One Family's Journey Home
It was early morning so Thomas invited Sandro and several other boys to have breakfast and spend the day at Casa Elohim, ABBA’s first stage home for preteen street boys. At the end of the day we hoped they would ask to stay in the house (since they have to want to) and Sandro was the one to ask. All but one of them stayed.
It’s hard to imagine Sandro’s bright eyes dull with drugs now that he has come fully alive. After a year with us the juvenile judge has authorized weekends at home. Even though we’ll miss him, we hope he moves back with his family by the end of the year.
When I first met Sandra, I knew she was Sandro’s mother. They had so much in common: that toothy grin, playful spirit, and contagious laugh. Sandro had been living in Casa Elohim for most of the year by the time of our ABBA family camp. Our family had chosen Sandro’s family to host at the camp, making sure they felt comfortable and were making the most of the time with their estranged son.
Sandra was big with child, her fifth, and her husband’s first. We knew they must be evangelicos of some sort, since Sandra
and her daughters wore long skirts and her new husband Elias appeared in the same dress pants and black shoes day after day. So on the last day of camp I asked Sandra to tell me her story. We found two plastic chairs on the sidewalk outside our cabin where we could keep an eye on her younger children, Leandro, Keice (Casey) and Carol. Elias hung around until she shooed him off to swing the kids.
Sandra started telling me of her childhood in a northern state. Her parents were spiritists and her family a mess. She had run off with a teenage boyfriend at the age of 15 and didn’t know what it was to be pregnant until nearly her due date. She and her mother rode in the back of trucks and train cars to get to an aunt’s house in São Paulo, arriving just in time to give birth to Sandro. Her mother had carried the boy out of the hospital, claiming him as her own. So from the beginning, Sandra felt that her son had been taken from her.
The ensuing years went from bad to worse, with a series of abusive boyfriends, dismal living conditions and nearly fatal beatings while pregnant with another child. To escape her abuser she had fled to his parents’ house in another state, but they had sided with their son and took her children from her. Forced from their home, she prostituted her way back to São Paulo, and started to cry out to God for her children. A new boyfriend gave her his entire month’s salary to be able to travel north and reclaim her children. Not long after arriving home with them, he too left her.
Sandra got more desperate when she found herself with no income, alone in a one-room house trying to feed four children. A cousin told her where she could make a lot of money at a brothel, and she decided to give it a try. Soon she was doing drugs, leaving her children alone more and more, and feeling miserable. She knew that she would have to find a way out if she were to stay alive, but it looked impossible.
Then one day at the brothel, she heard a voice say, “Sandra, this isn’t where you belong.” She looked around to see who was talking to her. No one was near. She heard the voice again, saying loud and clear, “Sandra, this isn’t where you belong.” She knew then that it must have been God Himself speaking to her.
That week the miracles continued. A neighbor, who had formerly been her enemy, started inviting her to church. Sandra said she would go. Then she gave her boss notice that she would be leaving work, but before she could leave, the other prostitutes cornered her in the bathroom. “You think you’re better than we are?” they taunted, approaching her with knives. She was drugged and weak, and knew that she had no chance of defending herself. But something told her to hold her head up high and she would be safe. One by one, they put their knives away and let her go.
Today Sandra is a happy mother of five children, including baby Vitória (literally “victory” in Portuguese) born this year. Elias, whom she met in church and married without paying the legal fee (another miracle), recently found a job as a night guard. When we told them that we could loan them $3000 reais (equivalent to US$1600) to buy a house, they started shopping right away. Sandra called us the same week, ecstatic that they had found a place just across the street from Elias’s job and close to school. Thanks to generous donations toward the “favela housing fund” through ACTION, they will only have to pay back $2000 reais (about US$1000) over time, and they will be free from rent payments.
Our daughter Esther (9) writes: “I remember when Sandro and Keice, his sister, came to stay at our house for a while. Lillian and I slept in the guest room with Keice. We played with playmobile people, making up a story of princesses and knights and Indians. She liked to jump on the trampoline, even in her long skirt. That night she took a bath in a bathtub for the first time. I like Keice because she’s really talkative and fun.”
Our girls helped Thomas move Sandra´s family several weeks ago. Lillian (13) described the day: “We started off in the big white truck and got there nearly two hours later. I was glad that they could move from the tiny room they were renting to this new house.
“When we arrived, the kids marveled at the bigger space. The boys left us at the new house to get started while they went back to the room to move out more stuff. We had brought a couple of beds and a bunch of sheets for their new house since they had been sleeping on the floor. Keice stared as I pulled the bedclothes over the mattress.
“Isn’t that enough?” she would ask after each sheet. Keice and Carol acted like they were decorating the rooms of a dollhouse.
“When the boys arrived, Leandro and Sandro ran to the house with arms full of stuff. Sandro seemed happy to be home with his brother. On their last trip, Tia (Auntie) Sandra came with the baby. “When she saw the new rooms, she wouldn’t stop saying, ‘What a blessing! Oh, what a blessing!’ When she saw the new bed, she ran straight to it to sit down.
“Though they had a little trouble deciding who would have the new bouncy beds, in the end the boys won the argument and it was pretty much settled. After a little coffee and a long prayer of thanks, we kids ran about the muddy outside corridor playing hide and seek and tag, until it was time to go.”
Sandra and Elias will be able to replace the wood of their house with brick, in the same way they are learning to “build their house upon the Rock” of the saving power of Jesus.
— Susanna Smoak