Some of the girls

Name: Gueiby Yamileth Caballero Cardona
Age: 11 D.O.B. December 2, 1997
Parents at home: Yes
Occupations: Mother works in the home, father works as an electrician.
Number of children living at home: 5
School: Entering 6th grade (more than likely, this will be the last year of school for Gueiby because in her neighborhood, there is no high school).
House: Homemade wooden house


Name: Ritsy Pamela Flores
Age: 15 D.O.B. July 9th, 1993
Parents at home: Yes
Occupations: Mother works in the home, father works in a factory.
Number of Children living at home: 3 (her younger brother, Wilson, age 10, was just sponsored by a church in the U.S. to have corrective eye surgery and is now seeing well!)
School: No longer in school
Home: Homemade wooden house, dirt floors.


Name: Wendi Yamileth Mendes Ochoa
Age: 12 September 3rd, 1996
Parents at home: Yes
Number of Children living at home: 4
School: No longer in school, but takes care of her younger siblings at home.
Home: Homemade wooden home with cement floors.





I will continue to keep adding more pictures and bios of the girls. Keep praying for all of these girls as they face extremely challenging situations and are at a very impressionable age!

And we're off!

Greetings to everyone, especially my 2 loyal followers! (its so great to have people so interested in this ministry!)

We have now had our official 2nd meeting for Semillas de Esperanza, and everything keeps getting better than expected! I now have 25 girls interested, and yesterday I was able to get all of their pictures and biographies that I will be sharing with all of you as well as all of our customers. I also had them working for the first time getting used to using the pliers to bend and twist the wire, and some of them show an amazing natural talent with just their first try!

I will be posting some pictures from this last Saturday, as well as some photos of the girls and some of their biographies that they shared with me.

Thank you so much for everyone's support in this endeavor. I truly could not do any of it without everyone's help and support, and I am so excited and motivated to be working with these beautiful young women. Hopefully I will have some pictures of actual jewelry to post soon....but I must admit that in the meanwhile I've had some fun making some prototypes for them to follow!

Love to all!
Macayla

First Meeting Ever!

This past Saturday I had my first ever meeting with my girls for Semillas de Esperanza, and I am happy to say that it was overwhelmingly better than I could have imagined. Before leaving for the states in December, I had mentioned to the girls my idea of using this ministry as something that will not only teach them a skill, but also help us to have good fellowship, discipleship, as well as raising a little bit of money to do something special for these beautiful girls. Apparently, while I was gone they were asking every weekend when I was going to come back and we were going to start, and my FIRST meeting in the tiny little sewing room under the feeding center held 20 girls, myself, and two adult volunteers. I felt so blessed and like things in my life had just clicked into place. I suppose that's God factoring into that.

So, while I have been so blessed with support from family and friends back home, I am afraid that God is turning this into something even bigger than I had imagined, and I will need to purchase more tools so that we can all work together. I have had one teacher from Pinares who was given $100 to bless a ministry of their choice, and after seeing the turn out from our first SDE meeting said that this was the place to put that money. Today I also received an e-mail in which I have some pre-ordered bracelets that will be purchased to benefit another ministry for young girls also.

Stepping out in faith can sometimes be such a difficult decision. What is known is more comfortable than the unknown, and in the decision making process you are reminded of all of your inadequacies and short-comings, but when you do take that step in faith--that plunge as it may seem sometimes, God is there and he will never let you do it on your own.

I was once again very humbled that God has used me to work for him, and I was once again reminded that if I continue to step out in faith, he will bless me with something bigger than I could ever imagine. I knew there in that moment I was in exactly the right place doing the exactly the right thing, and I felt God telling my spirit that I will never be wealthy if I follow him, but I will never be in want.