Zach Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister and hospital chaplain, studied health traditions in China, Thailand, Greece, Turkey and Central America.  He wrote Healing Touch: The Church’s Forgotten Language (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994).  For five years beginning in 1997 he and his wife, Sally, worked as volunteers with Common Hope, serving poor families near Antigua, Guatemala.  Zach coordinated a gardening/medicinal herb program and wrote stories for Guatemalan children.  (The series is now available in English and Spanish at 1stBooks.com.).  In Charlotte Zach works with Latino jail inmates, and Sally conducts historical walking tours.  Their daughter, Leigh, and her husband, Cory Jones, live nearby with son, Zacory Grayson Jones.

I met Margarita when she participated in the gardening program.  On our visits to help Margarita dig beds for her garden, Vilma, my assistant, noticed that Margarita’s husband, was usually not at home.  She said that was a good sign that he was probably at work and had quit drinking.  The bad news was that Margarita was hardly ever at home, a fact that her neighbors attributed to Margarita’s having taken up the drinking habit, leaving the children to fend for themselves.  Vilma and I sought the counsel of Sharon Dohse, the family’s social worker, who helped us understand Margarita’s situation.

Life for Margarita plodded on as one sad drama after another.  She’d given birth to 16 children, 9 of them living.  Some of them had begun to act out...faking illnesses, getting arrested and such.  Eventually, the family had to move when one of the sons was caught stealing from a neighbor.  This was particularly distressing since it meant that the garden had been abandoned.

Vilma and I never suspected such a dreary background since Margarita’s demeanor was always so friendly.  She actively participated in one program after another at the project.

But Sharon saw through these surface appearances.  She interpreted Margarita’s constant talk about herself and her busyness at the project as addictive behavior.  Perhaps Margarita was using the project’s programs mainly to distract her from her miseries.

Sharon also saw that Margarita was an incredibly strong person in many ways.  Margarita only needed to believe in that strength herself.  So Sharon’s strategy was to help Margarita focus on that strength.  She referred Margarita to a Common Hope psychologist and to a support group.  At the same time, Sharon limited Margarita’s presence at the project to the literacy program and put a stop to Margarita’s idle chatter that only served to reinforce her negative self-image.  Basically, Sharon was teaching Margarita how to set boundaries and to rely on her strengths, not on mood-altering habits.

Then Sharon got to work on the most urgent concerns regarding Margarita’s children.  She sent the hearing-impaired child to Common Hope’s speech pathology program.  With a hearing aid, he totally changed his behavior in school.  As soon as the middle boy was released from prison, she helped him enroll in a carpentry school program. 

“Guess what?” Sharon asked me one day.  “Margarita finally graduated from the sixth grade.”

Great news from the literacy program!  It reminded me that I had not seen Margarita in a long time.  Sharon explained that Margarita was spending more time at home with her children.

Sharon’s work often left her emotionally exhausted.  In Margarita’s case she had integrated a variety of resources from the project’s clinic, social work and education departments and from the community.  She had taught Margarita how to use a crisis as an opportunity.  Most of all she had given Margarita valuable lessons in boundaries and self-reliance.  Sharon had woven a variety of resources in and out of the lives of Margarita and her family.  As a result the family had become more closely knit and better able to live independently.

Common Hope’s social workers, like Sharon, dedicate themselves to empowering families.  In turn, healthier families are far more likely to support their children trying to succeed in school.