Candelaria is a place where having a father is an exception and not the norm.
Teenage girls abandoned by their dads. Teenage boys that have never met their fathers. Men that are dying in their thirties of kidney failure because the only work available to them is in the chemical-laden sugar cane fields. Men that are dying and leaving behind children to be raised by single mothers struggling to put food on the table. Men that leave to find work outside the sugar cane fields and don’t come back. Men that aren’t interested in sticking around to raise children.
An entire generation growing up without a father.
What’s going to happen to these kids? Well, the world says they’ll follow in their parent’s footsteps. The girls will seek fatherly affection in romantic relationships. They’ll become mothers at an early age. They’ll be responsible for the care of children while still children themselves. They may even leave their children to be raised by extended family while they find work in Costa Rica.
The boys? Some will follow fathers they hardly remember into the sugar cane fields. Those boys will probably father children that won’t remember them either. Some of them will leave their children. They won’t know that they’re better than they’ve been told. They won’t know that they are men, who are called to step up and lead their families.
The world says they’ll believe everything it says about them.
But there’s a whisper that there’s something more. They are NOT what the world says they are. They’re not even what they say they are. They are, and only are, what God says about them:
They are chosen.
They are loved.
They have a future.
They are great.
They are world-changers.
If that whisper became a roar, those teenagers would never be the same. Candelaria would never be the same. This nation and this world would never be the same. These kids aren’t fatherless. Their heavenly Father plans and hopes greater things for them than they know. Greater things than they can probably even imagine.
We’re here this month to get to know these teenagers, to pour into them and love them. My prayer for them is that the whisper would become a roar in their ears that drowns out the shouts and cries of the world around them.
