Family Reunification
A Fundamental Right for Institutionalized Children
by Carmen Solis, Coordinator of Holistic Care and Social Worker
Family is very important to God; in fact, the idea came from Him. God could have created us to live in isolation, but He didn't! We need each other not only for the procreation of the human being but also to support, build, and bless the place where God has placed us. When writing this, the scripture Psalms 68:6 NKJV (our mission) comes to mind: “God sets the solitary in families.” Knowing that many children have had to be separated from their families by different circumstances, we all have the call to take action to return to the original model of God.
At Family Life Missions, we believe that reunification means more than simply supporting children to return to live with their biological families. It means doing actions to ensure that the families we work with have, at least, the minimum resources they need to live together. And this is before, during, and after the official legal procedures have been carried out by DINAF (Honduras Children Services). After the family reunification is carried out, with the FLM team in charge of holistic care, we ensure that the families have timely comprehensive follow-up with spiritual, social, psychological, physical and educational services. It is gratifying to know that in doing so, we help reduce the risk of families falling back into vulnerable situations.
Growing. I love this time of year where we have planted seeds and are seeing them sprout with beautiful flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Every year my family plants tomato plants that we diligently water during the hot and humid days we have in Middle Tennessee. The fruit of my labor is beginning to show this year with many flowers appearing and then tiny, green tomatoes. Over the next several weeks I will continue to grow, water, and weed my tomato garden until we can enjoy delicious, juicy fruit! This process takes time and no matter how well I plant the seeds or water the plants, I cannot make them grow any faster! As we grow in our daily lives, we see the same thing. Paul tells us in I Corinthians 3:6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
The Covid-19 Pandemic, although it sounds paradoxical, has also been an opportunity to make strategic changes. We must think that every crisis has a solution, an expiration date, a life changing experience. At Por Los Niños Bilingual school we have learned to be a lot more organized, punctual, tolerant, and even miss the noisy school environment. We had to make immediate changes and adjustments, urgent alternatives for educational continuity, and seek for the best options as an educational institution, which led to challenges and essential changes to continue giving education to our students.
In Psalm 68, we read that God is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families.” At Family Life Missions, we have taken this Word as our mission: “To partner with God to set the lonely in families.” We began Family Life Missions 29 years ago providing residential homes for abandoned, orphaned, or vulnerable children through our Por Los Ninos Program. Unlike many organizations worldwide, we adopted a family setting as opposed to an institutional orphanage. We believed this was a better way. And it was.