|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
News |
|
Some wish Jeanie Weber could be cloned.
“I wish I had a Jeanie; I wish we all had a Jeanie in our places of
service,” a childcare executive recently said of Weber for her
commitment and service to Arkansas Baptist Children’s Home (ABCHomes).
Weber of Little Rock recently celebrated her 25th anniversary with
ABCHomes. She serves as administrative secretary for ABCHomes home
office, providing clerical services for the executive director and
program director. She is also responsible for administrative
secretarial services to the ABCHomes board of trustees.
“Jeanie will accept nothing less from herself than quality work,”
said David Perry, ABCHomes executive director. “She is known for her
courteous personality … and goes to great lengths to provide for
every need and every detail related to meetings, conferences,
reports and other administrative activities.”
Weber’s commitment, Perry said, extends to the children in ABCHomes
care. “She thrives on interaction with our children … She loves the
opportunity to have quality time with the children … and goes the
extra mile to fill in for the evening in one of our facilities or
provide transportation. She is faithful to pray for our kids.”
ABCHomes program director Charles Flynn says, “What separates Jeanie
from others is the joy she brings to her work. She really enjoys
helping people and is determined to meet each person’s needs.”
This determination has gained her a nickname as “mom” for how she
looks out for everyone. And while she has no children of her own,
ABCHomes kids know Weber is in their corner, cheering them on.
Weber joined the ABCHomes staff in 1981 as secretary in the Little
Rock area office before moving into the administrative assistant
position 11 years ago. Prior to that time, she worked with the
Arkansas Baptist State Convention from 1974 - 1981.
A native of Arkadelphia, Jeannie and her husband, Wayne, have called
Little Rock home since they married in 1974. She is a member of
Immanuel Church of Little Rock. Weber attended Henderson State
University and was active in the Baptist Student Union.
In honor of her longtime service, ABCHomes staff presented Weber and
her husband with a trip to Branson at an annual agency-wide retreat
in November. During the ABCHomes Dec. 11 executive board meeting,
staff and board members surprised Weber by presenting her with 25
roses and news they had donated financial gifts, in her honor, to
the ABCHomes general endowment f und and Thanksgiving Offering.
Reflecting on her service, Weber says, “How could I be happier
anywhere else?”
ABCHomes alumni reunites with family
From the Arkansas Baptist
News
By Lisa Watson
For most of his life, Luiz dos
Santos, felt his life was like a
puzzle with many missing pieces.
Two failed adoptions led the young teen, now a junior at Ouachita
Baptist University (OBU), to the Arkansas Baptist Children’s Home in
Monticello (Children’s Home), where he spent several years.
But following a recent trip to Brazil to reconnect with his birth
family, dos Santos has begun to realize that God used many people,
including those at the Children’s Home, to fit together the puzzle.
And this realization has led him to a deeper walk with the Lord.
“My experience in Brazil getting the puzzle together in my life and
finding the truth played a great contribution in realizing how God
had really been in control of my life,” he says.
Dos Santos was born in the favelas (ghetto) of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to
a life of poverty. One of 14 children, dos Santos’ father was an
alcoholic who regularly beat his wife. At the age of 4, he was taken
from his family by a neighbor and eventually placed in a Catholic
orphanage. Social workers told dos Santos’ mother that he would have
to stay in the orphanage until he was about 15 years old. This
wasn’t the first time social workers had tried to take away her
children but she’d always been able to get them back.
“My mom kept the family together but I was the one who got away,”
says dos Santos.
Dos Santos was unaware of his mom’s efforts to recover him. Instead
the social workers wrote in his file that he had been abandoned.
Though his mom never signed any paperwork, dos Santos was adopted by
a family in New York when he was 8 years old. His adoptive parents
were told he was 4 years old.
Dos Santos lived with his adoptive family in New York for more than
two years before they decided to send him to live with another
family in Arkansas.
“In 1994, I ended up with a family in Arkansas, who at first seemed
to be a good Christian family,” says dos Santos.
Instead, he was abused physically and mentally. “I would say living
in that house was like living in a prison,” he explains. “I always
had to watch what I was doing because I was afraid of her (his
adoptive mother) and what she did to us.
“Her greatest weapon was degrading us with Christianity, which would
cause me to distrust in my later life.”
Finally, in January 2003, after living for years in a very abusive
situation, dos Santos’ adoptive mother sent him to live in the
Arkansas Baptist Children’s Home in Monticello, a ministry of
ABCHomes. “In the end, my adoptive mom wanted me out because I
started to speak out against her abusive method and she also feared
that I would turn them in to DHS,” he says.
Dos Santos lived at the Children’s Home until he graduated from
Monticello High School in 2005. While he lived there, Children’s
Home staff helped him to work through the difficulties of his past.
“When I ended up in the Children’s Home, I felt once again let down
and that the world and God was against me and that I had no one to
trust,” he explains. “Also I felt that I would never have a true
family in my adolescence years.”
Ministering to teens like dos Santos is the priority of ABCHomes,
which raises much of its support from churches through the annual
Thanksgiving Offering, traditionally observed in Arkansas Baptist
churches since 1908.
