Mexico (MNN) ― "This is just a drop in the bucket. There are over a million kids living on the streets in Mexico City." That's according to Dexton Shores, director of ministry development in Mexico and the border for Buckner International.
The ministry partnered with Iglesia Bautista Horeb, an area church to launch a new children's home called "La Familia." The team fosters the children of prison inmates and provides a transitional program for the inmate mothers.
Buckner expected that the children would move in last month following the May 18 dedication. However, when they got the case files for the kids, they realized there over 100 children in line for the nine spots available.
The team is still reviewing the cases, focusing on the children age six and under. Shores says they're working specifically with very young children because they're most impressionable. "If they grow up in a facility where it's all nuns taking care of them, when there's a hundred or more children in a facility, they really grow up with no sense of what family is," which can sometimes perpetuate dysfunctional problems.
So Buckner's approach aims at life change. Shores explains, "The idea is that there would be one married couple that would serve as parents to no more than 12 kids. That way, there's a family environment. So they have Bible study together, they have family worship together, they go to church together, they function just like a family would."
The church is also providing a healthy volunteer base as well as additional financial resources for this group home. Jaime and Astrid Díaz Pereira gave up their careers to serve as house parents of the home. They have three daughters of their own: Rebeca, Ana Raquel and Astrid Andrea, but they're expanding their borders to become a family of twelve.
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