From New Girl to Caregiver: A Mi Casa Kids Story
Fourteen years ago, an eleven-year-old girl walked through the doors of the Mi Casa Kids Girls' House for the first time.
This month, at twenty-five, she officially joined the caregiver staff there.
A Homecoming, Fourteen Years in the Making
She knows this house in a way no outside training could teach. She remembers what it felt like to be the new girl in the doorway, unsure if this place would really become home. She learned our values not from a manual, but by being raised inside them for over a decade. Now, she's the one on the other side of that doorway, the one who gets to say "welcome home," and mean it, because she's lived every part of it herself.
It's hard to think of better proof that the care given here lasts. A girl who arrived needing a home has grown into a woman who now provides one for others.
Report Cards and the Final Stretch
August is also report card season in El Salvador, where the school year runs through late October and into November. Grades came home this month for the kids across our homes, and there's a lot worth celebrating: real growth, hard work paying off, subjects that used to feel impossible starting to click.
There are also areas some of our kids are still working on, and that's exactly as it should be. Growth isn't a straight line for any child, and part of what we get to offer is steady support through both the wins and the parts still being worked on, without either one defining a child's worth.
What Growing Up Here Really Means
A girl who once needed to be cared for is now one of the people doing the caring. That's not a single moment of arrival, it's the result of years of consistency, of being loved well enough, long enough, that loving well becomes something you know how to do yourself.
"One generation commends your works to another." (Psalm 145:4) This month, at House of Life, that verse became something we could point to and say: this, right here, is what it looks like.
One more update: thanks to the generosity of this community over the summer, the two new rooms at House of Life are getting closer to finished every day, on track for our September goal.