The Fuentes family holds a special place in our hearts because it is the first family we started serving through this ministry!
A Rough Start
This family’s problems started when their house burnt down. The government helped them out by giving them a tiny piece of land to live on while they rebuilt their home. It is during this time that their mother, Modesta, was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease. The family had little to no income. While the hospital offered free dialysis for Modesta, she still needed to find a way to make it to the hospital 2-3 times a week. They had no car and for them, it was expensive to pay for a taxi to take her back and forth. This resulted in Modesta missing her treatments and she often found herself in the hospital for weeks at a time because she would become gravely ill. Meanwhile, the three children: Yanira, Dincy, and Jairo were left all alone at home.
We began serving this family by providing for taxi fare for Modesta so she could get regular dialysis treatments at the hospital. We also helped by providing some food and clothes as Modesta could no longer work and at the time, Yanira was too young to work. We also helped by fixing up the front gate to their property that was falling apart and not very secure. Eventually, Modesta was able to receive supplies to her home from the hospital in order to receive dialysis on her own and we helped by building a small area to store her medical supplies.
When Yanira turned 13, she began to work small jobs to help raise some money to feed her siblings. We received reports that she started having fainting spells. We raised the money for her to have some medical tests done, all of which came back negative. We discovered that she was going 2-3 days without eating because they didn’t have enough food for the whole family and she skipped meals so Jairo and Dincy could eat. We then tried to continue raising funds to supplement their income and not too long after this transpired, Modesta passed away around Christmas of 2011.
We learned that their older brother, Walter, who had been living elsewhere decided to move back home to try to support his younger siblings. Neighbors began taking care of them in any way they could. A family across the street ran their garden hose to the house so they could have running water as the property did not have plumbing.
Walter had been having a hard time making enough money to provide for his younger siblings, so Ilsa (Modesta’s best friend since childhood) and her husband Ricardo (who passed away in 2021 due to COVID 19) have since taken them into their home to continue raising the children. They have been working extremely hard to not only provide for these children, but also make sure they continue going to school.
Yanira decided after graduating from 6th grade to leave home and start her own life. She is still in contact with Ilsa and her siblings.
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