April 2, 2008

“Is it time? Is it time for school?” Tyesha Franklin asks her mother at least 10 times each morning. The three-year-old loves Edmundite Missions’ preschool in her small isolated community of Vredenburgh. She hops, skips and runs to the van when it arrives to pick her up. “She cries on the days there’s no school,” said her mother, Marisa.

When Tyesha comes bounding to the van, all smiles and chatter, you would never know she spent the first three months of her life in a hospital incubator, fighting for her life. The little girl was born four months early, weighing under two pounds.

“I was so scared,” said the first-time mother. “I didn’t know if she would make it. I called in our pastor to pray over her. She was so tiny you could hold her in the palm of your hand. You can see why she is so precious to her father and I.”

Tyesha had critical surgery when she was just six weeks old and for her first year of life, wore a heart monitor. Today Tyesha suffers extreme asthma and takes two breathing treatments a day. To reduce her daughter’s asthma risk, Marisa keeps the simply furnished tiny one-bedroom shack swept neat and tidy, despite no running water.

A framed photograph of her tiny baby’s first days of life—hooked to life-saving preemie machines—sits on a shelf “as a reminder of the miracle.”

“We thank God for His gift,” Marisa said. “We’re thankful for preschool, too. Tyesha was behind in taking her first steps and saying her first words, said Marisa, who worried about her only child’s future.

Preschool is teaching her better coordination, language skills, and other key developmental steps. “She loves books, and I know she got that from preschool. Reading will help all her life.”

Tyesha is one of 25 little children who attend the Missions’ preschool in this backwater community, 18 miles off a rural county road, hidden among the pine trees. Most Alabamans have never heard of this forlorn poverty-plagued place, where elders and families struggle with substandard housing, inadequate services and limited transportation. There is no library, no grocery. The nearest jobs are 40 miles away and layoffs and high gas costs have hit this vulnerable community even harder.

The Missions’ preschool van travels rutted red dirt roads, past chickens pecking at the ground and laundry hanging on sagging wires. It stops again and again, at small trailers with cracked windows, leaky roofs and crooked cement block front steps, and at tiny tin-roofed shacks like Tyesha’s, with no running water.

The children walk excitedly to the van full of smiles and their lively chatter about families and the neighbor’s new puppies begins. They sing, clap hands and recite nursery rhymes on the ride.

When they arrive at the preschool, cheery, loving teachers make sure hands are washed before children sit down to a hot nutritious breakfast, a favorite is cheesy grits with toast and apple slices. The meal always begins with folded hands, bowed heads and “God is great, God is Good,” their thanksgiving prayer. Breakfast, like lunch, frequently includes extra helpings for the hungry children and ends with milk mustaches all around.

As they begin their lessons, preschoolers sit in semicircle where they act out stories, play simple instruments and learn words beginning with the letter of the day. They sing, count, identify colors, shapes, patterns and even imitate trains. Crafts, imaginative play and educational games make learning fun. Two year olds know their alphabet and three year olds write their names.

“Our parents know that education is the only way their children are going to get ahead,” said Sister Kathy Navarra, S.S.J., Missions outreach worker and preschool administrator. There is no Head Start in Vredenburgh. “Our preschool gives children a chance at a better start for elementary school.”

It costs the Missions $18,200 each year to pay for lights, heat, insurance and upkeep to operate the Missions’ preschool in Vredenburgh. In one month, the Missions pay $325 for gas to provide transportation for little ones. AS costs rise, I worry about paying the bills for this critically needed educational program.

When I spend time with our precious preschoolers, I am reminded of Jesus’ love for little children. “Let the little children come to me,” he said, taking them in his arms and blessing them. (Mark 10:16) You too can be a blessing to little children living in an all-but-forgotten community in rural Alabama. With your help, we can open the door to a brighter future for Tyesha and other poor little children.

Serving the Savior,

Father Richard Myhalyk, S.S.E.