Jhannel
Updated May 19, 2017
TSC is working hard to try to obtain U.S. permanent residency for a Bolivian birth mom and her daughter to make it possible for them remain together. They are living in Spain but are in great need, and there is quite a bit of urgency concerning their current situation. We are attaching a photo of this little girl, named Jhannel, and her mother who loves her dearly—who has already worked so hard and sacrificed so much in order to continue parenting her baby. Because of their specific circumstances, we believe permanent residency here is the best solution for them, and a generous donation to TSC, as well as the donated services of a kind immigration attorney, have made it possible for us to move forward with this plan. We are moving toward the final stages of the process, and we are in need of significant additional funding for all of the final steps. Please pray for this process and, if you are able, click the link below to contribute to the completion of this important project.
Choose Orphan Prevention – Jhannel from the drop-down list
Updates
Raiza & Jhannel — Three Weeks In
Posted June 8, 2018
Raiza and Jhannel have been here in the U. S. for three weeks now. They are resting and recovering from the long trip, but also from years of their really tough former life. Raiza has told me that she has to keep reminding herself that this is all real and that she doesn’t have all of those past things to worry about anymore. And for our family, it is a huge blessing to have them living here with us for the beginning of this journey.
This week we have been busy getting all of the final official pieces in place for Raiza to begin her employment with TSC as Office Assistant, and scheduling a number of needed medical and dental appointments for them.
I wish that everyone who has been a part of making this dream come true could fully understand what a difference you have made in their lives, and also grasp the reality that there is no way to know how many other lives in the future will now be affected by their presence here in the United States. We, and they, are so very grateful.
Jhannel is a ray of sunshine and glows with joy through most of her days here. She is picking up English very quickly now, adores our dogs, and loves joining in with some of our homeschooling. I’ve attached a few recent pictures so you can see for yourself. Thank you with all our hearts. Please continue to pray for them as they keep taking baby steps down this road to a whole new life.
Raiza & Jhannel Are on Their Way
Posted April 28, 2018
Many months have passed since our last update on Raiza and Jhannel, and many more battles have been fought. But we are finally done! Jhannel and her mommy, Raiza, arrive in Cincinnati on May 15 as permanent residents of the United States of America to begin their new lives — together forever and with no more fear of ever being separated.
This is possible because of all of the help from so many of you as you linked arms with us during this fight. We will never be able thank all of you adequately. Not only did supporters make it possible for The Shepherd’s Crook to regularly supplement Raiza’s small income and help them survive these long months of waiting, but you also helped us raise all of the money needed to pay all of the many fees required to get their permanent resident status and to purchase luggage for them and plane tickets and all things needed for them to leave their old lives behind and start over here. You prayed with us through roadblock after roadblock during this long process. Funds needed to pay Raiza’s salary as TSC’s Office Assistant came through generous donations, many of you helped finance the preparation of a bedroom “suite” for them in our home, and volunteers spent many hours doing the hard work of making that space beautiful.
Attaced is a new picture of the two of them, taken just today, and some pictures of the room where they will be living until they are ready to find a place of their own.
Thank you so much for everything. Please celebrate with us, but also continue to pray for the two of them and our family as we all adjust to these changes in everyone’s lives. Raiza is leaving behind everything familiar in order to make a better life for her daughter, and while she is excited about this and so grateful for this huge opportunity, this requires much courage and commitment.
So Very Grateful,
Kathy
Update on Raiza and Jhannel
Posted August 25, 2017
Back in May, I (Kathy Rosenow) wrote to tell you about one of TSC’s newest projects. I shared the story of Raiza and her daughter Jhannel — their desperate need and TSC’s efforts to help them stay together as a family by obtaining green cards for both of them to come to the US and start new lives here. At that time, we were trying to raise a remaining $9,000, and we thought they would be here a few months after that. This is a beautiful and exciting story, and if you missed that post, I’d encourage you to go to this link and read the full story.
After that post was shared, faithful followers of TSC responded by donating more than half of the needed $9000. I want to update you on where things stand with this project now.
