Celina is elderly and weak. A 70-year-old widow, she is up each day with the sun working her coffee fields and walking the hour to an unclean stream outside Pagisi village in Uganda – just to survive. Though her stomach rumbles with hunger, she eats only one meal a day of beans and vegetables. She is poor, and yet, her spirit is generous. Celina has nine children who rely on her every day for a hot meal. Three orphans and six village children find safety in her small hut.

“The children make me happy,” Celina says of the nine children. “The orphans had no one to care for them, so I took them in. The other six children eat at their homes but they are still hungry so they come to me for more food.”

Celina loves her children, but her face wrinkles with worry when she speaks of their future. She is old and poor, and she dreads the day she will no longer be able to care for them. She dreams of a better school that can pull them from the same poverty she suffers. She prays for clean water for them to drink so they don’t share the deadly fate of so many in their village. But she cannot stay with them much longer. She is eager for them to have the tools they need to thrive on their own.

God has not forgotten Celina, the orphans in her care, or the people of Pagisi. Together with you, they can experience true transformation and a future bright with opportunity.