Sor Lucia Roge Nutritional Center. Not a very exciting name? "nutritional center"? , but an incredible place. It is run by Sister Anna Christina, and she takes in children who have families, but are very sick or starving to death. The center nurses them back to health and works with the families to teach them how to keep their children healthy.
The work is good, but what is truly amazing about Sor Lucia Roge is something rather intangible, it is the deep joy of the children. These are children who know they are loved, and being loved has healed them. Sister Anna Christina says that the children are nursed back to health primarily with love, and it shows.
One can tell how long a child has been there at a glance. Children who have not been there long are skinny and look down when you look at them. Children who have been there a while are big and healthy, and when you look at them they smile and come over to you. Fear has gone from them, and they are reconnected to the world around them.
It is amazing what love does for children, what love does for all of us.
I had the privilege of meeting Lester. He is the child in the photograph, being held by Robin Mahfood, the president of FFTP. Lester was brought by his grandfather when he was on the brink of starvation. In Robin's other hand is a picture of Lester when he showed up at the center.
Lester's mother was very young and not married, and did not know how to care for him. Three hospitals turned him down because they thought that nothing could be done, that he was too far gone? that he would die. Now Lester is wonderfully chubby. He loves to be held, but Lester does not yet smile as much as the other children. Some kinds of hurt have very deep roots.
Sister Anna Christina has never lost a child, and I believe that Lester's smile is not too far away either.