We have been in their lives and they have been in ours...

Below is a reflection from great supporter Joe Klag on just how the children of NPH have changed his life and how supporters like him surely change their lives.

Good morning friends, I have been asked recently why my family is invested in NPH. It is my wife’s fault!!! You see she went down with the teens from our church for a couple of years. There she met children who came from life circumstances that you and I could not understand.

Two very special girls, Chave (Maria Isabel) and Marisol age 4 and 2. They are two sisters from a family of four sisters. Their mother died after Marisol was born. Their father could not or would not care for them. Thankfully, instead of being forced to live on the streets all four of them found their way to NPH (Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos). We met them and our lives have been changed.

Since then we have been in their lives and they have been in ours. We go down to see them once or twice a year. One of the great benefits of NPH is that we were encouraged to develop a relationship with the kids. They are now 10 and 12 years old and we look forward to making the trip to Mexico to see them as often as we can. I enjoy emailing them too.

The vision of Fr. Wasson when he started NPH was to take children who had been orphaned, abandoned, abused physically, sexually, psychologically and raise them all as one family. That is why we can not adopt the girls and bring them here. These children who call NPH home did not have a “family” before coming to our homes. Now they are nurtured, educated even sent to the university if they have the grades, nourished and loved. Many of these kids have experienced love in their lives only after they came to NPH.

You see, I thought it would be a great thing to go and see these kids and help them. In many ways, they have done more for me than I could ever do for them. A year ago, Chave wrote a letter to us thanking us for being in her life. She could not understand why someone from another country who didn’t know her or Marisol would come and want to be involved in her life. In that letter, she wrote how much it meant to her. Every time I come back from visiting an NPH home, I realized how I benefit from it. These kids give us more than I think we ever do for them. In their world where they have nothing, they have everything. While they are normal kids, they are given the gift of love by all their little brothers and sisters (NPH) in the home and they know they are loved and they share that love.

As Bob Goff wrote in his book, Love Does, love compels us to act. The work NPH does can happen without great people like you. If we don’t help these children, who will?