Mexico (MNN)– "This is just a drop in the bucket. There are over a million kids living on the streets in Mexico City." That's
according to Dexton Shores, director of ministry development in Mexico and the
border for Buckner International.
The ministry partnered with Iglesia Bautista Horeb, an area
church to launch a new children's home called "La Familia." The team fosters the children of prison
inmates and provides a transitional program for the inmate mothers.
Buckner expected that
the children would move in last month following the May 18 dedication. However, when they got the case files for the
kids, they realized there over 100 children in line for the nine spots
available.
The team is still reviewing the cases, focusing on the
children age six and under. Shores says
they're working specifically with very young children because they're most
impressionable. "If they grow up in
a facility where it's all nuns taking care of them, when there's a hundred or
more children in a facility, they really grow up with no sense of what family
is," which can sometimes perpetuate dysfunctional problems.
So Buckner's approach aims at life change. Shores
explains, "The idea is that there would be one married couple that would
serve as parents to no more than 12 kids. That way, there's a family environment. So they have Bible study
together, they have family worship together, they go to church together, they
function just like a family would."
The church is also providing a healthy volunteer base as
well as additional financial resources for this group home. Jaime and Astrid Díaz Pereira gave up their
careers to serve as house parents of the
home. They have three daughters of their own: Rebeca, Ana Raquel and Astrid
Andrea, but they're expanding their borders to become a family of twelve.
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