We have twenty-one women and their children in our program. Finding Freedom’s annual Guatemalan trip to oversee our program is often the only direct time we spend with the women we assist with food, shelter and education for their children. Our facilitators are there daily, but this brief time our board members spends with with the women we help does not create a relationship that qualifies as a sister or a friend.
Why then, do we feel like both?
Here is the Webster dictionary definition of a sister:
: a female who has one or both parents in common with another Or : a girl or woman regarded as a comrade Of course we don’t qualify for the first definition, since none of the women we assist in Guatemala have the same genealogy that our volunteers do. We do feel like comrades, working together with our Finding Freedom mothers to alleviate the effects of the deep poverty that impinge on their lives.
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| We celebrate new found health |
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| We haul supplies up mountains |
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| We listen and assess how best to help |
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| We feed their hungry children |
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| We share meals |
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We connect
No matter what the official definition is, it feels like friendship among sisters; a kinship among women from two different countries who want the same things.
Peace, self-sufficiency, connection, security.
(Photo credits: Devin Mendenhall and Shawn Packard)
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