While living at the Children’s Home, dos Santos had to work through
a lot of anger, especially anger directed toward God. “He thought,
‘if God is all-powerful, how could He allow these things to happen
to me?’” says Randy Luper, Children’s Home director.
“But, I picked myself up again and decided to be on my own again. I
would meet people that would help me,” says dos Santos.
And he did find help from others. While dos Santos lived at the
Children’s Home, he met several people who would eventually help him
to put together the pieces of his past.
When dos Santos was 16, he met Daniel Messina, a Brazilian student
attending Ouachita Baptist University (OBU). Messina got involved in
ministry at the Children’s Home and the friendship between the two
young men grew. Messina’s parents, Sergio and Roseli, lived in
Brazil and invited dos Santos to visit them.
Gary and Rosila Corker, independent missionaries from Brazil, who
were also involved in Children’s Home ministry, invited the dos
Santos to stay with them in Brazil.
“When I went to the Children’s Home, I resumed the relationship with
my adoptive family in NY,” he says. “They regretted allowing me to
go.”
In 2005, dos Santos’ adoptive family from New York paid for his
trip.
While in Brazil, the Corkers helped him search for his biological
family, but they were unable to locate them.
Meanwhile, Sergio began to help dos Santos with his search.
Eventually, with the involvement of the entire Messina family, they
located dos Santos’ brother through the Internet and other sources.
Because of the true Christian example set by the Messinas’ family,
dos Santos says he began to understand what “true Christianity”
should be like.
“I could see why their son was such a good positive influence,” says
dos Santos. “They helped me through a lot of things and they made me
feel like I was part of the family.”
When dos Santos first phoned his family, his biological brother and
wife were skeptical that this was indeed the brother who had been
lost so many years ago. Roseli explained that she and her family
were Baptists and were not looking for money but just wanted to try
to reunite dos Santos with his family. “It turned out his brother
was an evangelical Christian, so when he heard they were Baptists it
was a “breaking point,” dos Santo says. Soon, email address and
photos were exchanged and dos Santos’ brother began calling him
regularly. His brother told the rest of the family about dos Santos.
“He said my mom was crying when he told her, and she wanted to get
to know me,” says dos Santos.
More pieces of dos Santos’ life fell into place when he returned to
Brazil this past summer to meet his biological family. The Corkers
traveled with dos Santos to help translate when he met his brother
for the first time.
When dos Santos’ brother took him and the Corkers to meet his mom,
he struggled with his emotions. “All my life I thought that my
mother had abandoned me as child and didn’t care, so when I embraced
her for the first time in the favelas, I was thinking, ‘Should I
embrace this person?’” he explained. “It was very overwhelming.”
As he went with his mom and brother toward her home, dos Santos
thought about how far he’d come from living in poverty in the slums
of Brazil to being considered a “rich Brazilian,” by most of the
people he met there.
Nine of his 13 siblings were waiting for dos Santos when he got to
his mom’s house. They were all amazed that he was really there after
being lost for so many years. “My siblings clung to me like I was
star or something ... They were amazed ... that I was alive and
well,” he says.
While he was visiting his family, dos Santos also discovered the
truth about his disappearance, that he had been stolen from the
family and that his mother had tried to find him. He realized his
family didn’t abandon him on purpose. He also discovered that he was
23 years old instead of 20 years old. His adoption paperwork was
sketchy in that area.
When dos Santos finally had to leave his family, his mother didn’t
want him to go. “My mother did not want me to leave due to the fact
that she had lost me before,” he says. Dos Santos says he has a
great desire to get to know more about his mom. “My mother kept her
family together and had searched for the one (myself) who was taken
away for many years.”
Dos Santos also met his father, who is still an alcoholic, and is
still living in the “shack” where the family lived for many years.
“Dad doesn’t take any kind of responsibility for the family,” he
says.
“I really want to go to live there or to visit my family,” says dos
Santos. “I work two jobs at OBU, as a resident assistant and as a
cashier at the Cafe. ... Right now, I don’t have the money but I’m
just hoping to make enough money to spend Christmas with them.”
Dos Santos, who is a history and sociology major, would also like to
write a book about his experiences one day. “As for my career, I’d
like to go back to Brazil and do some kind of social work,” he says.
“I love the U.S., but I want to help with poor people and poverty in
Brazil.”
Dos Santos admits he was skeptical about Christianity because of the
abuse he suffered in his life. “But after people like my adopted
grandparents,
Randy Luper, my (Children’s Home) family friend, Mrs. Betty Smith
and her husband, Gary Corker’s family, Daniel Messina and his
family, I saw what Christianity should be like.
“I came to find out quick that while we see one part of the puzzle,
God sees the whole puzzle,” he says. Finding out that he hadn’t been
abandoned by his family changed his feelings and thoughts about God.
“God had really put people in my life to change me and show me the
way,” he says.
Dos Santos realized that only God could have worked out all the
details necessary to fit together the puzzle pieces of his life.
“You don’t see your whole life, only God sees all of it, he says.
“It’s a puzzle I thought I would never solve.”
“And I’m still young so there’s more to come,” he says.
|
|
