Former sponsored child an encouragement for poverty-stricken families
“I believe way down deep in my heart that poverty can be overcome,” says Anibal Mejia. He speaks from personal experience.
Anibal’s parents didn’t have much money to provide food or clothing since his mother stayed home with the children and his father worked as a small farmer, completely dependent on nature for his harvest.
At the age of 6, Anibal became a World Vision sponsored child and remained so for the next 8 years.
Through this, Anibal had access to medical and dental care, access to higher education. And he also participated in spiritual formation classes World Vision offered.
One of the things they did in the spiritual formation class was to pray for their sponsors. “We would thank God for their lives and for doing what they were doing for us in spite of the fact that they didn’t know us,” he says.
The spiritual formation classes left a lasting impact on him.
“I firmly believe that all this issue of family support and the experience of being a sponsored child are the means that God put in my life to help me become what I have become,” says Anibal.
After graduating from school and working for a few years, Anibal ended up volunteering for World Vision.
When a job opened up in the community of San Marcos de la Sierra, World Vision offered him the role because they’d seen his heart during his volunteering.
That job really tested Anibal’s dedication. At that time, World Vision lacked even a vehicle for workers to get around from one community to another. “There were days where I had to walk up to five hours to go from one community to another,” he remembers.
But that didn’t dampen his sprits. Finally he’d found a job with true meaning for him. “For me the work was of a huge satisfaction because I was doing something that was helping people,” he says.
Now after 18 years and a number of different jobs, Anibal works as the Western Region Manager in Honduras overseeing 11 Area Development Projects (ADPs) within the country.