PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. - Charlotte High School junior Rebekah Marlow expects the trip will change her life. Homemaker Kim Leach wants to change the lives of those she meets on the trip. And, Dick Adomatis organized the trip because he believes in change.
Twenty-five people from First Christian Church in Port Charlotte and a Sun Herald reporter and photographer boarded a bus at 4:30 a.m. today (April 3, 1998) on their way to Aguascalientes, Mexico. They plan to build a living facility at an orphanage in a tiny village near Aguascalientes.
Their reasons for going vary. The thread that stitches the reasons together like a quilt, is change.Personal change, to change the lives of the 42 children living in the orphanage and a change of religion for the village residents.
"I've heard it's a life-changing experience," Marlow, 16, said. I want to learn "not to take things for granted - to appreciate what we have."
Leach, a mother of two and homemaker, thought she'd missed her chance to go on a mission trip.
"I've always had it in my heart to go," she said. "I want to show God's love to these people" Ñ the village residents.Youth minister Todd Thomas said the teens going will learn what it's like in another country.
"Kids today take things for granted," he said. "Even kids who are considered poor have no concept of what poor is like - what it's like to have nothing."
Adomatis and his wife, Sandy, are organizing the trip. He first got involved with the orphanage in 1991, with an organization called Kids Alive International, while living in Indiana. The church he was going to there made a trip to the orphanage which is run by an American doctor, Jim Unzicker.The Port Charlotte couple has supported the orphanage ever since.
"The love in our hearts for what heÕs trying to do - care for these children, teach them" is why we've continued to support the orphanage, he said. Children in the home, ages 2 to 15, have often had no one. Some lived on the streets before being brought to the orphanage.
"Six of (the children) are from the same family," the father of six said. "They saw their mother shot right in front of them ..."
The children live in the city of Aguascalientes now, but will be moved to the village of Santa Rosa when the construction of living quarters is finished. Adomatis said the village is about 25 miles from the city.
"Right now the children have no place to play but the city streets," he said.
"In this country we have a welfare system ... in Mexico there's not that hope."