Don and Jen Knebel

A trip to a Christel House school outside the United States usually includes an opportunity to visit the homes of students.  So, when we visited the Christel House in Mexico City we went to the home of a student located about 45 minutes from the school.  The home for the student and her mother was a single room about the size of an American walk in closet, with a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  Light (and who knows what else) came into the room from large cracks between the walls and the roof.  Clothes, dishes and the other necessities of life were neatly stacked around the room. 

Later in the day, the Christel House students put on a program celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the school in Mexico City.  Among the participants was the young girl from the tiny home we had visited.  Unbeknownst to us at the time, her mother was also in the audience as she sang and danced and just stood quietly in line with the other children in her neatly pressed uniform.  At the end of the program, the mother whom we had met in the morning came forward to say thank you to Christel and the school’s principal.  The thank you was expressed most sincerely by the tears of joy and pride that came after seeing what Christel House was doing for her child.

Christel House brings into its programs children who live on the very bottom rungs of their societies – children who live in a single room with a single light bulb and a mother struggling just to survive.  What comes out of those programs is a young person able to break away from that struggle and to help others to do the same.  That is why we support Christel House.