Ten days after that post, we learned that Raiza’s case had been assigned to a USCIS officer who was, for some unknown reason, intent on finding a way to deny our request. Our attorney was able to successfully answer every question tossed back to us, but in the end this officer found a technical mistake with a signature and denied the case, based on that. This was a bitter disappointment, but not the end of the battle. We regrouped and were able to file again. Unfortunately, this re-filing cost us another unexpected $2,000 in fees, and weeks of lost time. Thankfully, though, the case was approved by the next officer who handled it! (Huge cheers from Cincinnati that day!)
From that point, it was passed on to the National Visa Center (NVC) to begin preparation for the final steps of issuing Permanent Resident Visas for both Raiza and her daughter, Jhannel, and arranging Raiza’s visa interview with the US Embassy.
At 2:00 am Thursday, August 24, we received an email from the NVC telling us that they are now ready to proceed to the final steps. We still have weeks ahead, but things are sailing through now and there shouldn’t be any more unfortunate surprises throughout this last part of the process.
There have been many battles all through this whole process, and we are really only just now fully understanding what a miracle it is that this is happening. Typically, green cards (or Permanent Resident Visas) are only granted to immigrants who have higher levels of education, and especially to those in the fields of medicine or science. It’s so very encouraging to see God moving this case through in spite of the fact that Raiza doesn’t fit into any of these categories. It’s a reminder that His purposes will not be thwarted.
“For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?” Isaiah 14:27
These added expenses, the additional months of support needed for Raiza and Jhannel as they wait for their visa interviews now, and the fact that we hadn’t finished raising all of the needed funds yet anyway, mean that we are still short about $5,000. This will include all remaining fees, monthly supplementation of their small income for the next couple of months or so while they wait, all travel costs to get them here, and the purchase of some items that they will need when they arrive. We need to raise this money very quickly so that we are ready to keep moving to the next steps as they happen and so that Raiza and Jhannel can continue to survive while they are waiting.
Would you please consider helping us raise the last of these funds so we can all see this project through? We are hoping to hold a dinner or open house of some kind once Raiza and Jhannel are here and settled a bit so that anyone local will have the opportunity to meet them, and so that Raiza will be able to thank some of you in person for the making this new start in life possible for her and her daughter. If you would like to help, go to our donation page and select Orphan Supplies – Jhannel from the drop-down menu.
Here are a couple of new pictures of the two of them.
Plea for Help: Jhannel and Raiza
Posted May 20, 2017
I want to tell you an amazing story. Unfortunately, I can only share a condensed version of this decades-long, real-life drama. And even then, this will be a long message. But please read on and share. You can be a huge part of saving two lives. TSC very much needs your help!
In 1994, a little five-year-old girl was playing around a trash fire on the property where she lived with her grandparents in Potosi, Bolivia. When she threw gasoline on the flames, her clothes immediately caught fire. Terrified, she began to run. A passerby spotted this child running as the flames engulfed her, and tackled her to the ground, smothering the flames as quickly as possible. Sadly, her body was severely burned, and she was in desperately critical condition.
She was sent to La Paz, Bolivia, where she could get better medical care than in Potosi. However, Bolivia is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and even the best medical care there was greatly lacking. After many, many months in the hospital, though, she survived.
By the time she was seven years old, the scarring on her body was beginning to cause problems for her, as it was impeding her growth and her mobility. Thanks to an organization called Healing the Children, she was sent to the United States for badly-needed scar revision surgeries.
If you have read Scott’s and my book, Swaying in the Treetops, this story may be starting to sound familiar to you. Our family served as the host family for this little girl named Raiza, beginning in 1997. Over the next five years, she lived with our family several different times for extended periods, called us Mom and Dad, became very much like one of our daughters, and even sat with us at one point and prayed to accept Christ as her Savior.
Again if you’ve read our book, then you also know that as the years passed and Raiza was forced to travel back and forth between her very unstable life in Bolivia and the family in America that she had come to think of as her own, her heart became confused and full of pain. By the time she was about twelve years old, this pain and confusion had taken the shape of anger and deep sadness.
