Another wonderful Angel came into my life. Cecilia Campoverde a Professor at FAU. She wrote a project called “The Guatemala Project” She has adopted a complete city that had to be relocated after a flood in Guatemala because of Hurricane Mitch. Her group has built a school, a Medical Clinic, a house for the Doctors to stay when visiting the clinic. She has raised money to build every family a table and chairs to eat their meals in. The project also makes very small loans at very low interest to help the residents into business. One was a bicycle shop. I have sent to her 175 bikes over the years. Some were to help the bike shop get a good start and the rest were distributed to the entire village.
I have received help from the most unusual sources. One family decided not to have a gift exchange one Christmas and gave me the money for my project that they would have spent on their gifts. One group of girls in a neighborhood had a lemonade stand to raise money and collect bikes for me. A forth grade class did odd jobs to raise money to help me out one Christmas. A group of firemen came to assemble new bikes one year to help with Christmas. Many employees of a Bellsouth office building had a project and collected close to 100 bikes to help me out several times.
The most touching was from a Mother of a young man who had died prematurely. Her son loved his bike and she told me that he was his happiest when on his bike. She gave it to me so his Spirit would continue in another child.
One year, I had a bad injury on my toe and left the hospital to get the bikes ready for Christmas. I received hundreds of Prayer cards and letters that people wanted to help me to get well so that I could continue the work.
When I had the nice big bike shop a lot of miracles happened. The young children would come after school to work or just to say Hello. Sometimes they would have a problem that worried them and would talk to me about it. This was a very Spiritual experience for me. Some kids just came to pick out a bike while others liked to come and fix the bikes for the kids that were not able to repair their own bikes. Some would pick out a badly damaged bike and repair it for a special friend and I would let them give it to the friend.
Some of these kids were headed towards the life of crime in gangs. The bike shop was able to build their self esteem and the gangs suddenly were not an issue.
