Posted on December 31st, 2008
Children Lined Up to Eat
A Kenyan baby birthed in a cornfield and left there to die didn’t.
The tiny girl survived thanks to the vision of an Anacortes woman who cared.
Rehema Grace’s story is not the only one that Joyce Panzero can tell.
Panzero opened an orphanage in Kenya two years ago. What started with one baby has now blossomed to a safe place that houses, feeds and provides basic medical care for about 60 unwanted babies and toddlers.
“The orphanage is much more of a great big home than an institution,” Panzero said. “We love on those kids all the time. Who wouldn’t?
Read the rest of this article at www.goskagit.com.
Posted on August 30th, 2000
In a day of dispassionate youth and faceless corporate giants comes a story of compassion and of circumstances that cannot be written off as coincidence. A chance to reaffirm your faith in humanity, and perhaps in something more, this is the story of a group of teens from Skagit County, Washington and a trip to Australia that didn’t exactly go according to plan.
“Just a few weeks ago on July 7th they left for the airport to fly to Australia for a Mission Trip. Tickets in hand, cameras packed, the sixteen youth and four leaders headed off. A quick stop for lunch changed the entire trip. Returning to the car after lunch they found that they had been robbed. All the tickets, all the passports and about $12,000 in cash were gone. Their plane was set to leave that afternoon.”
“The first reaction was, quite naturally, one of disbelief and devastation but remarkably, not anger. Arriving at the airport those in the car had the job of telling the others what had happened and facing the prospect of telling everyone back home. But far from ending, their trip had just begun.”
“As they stood in the airport the attitude among the teens who range in age from 15-18, was one of hope and action. They gathered together and prayed and then started singing right there in the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, a busy, international port. A passerby saw the group and asked if he could phone the local television station suggesting that “sometimes criminals have a heart and if they know who they hurt they might at least return the passports.” The TV crew arrived and pictures of this group of teenagers not ranting with frustration, but singing, formed the lead story for four days.”
“The group was then contacted by United Airlines and told that while Australia could not let them into the country without passports, if they could get the passports replaced the airline would honor all the tickets. Joyce Panzero who lead the group along with her husband Ron says, “this was the first of what I call miracles. . . the airlines do not honor stolen tickets.” In this case not only did the airline agree to honor the tickets, they did it at no cost to the group. Right around this time donations began to come in and thus far $9000 of the stolen $12 000 has been replaced by donors. The next step was to try and get passports.”
“Phone calls were made. A local photographer was contacted to take new passport pictures and offered not only to rush them, but to donate them to the group. Through the assistance of two US Senators and a notary public the group arrived at the Federal Building Monday morning where they were ushered into a separate room and saw all 20 passports processed in three hours! The considerable cost of these new passports was covered by a local church and it looked like the group would be on its way. At this point it was time to book another flight but the next available flight to Australia didn’t leave until the following evening. Committed to not going home until the trip was over the group was contemplating spending the night in the airport when someone suggested phoning a local hotel to see if they could get some kind of discount.”
“Joyce phoned a friend who works as a travel agent, told her their situation and asked her if she could try to find them a discount on four rooms close to the airport. The friend promised to “see what she could do” but that hardly prepared Joyce and the group for the phone call they got half an hour later. The friend phoned back to say that she had got them four rooms at the Marriot Hotel [for those of you outside North America, Marriot is one of the finer chains of hotels, catering mostly to business class travelers]. Joyce remembers thinking “even with a BIG discount we couldn’t afford the Marriot” but the friend assured her that the hotel had given them a great deal: all four rooms free of charge and a free shuttle to and from the airport.”
“The next day the group boarded the plane and did arrive in Australia, safe and sound and with quite a story to tell. The group all attend Christ the King Community Church Youth Group, and were traveling to Australia to attend “Youth Torrent” a Christian youth outreach. As they describe the events, “God just took over”. As Joyce notes, “the lives and the hearts of our group have been changed forever because we saw first hand God restoring what was taken away”. It was their faith in God and a personal relationship with Him that gave them the ability to sing when it looked like the trip was over before it had even started. And it is God that they credit with bringing so many events together to get them on that plane.”
