A Prayer for Sion

“Teacher, are you married?” one of my adoring second grade students asked me. “No,” I responded. “Why?” “Well” she continued, “I was hoping to have a little brother. If you were married, I was thinking you could have a son. Then he could be my brother if you adopted me. I would like you for a dad.”

Although I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time when I heard it, these words were nothing of a joke for Zion. Her mother abandoned her several years ago for work in Uruguay, she doesn’t know her real father, and, although has a baby brother come along the way since her mother left, she’s never met the child. She lives with her grandmother, who I suspect of many eccentricities and perhaps a touch of senility, and only hears from her mom by way of telephone a couple times a year. The child is starved for attention, doing whatever she can to spend time with me and other teachers and to be heard. Although she is very smart and has a great sense of humor, Zion hardly does her work in class and spends her time in school ambling about the classroom and whispering things in the teacher’s ear.

Zion once asked me in whole and simple faith to pray for her family—her mom and her baby brother in Uruguay, and her grandmother-who-turns-sixty-five-today in Paraguay. Athough nearly abandoned, she loves them terribly and hurts because they’re not all together. I told her I that would, and I really do. She is a beautiful child, but one with so many needs and so much brokenness that only a heavenly father can heal. Her and her family are in much need of grace, so if you think of it please say a prayer today on their behalf. She’s the reason that the ministry at Adonai exists and the reason why I’ve come to Paraguay—to bless and reach out to students with the love and hope of Christ, doing whatever we can, no matter how small it might seem, to offer the good news of redemption and restoration through the Gospel of Peace.