Looking Back, One Child At a Time

Hey everyone.. I have to write a "personal narrative" for my english class, and this is what I decided to write...
Keep going4god,
Maddie Gonzo :)

One Child At a Time

It all began with my mom praying for my dad that he would come back to the Lord, and want to live for him. Dragging him to church one day in 2004, changed his life, and my family’s life. In church that night, there was a pastor that came from Cambodia to speak about his ministry, and the poverty there. As my dad listened to the pastor talk, he was wondering how God could ever let young girls (as young as I was) live as child prostitutes and in so much poverty. After my dad was praying, he heard God speak to him very clearly saying, “Rudy, how could you let this happen? You’re my hands, and feet.” Two weeks later, my dad was out in the jungle of Cambodia building an Orphanage, and taking care of little kids, and it changed his life forever.
The next summer he wasn’t able to go back to Cambodia because he couldn’t get enough time off of work. He was very disappointed, and wanted to do something. One weekend a pastor friend called and asked my dad if he wanted to go to Mexico with him to build a church. Of course he said yes, and my brother who was only fifteen years old at the time went with him. There they met another pastor named Pastor Troy who was all the way from New Orleans, LA. They had a blast on the trip, and got their hearts broken all over again for the kids living in the garbage dump, and orphans without a place to stay.
About a month later when they got back from Mexico, we heard that Hurricane Katrina was about to hit New Orleans. My brother recognized that Pastor Troy was from there and told my dad that we had to go help him. My family raised hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations, and sent over fifteen teams to New Orleans to help.
After Hurricane Katrina, is where I came in. I was only 9 years old at the time, and asked my dad if there were any hungry kids in Santa Rosa. I was disappointed that I was ‘too young’ to go all the way to Cambodia, Louisiana, or even Mexico. He told me that there were, so I asked the question that changed my life; “Why aren’t we feeding them?” That week I put together 18 bags of groceries that I took out of my kitchen cabinets. My dad came home after a hard day of work and saw that I had groceries packed. My mom asked my dad where we were going to go and he said where Jesus would go. We went to the most dangerous part of Santa Rosa where 90% of crimes happened, known as Papago Court. When we showed up, we knocked on doors and told them we had food and prayer from Jesus.
Our lives could not have been crazier at the time. My mom was battling with cancer, and my little sister and I had just collected fifteen hundred toys for orphans in mexico. Now we wanted to start a neighborhood outreach. From the 18 bags of groceries in one neighborhood, the outreach has grown to five thousand pounds of food every week out of my front yard distributed into eight different neighborhoods.
My younger sister and I have been interviewed on ABC7 News, and were honored by the American Red Cross as Good Samaritans in Northern California. Although it takes a lot of effort, it is worth developing relationships with little kids and seeing all the smiles on their faces. I will not stop, and I will keep helping, one hungry child, and smile at a time.