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What Happens When God Calls You to Be a Mom on the World Race?

For the month of October, leading up to Orphan Sunday on November 3rd, we’ve been sharing stories on the theme of adoption and orphan care – stories of kids living on the streets, orphans, and children at risk, and the ways our missionaries have seen God care for them. We’re sharing stories of missionaries caring for children, fighting for them, and even bringing them home to stay.

And on Monday, November 5th, we’ll share a special story that is close to our hearts.

This week’s story is from Cassie Schott, a World Race alumnus from the October 2010 S Squad. When Cassie left for the World Race, she had no idea God would call her back to one of the countries to love the kids there, but that’s exactly what happened.


I went on the World Race in October 2010. At Launch in Guatemala, we found out that our team, along with another team, would be spending our first month of the Race in Honduras instead of staying in Guatemala with the majority of our squad. We were told we would be working with a ministry that helps street kids. I had been to Guatemala twice before, so I was excited about this new adventure into the unknown.

We started the month by playing soccer every day with the kids in the streets, hanging out with them, making friends. Through that, God began to build relationships. As the kids began to trust us, they wanted us to make the trek up the mountain to meet their families, neighbors, and friends.

The more they let us in, the more God began to wreck me as I learned the stories of these teenagers with calloused hearts whose lives had been scarred by abuse, drug addiction, alcohol, violence, and gangs. Some of their parents had abandoned or disowned them, others threw them out on the streets to work or steal or find a way to make money before returning home.

There was one particular 13-year-old boy, Luis, who broke my heart. God used him and his story to call me back to Honduras.

I felt led to come back and be able to show him the love that he had been starving for his whole life, the love of a mother.

I finished the Race in September 2011 and flew straight back to Honduras to visit the ministry, which had moved to a new property and had changed drastically since my time on the Race. It was very obvious during my two-week visit that this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The ministry had changed it’s focus from going to hang out with the kids on the streets to bringing them into our home to live in a 24/7 community of love, faith, and family. It started out with one, then there were three, and today we have nearly 20 teens and children living with us on our property.

I moved to Honduras to work with Zion’s Gate Ministries in December 2011, and throughout my time living here, God has begun to “enlarge the place of my tent” (Isaiah 54:2). I came here thinking I would be the love and consistency of a mother in Luis’ life, and that was really all I had in mind. But God had bigger plans.

About a month after I moved here, I met Genesis who was a year old at the time. She had been abandoned by her 15-year-old drug-addicted mother when she was three months old, and left in the care of her “grandma” who works in the dump and does not have the means to care for her.

She would often spend the weekends sleeping in the dump with her grandma, picking through trash, eating food that had been thrown away. She was always sick.

I offered to help out by babysitting Genesis while her grandma worked weekends in the dump. The more time I spent with her, the more I felt like God had huge plans for her to be with me. Through hearing more of her story and much prayer, the Lord gave me the promise that she would be my daughter.

It has been a little over a year and a half since I started caring for her, and it has not always been easy. Sometimes she is with me for months at a time, and then her grandma takes her back until she realizes that she cannot care for her and needs help again. During those times when she was taken away from me (days, weeks, sometimes months), I used to worry that she was not being fed or taken care of properly.

But God has taught me so much this year about trusting him with her life. While he has promised her to me, she is ultimately his. My faith has grown so much this year through this whole process, and I will continue to believe and trust in the promise that he has given me because I know he is faithful to fulfill his promises.

In August 2012, God gave me the dream to build a girls’ home on the property. The ministry had been mainly focused on teenage boys up to this point, but there was also a huge need for girls. I began fundraising and, although I still needed nearly $20,000, the Lord asked me to trust him and break ground on my birthday, October 30th.

He provided exactly what was needed along the way, and we moved in earlier this year.

Since then, we have been able to bring in a 21-year-old deaf/mute girl, who no one has really ever taken an interest in, and two children (five and eight years old) whose 26-year-old mother has three other children with different men and does not have the money or means to care for them.

 

We are especially excited for the young ones we have on the property because they will never have to be “street kids” like many of the teenagers we have here. They will grow up knowing the love of a family and through that, seeing the love of Christ.


God called Cassie back to Honduras to be a mom to Luis, Genesis, and the other kids at Zion’s Gate in whatever way she can. 

What’s a way God is calling you to help children in need?