After 11-months of serving in orphanages, prisons, garbage dumps, Tibetan monastery’s, schools and to the homeless we are finally finished. It felt like a whirlwind and it is hard to believe this chapter of my life is coming to a close.
For our final day of ministry we got to serve in a prison. It was here that I met Angelina. There have been certain people around the world that will stick with me forever, Grace from the Philippines, Policeman Jack from China, Gogo Edith from Swaziland and Lynda from Honduras. So it is fitting that on our last day of official ministry I would meet someone whose story would deeply impact me.
Paulina is a 63-year-old widow from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Born in the Philippines, she came to America as a teenager and has been a resident of the United States since 1968. She is a proud mother of four, a gloating grandmother of 12 and she is a Panamanian prisoner, sentence: unknown.
On a vacation to Panama with her daughter someone unknown to her put drugs in the top of her bag. As she was walking through the border, the police searched her bag and found the drugs. They immediately hand cuffed her and her daughter and brought them to the David Prison. They have both been in prison for the past two years and are unsure when they will get to go home.
Since they are foreigners, the Panamanian government is even harder on them. The U.S. embassy comes and visits four times a year to make sure they are not being abused, but nothing more can be done. They are unable to get legal help from an American lawyer due to Panamanian laws, so they are forced to wait for a corrupt system to release them.
Their families are back home in Pennsylvania. Her daughter Laurie has 3 teenagers; a 12-year-old boy, 15-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son who are left without a mother for an unknown amount of time.
Paulina cried as I prayed for her family back home and a quick release from prison. My heart breaks for them both. For the sacred time they are missing with their kids and grandkids, time I know so well while I've spent a year missing my family.
