Alesca is one of the university students in my scholarship program. She is pictured here with her father, Felipe. Her two sisters, Erika and Idania, were also scholarship students of mine, but in 2016 all three of them were in a tragic accident when bales of hay being carried by a large truck broke loose and rolled over them as they walked home from church one afternoon. Erika and Idania died as a result of the injuries from the accident, but Alesca survived. However, she still suffers from many complications from the accident of which the doctors at the public hospital told her that she would live with for the rest of her life. When her father came and told me about the accident and that she had survived, I remember grieving with him as we stood at my gate. How much he had suffered, and yet how glad he was that one of his girls had survived. In his words, “at least the Lord left me with one of my daughters.” I told him then that if Alesca recovered enough to go back to college I would definitely continue helping her with a scholarship. This February he came to tell me that she was going to try going back to college on Saturdays. Because of her not being able to walk well, I went to visit her to figure out the best way to help her out. She is studying at a public university which means the costs are quite low. Before I was helping her with $100 a year for materials and transportation, but in hearing her story and how difficult it still is to walk, I realized that the best way to help her out was by providing the funds for her to take a taxi to her classes instead of riding in the overcrowded buses where she could easily be pushed around. As we talked about this and her health issues, I came to understand that the most unfortunate result of the accident is that she no longer has the ability to urinate. I’m not going into details here because I didn’t understand all of it myself as to how she manages, but I found it hard to believe that what the doctors said was true, that she would live this way for the rest of her life. Continue reading “Alesca’s story”