After she returned to Bolivia for the last time, we completely lost contact with her. But we never forgot her or stopped praying for her and loving her. I often woke in the night crying, and praying that she was safe. And I continued to pray that God would bring us back together someday.
Then about five years ago, through a series of what I’ll always believe were Divinely orchestrated events, Raiza and I found each other on Facebook! I couldn’t believe that we were finally connected again. At the age of sixteen, she had managed to get herself to Spain, and had been living there and working as a nanny for several years. Sadly, many betrayals in her life, and the continued hardships of trying to survive by herself, had damaged her ability to trust God or people. Then, not long after we found each other again, she met a man that she thought might finally be the one who would love and care for her and make her dreams of marriage and a family come true. But her heart was broken again when she became pregnant and he abandoned her because she refused to have an abortion.
Raiza continued trudging on as she had done for most of her life — alone. Once her daughter Jhannel, now two and a half years old, was born, she was unable to work enough hours to provide for the two of them. But she was an amazing mom who loved this baby with all her heart and was determined to give her all of the consistent love and care that she never had herself. As the months passed she became desperate, as she was unable to even provide medicine for Jhannel when she was sick, and she began to wonder if it would be best to find someone else to raise this child — her child. Her heart was breaking at this thought, but she knew she could never provide, on her own, all that her baby needed.
Raiza’s and Jhannel’s case was a perfect example of why TSC started our Orphan Prevention Project, and we voted to take on their situation as one of our Orphan Prevention cases. (You may remember that we were part of helping little Nixie and her young birth mom through this same project.)
Through the gifts of donations to our Orphan Prevention fund, TSC has been able to provide a bit of monthly support to supplement her small income and help them survive while they waited for this miracle to finally happen. And with the pro bono services of a local immigration attorney, we have been fighting hard for the past year to get Raiza and her daughter green cards so that they can come live and work in the U.S. as permanent residents. It was a massively challenging plan (due in great part to the fact that Raiza has never been able to get an education), and we knew we could only succeed with God’s miraculous intervention. Then a couple of weeks ago, we suddenly received word that their case had been approved by the US Department of Labor and is moving into the final stages of this long, hard process!
The plan now is to wrap up these final pieces and to get them here, possibly as early as October. Once they are settled, Raiza will be working as an office assistant for TSC (again, a very generous donation will provide her salary), and we will work alongside her to help her obtain her GED so that she will have more choices moving forward as she slowly becomes more independent.
However, we are in great need of more funds to finalize everything, as fees up to this point and the ongoing monthly support have depleted all that we had available. This is an expensive process from beginning to end, even with the donated services of our attorney. We need to continue providing monthly support for the two of them for the next few months, as well as covering the Immigration and green card fees, required medical exams and immunizations, plane fare to fly them here, etc. Some of these fees/costs are expensive.
We need to raise, as soon as possible, another $9,000 in order to wrap this up. Would you please consider making a donation to help with this new start for this brave mom and her baby? And would you pray for our efforts and for their hearts as they begin this new life. And please share this message. Donations can be made by visiting our Orphan Prevention – Jhannel web page and clicking on the Donate button at the bottom.
During this past year in Spain, Raiza has continued working very difficult hours doing house cleaning jobs here and there in order to maximize her time with her daughter and to keep food on the table for both of them. The supplemental monthly support TSC has been able to send. has helped but hasn’t been nearly enough. We have watched her faith grow as her desire to be able to trust God and people again has gradually increased. She is excited that this dream is finally coming true, while also realistically scared of the changes ahead for both of them. We are asking for much prayer for Raiza as she continues to grow in her ability to trust, and as she prepares her heart and the heart of her daughter for the exciting and scary new things on the horizon for this little family who longs to remain together.
Thank you for any help you can offer. Please consider joining us. Any amount will help!
In Christ,
Kathy Rosenow
Co-Founder | Co-Director
Pictures of Raiza as a child in our home
Picture of Raiza now, with her daughter, Jhannel