush tropical plants explode in succulent green clusters. A terra-cotta tiled footbridge and a perfectly paved driveway cross a concrete culvert and on past a stately front gate. Just beyond that is an immaculate cinderblock house with brightly hued accents. It looks like a model home transplanted straight from a showroom floor.
“The day they gave us the keys was a really good day for us,” Reina Lopez exclaims about
the home her family received from Children International more than seven years ago. Reina’s family was one of the thousands of Honduran families who lost their home during Hurricane Mitch, one of the most destructive hurricanes in history.
“It’s not something that anybody ever expects...” she concedes, “and when it happens, it’s like a nightmare. There are images I just can’t get out of my mind.”
But Reina’s bad memories are now being eclipsed by better days and brighter vistas in a community called “The Miracle.”
Reina, her husband, Hector, and their daughters, Dafne, Heather and Audrey, were among the first to move to The Miracle, or El Milagro, after Children International built 200 homes for the families of sponsored children left homeless by the hurricane. They haven’t looked back since.
To help families like Reina’s rebuild their lives, Children International acquired a large plot of land a short distance from San Pedro Sula and created a new community from the ground up. Before long, running water, sanitary systems and electricity were installed in all of the homes – amenities Reina herself had grown up without in a remote mountainside village near Copán. “When the electricity came, I was 14 years old, and it was like a novelty in our community,” she now jokes.
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A miracle home: Reina’s model home in El Milagro, Honduras. |
As the housing community in El Milagro transformed from a work in progress into a model neighborhood so, too, did Reina’s home.
“When we first came here...we thought, ‘Wow! Where did they bring us?’ because there was a lot of dirt everywhere; there were a lot of rocks,” remembers Reina. “[The home] was just the four walls, the zinc roof and the concrete floor. And then little by little, we started making the house better, always with the help of Children International. Children International has always been holding our hand.”
For starters, Hector, a commercial painter by trade, covered the home’s interior in a fresh coat of paint. Next he installed decorative wrought-iron grates over the windows and added a splash of color to those as well. The following year he laid tile in the bathroom and the floor of the living room. The most recent additions were the footbridge, driveway and gate.
Reina and her daughters began to experience a transformation as well. She became the volunteer coordinator at Children International’s El Milagro community center and learned a host of leadership skills, while her three sponsored daughters are flourishing through sponsorship activities.
“Thanks to all the sponsors in the world for helping us become who we
are now,” says Dafne, Reina’s oldest daughter and an aspiring pediatrician. |
“My daughters have had opportunities I never had,” Reina says enthusiastically. “For example...[Dafne] took a computer course...and now she is actually giving computer courses to other children. And also, with the medical [help], we have a doctor at hand, which is something we never had before.
“My husband and I always compare our childhood to the childhood our children have...and our children are having a really good childhood,” she concludes. |
With her children safely sheltered by sponsorship and a beautiful home in a stable community, Reina is now free to focus on some improvements all her own. “I want to do something with my life, so I’m studying for my bachelor’s degree,” she says confidently, her sights set on eventually earning either a law degree or master’s degree. “It will be a lot of work,” she admits, “but I think it’s never too late.”
That may seem like a lofty ambition for a woman whose family has been through disaster and back...but Reina won’t have to search out a miracle to achieve her dreams. Thanks to Children International and a special place called El Milagro, she’s already there.
Read more about life in The Miracle in our summer issue of Journeys.
Photos by Jennifer Spaw.
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