Christian Formation
Dorcas House
A message from Terri Mathes
I’d heard about the children at Dorcas House even before I visited. “They latch onto you the minute you walk in the door,” people said. “They need so much love.”
The first part turned out to be true; I spent most of my first visit with a little girl on each hip and two more hanging onto my skirt. But I’ve had enough experience with foster children to know that the second part wasn’t true. Children who readily ask for affection have learned to expect they’ll get what they ask for. These children were getting plenty of love.
They were also getting really good care. They left tidy rooms to eat a hot breakfast served by two cheerful, efficient staffers. (Day or night, at least two adults are always awake to tend the fifty children Dorcas House serves.) After breakfast, the younger ones piled around me on the sofa and began to read aloud, each from a different book. Sylvia, the director, bustled through and said, “Eduardo, did you brush your teeth?” It sounded like any day at home, except it was all happening in Spanish.
A few minutes later, the reading stopped and all the little girls sighed, “Oooooh!” Sylvia had returned holding a white organza dress with a satin bow, matching shoes, and a small flowered hairpiece. “When you graduate from sixth grade, you will get to wear a dress like this, too” she told the little ones.
How did they pay for such a dress, I wondered?
Turns out, buying the dress was the easy part. There are more school children in Tijuana than classroom spaces, so when school registration rolls around, Dorcas House workers take turns waiting in line overnight to sign children up for classes. It’s a matter of pride that every child in Dorcas House is also in school.
Not only that, they do well. Dorcas House children so consistently outperformed their elementary school classmates that they ave received a matching grant to offer tutoring to children outside the orphanage. On the day I attended 6th grade graduation, one of the certificates for academic achievement went to a Dorcas House child whose mother had died of an overdose and whose father had disappeared.
Here’s what the graduation ceremony looked like: The child with the best academic record was called forward to be recognized, but he didn’t receive his honor alone; his parents came forward too, as did each of the six teachers who’d taught him. Everyone who’d helped the child along the way was there to applaud his success. After more awards and a dance performance in the school courtyard, it was finally time to hand out diplomas. Suddenly, the seats around me emptied. Parents and godparents crossed the courtyard to stand beside their student, and each group walked their graduate forward to accept the certificate together.
Who was standing with our students, I wondered? Then I wondered when I had started thinking of them as “ours?”
It’s a truism of foster care that love is not enough. Children need education and medical care, supervision and good nutrition. All of this takes money. Dorcas House is shepherding fifty children toward responsible adulthood, and they’re doing it for less than $11,000 a month. By now you’ve seen it coming: I’m writing this because they need our support. They need our money because there will be more graduation dresses to buy and because someone has to raise the matching funds to pay for those tutors. But they need something even more important than our money. They need people willing to stand beside them.
Terri Mathes is the wife of Rt. Rev. James R. Mathes,
Bishop, Diocese of San Diego. She visited
Dorcas House on June 20, 2006.
