to whom it may concern

please pray for marquita, our neighbor who came by tonight because she wanted our help to write this letter:

To whom it may concern,

“This is coming from a family that is paying rent on a house that is being put up for foreclosure, and this house has took a lot of money from the newborn and the eleven kids that live in the house. Our mom has been through a lot of stress thinking about what’s going to happen and we’ve been trying to get a hold of the landlord but he never returns our call. The father that’s in the house has been going out to sign a lot of applications for jobs, but it’s been hard to get a job.“

This letter is coming to you from an eleven-year-old who wants someone to hear her story. Her mom doesn’t know she’s writing this letter; she wants to surprise her. Her mom, who she lives with, is actually not her birth mother, but someone who has custody of her and has taken her into her home as her own daughter for five years now. She has opened her home to many children, who have had nowhere else to stay, and now she and her husband are in need of someone to care for them.

“Because of us paying so much money to the landlord, the newborn doesn’t really have that much.”

In fact, what she did have has been devastated. There is a hole in the roof of the baby’s room, which the landlord has not fixed and the window only has a screen on it. The whole in the roof rained on all the baby’s clothes and they were ruined, and people have broken in through the window and stolen what necessities the baby did have at the time; diapers, lotion, baby wash. They left a dent in the car that they jumped on to get to the window.

“God always said do good things and good things will come back to you.”

The police have put out a warrant on the landlord for not fixing the window, when they responded to the break in. Any maintenance on the house has ceased, since the landlord quit paying the man who used to work; so the holes in the roof go unfixed and the window stays mainly useless. As we sit here, we ask her what she would want if she could have anything; all she wanted was a hug. Or lots of money so she could take care of her family. She dreams of being a psychologist so she can help people with addictions. She wants to make the world a better place.
What does she dream of?

“Being rich to help a lot of people in the world, including the family that took me in for five years. “

So what do we dream of? Do we dream of making the world a better place and helping other people meet their dreams? I like to think that we have dreams too. That our dreams are bigger than white picket fences and fancy cars, and that this thing that we call the American dream runs deeper than the commercials and magazines tell us. I like to think that our dreams would be awakened by the heart of an eleven year old girl who wants nothing more than to help the mom who has taken her into her home.

“I really want to say thank you to whom it is concerned.”

Will you be concerned?