Spring Forward
Happy Spring! I pray that you are well and surrounded by love on all sides.
My deepest gratitude to you for your continued prayers for me on this journey through cancer. It will soon be a year since my last chemo and radiation treatments. Recovery has been slow, but steady. Thankfully, I have felt able to saddle up my old donkey and get moving in the last few months. Though my racing days may be over, I am determined to press toward the finish line, having Father’s joy as my strength. Thank you for believing with me for the fulfillment of God’s very best intentions for the rest of my days, as His servant, in our broken world. He is able to do exceedingly more than we ask or imagine according to His power at work within us!
I am thrilled to report that there is an incredible blessing at work from my battle with cancer. Our wonderful Laughing Child team in Mexico has been inspired to offer our Family Bridges ministry to families facing pediatric cancer. You can imagine the rather obvious reason that I would feel deeply for families facing cancer; I can relate to some of their pain more profoundly than I ever thought possible. Some of you may remember that the very first healing camp adventure that we hosted was for children with cancer. Now, ten years later, we have a renewed mission to serve these families. Please pray for them and for our team.
I just returned from what was both a heartbreaking and encouraging time in Mexico. The country feels darker and less secure than ever. At the same time, I am amazed by the light and hope found within our Laughing Child team. It is an honor to be a part of this awesome little family of ministry. The following is a fresh report of what is happening this year with Laughing Child from our Ministry Coordinator:
As we get closer to the beginning of our next season of field ministry I have been reflecting on what we have learned, and lived, thus far through our Family Bridges Ministry in Mexico City. This ministry was born from a deep need that we discovered within families living with terminal, severe, or chronic illness; one that is incredibly underestimated and for the most, unknown—thus undiagnosed. It is natural, and understandable for parents of a child living with an illness of the sort previously mentioned that their attentions and efforts are primarily focused on the managing of the illness. However, it is often that those children also have siblings, who are not directly living with the disease. I choose to say “directly" almost hesitantly, because while the disease does not directly affect their physical body, it nearly directly impacts their overall development. While it is our understanding that this is not in every case, we have identified that the majority of families, living in developing countries, primarily in poverty, that fit the criteria of a family unit with a non-ill child, and one severely, chronically, or terminally, ill, suffer from involuntary abandonment or neglect of their non-ill child.
While we have witnessed the effectiveness and the powerful results from our ministry program, we have also learned of the challenges that come with a work that is sadly pioneering in Latin America. Our first group of parents taught us that by default when asked about their child, they only—ever—begin speaking of their ill child. It was with the gentle correction and re-direction of Dr. Judith (developer and current leader of the implementation of our program) that they would remember that the frame of the questions were around their non-ill child. With this, we learned that the complexity of the problem, and the ways in which it affects the family nucleus, are far deeper than we anticipated. This, as simple as it may seem, was pivotal. We shifted our efforts and re-wrote the first days of our program around the question “do I know my non-ill child?”. Inevitably, this opened unknown doors in secret corridors of the heart that lead to the realization of their involuntary abandonment and neglect. It is not easy to lead a parent into that finding; no one is ready for such heart ache.
In our group, having a mixture of ages and ranges between the siblings, we have the sad fortune of testimony from those who are not actively involuntarily abandoning a child, but who have already done it—whose child is now an independent adult. Their heartbreak and testimony have helped guide those who are not “too late” to avoid making the same mistake. Most importantly these parents have enriched our lives with stories of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation as a result from our ministry.
This year, we begin to work with children and adolescents. This is perhaps the most exciting stage as we get an opportunity to follow up on the groundwork that has been started with their parents.
This season also comes with challenges that we are setting as a team to more effectively reach families. We have struggled with initial retention of participants and generating interest in the program outside from word-of-mouth (based on experience) and testimony. We have worked over the winter to create strategies to improve our outreach. As a team, we have concluded that part of the struggle is the nature of the origin of this work. We set out to help “treat" something which most families don’t realize they are suffering. For this reason, we have taken on the creation of a pre-workshop program. We will help families identify in one session their need and subsequently invite them to be participants of our program. We are also creating simple reading materials containing information for self-diagnosis.
Perhaps you noticed that we have begun adding the term “severely” in addition to "chronically" and “terminally" ill. As you may know, our founder, Shane, has been fighting cancer over the last few years. While his cancer would have ultimately been terminal (if it remained untreated/undiagnosed) he currently lives under the comfort of the term “remission.” Nearly a year after finishing his treatment, he now has had an opportunity to reflect on the excruciating reality of it and the near-death experience through which he lived. If you know Shane, you know that all throughout his ministry years he has always avoided the focus being on himself. He has diligently and successfully strived for a life in ministry that shines a light on those in need. Through his serious illness, Shane was not able to do much other than fight to survive and was forced to focus on himself. Unable to enunciate a word with his breath for two months, unable to swallow a drop of water or a speck of food, hardly sleeping in between vomiting, he identified with those who—just like him—are or have been severely ill. This became a teaching moment for us at Laughing Child International. A severe disease, like cancer, changes your course and the one of those in your care. This life-altering lesson reminds us that while there is wonderfully a tremendous amount of resource dedicated to pediatric cancer there is little to none dedicated for the siblings of those fighting it.
We now begin to reach out—again—to families and siblings fighting cancer; a devastating disease that reaches far-too-many families. If you, or a loved one, are fighting against it, we join you in prayer for His healing. Also, on behalf of Shane, and Laughing Child International, I thank you for your faithful prayers for our ministry and our founder. Bless you for caring and faithfully reaching out to our families in Latin America.
A Molina
