Shelter a Family in Need
September 30, 2008
Driving along a narrow gravel road, full of potholes and bordered by watery ditches, Sister Kathy takes me past a forlorn shack, where I see a few scrawny chickens pecking in the dirt. We then passed a dilapidated trailer where clothes are strung across a wire fence to dry.
This is the community of Vredenburgh, lost in the backwoods so deeply that most Alabamans have never heard of it. Miles from the nearest town, it is home to about 200 families who face terrible hardships of poverty, joblessness and despair. Our Sisters serve as Christ’s hands and feet bringing hope and help to those in great need.
We finally arrive at our destination, a ramshackle house, where we carefully make our way through the muddy yard up the wobbly front steps and through the patched door. We are visiting Cora and her year-old twins, Kamilya and Katilya, whose beautiful little faces and bright smiles light up the drab darkened front room.
Katilya is an active toddler, walking, dancing and playing. You would never know she was born four months early, weighing just one pound.
Old family homestead.
Her sister, Kamilya, who lays quietly in a baby chair, bears the heavy burden of her premature birth. She can’t walk or talk. Last month, doctors diagnosed her with cerebral palsy. Kamilya wears a heart monitor, and suffers vision and intestinal problems.
“Kamilya has had a hard time of it,” her mother Cora told me, wearing the heartbreak of a handicapped child all over her sad face. “Since they were both born so tiny, it has really been a day-to-day battle. But Katilya seemed to rally—she was in the hospital for just five months. My little Kamilya was in the hospital for eight. She is truly a special child.”
Cora and her twins live with her aged father in their rundown family home, staying in the front rooms of the house since the back was closed off a year ago when the roof caved in.
The isolation of this rural community means that every doctor’s visit, hospital stay and therapy appointment – and there are several a month— depends on a relative who has a car and gas for either the 112- to 240-mile round trip, based on which specialist they are seeing.
It’s been hard to get to all the girls’ appointments, Cora said. “Last month I lost my job running the cash register at the gas station when I had to take Kamilya to the emergency room. I’m just barely making it.”
Sister Kathy Navarra holds Katilya.
Because of Kamilya’s intestinal problems—she has had five surgeries—she can only eat soft food. “She eats grits and applesauce. I want to buy her baby food because it’s more nutritious, but I can’t afford it and buy gas and pay the bills.”
Cora knows what it’s like to struggle. When she was just six years old, the youngest of six kids, her mother died. Her father raised his children alone, working two shifts in the local lumberyard. “That’s why I want to care for my dad now with his diabetes and high blood pressure, because he worked so hard for us. I never once heard him complain.”
Cora’s deepest desire is a safe, simple shelter to raise her girls and care for her father. Cora’s husband left her when the twins were born, saying he couldn’t handle their problems.
Sister Kathy has found a small used trailer for the family so they can stay in Vredenburgh, the only home her father has ever known. Cora wants to be near the girls’ aunts and uncles, who drive to the doctor and help with caretaking.
I need to raise $275 to buy the lumber to build a wheelchair ramp for the simple trailer home for the family. Because of the unstable condition of the family home, Sister Kathy chose the trailer as the most economical way to provide a warm and sanitary shelter for the babies and their grandfather.
As a minister of Christ, I am committed to provide healthy food for this desperate family and several of their hungry neighbors in this terribly poor and neglected community. It costs $22 to fill half a box of food for each family. I come to you because our tight finances paying high gas and food costs can’t stretch any further.
The family visits the new trailer home.
Your gift will provide a brighter future for a child who has suffered so many setbacks in the first months of her life; you can help her grow strong despite her handicaps.
Know that you are always in my prayers. During November, my fellow Edmundite priests and I will especially pray for you and your loved ones, living and deceased, at the daily Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. (Download prayer form and mail, email or fax it or submit your prayer request online.)
Join me in praying, too for the precious children of God, especially those who need our help to reach their full potential, despite handicaps. I share with you the words of a blessed saint who so deeply demonstrated love for the weak and vulnerable sick. Remember that nothing and no one is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love. Mother Teresa
Serving the Lord ,
Rev. Richard Myhalyk, S.S.E.
