24 Kids and One Bathroom

For the enquiring minds who want to know, here is the story.  It's rather convoluted, but by the end, I hope to get to the point.

The ministry started while we were living in a 30 foot travel trailer across the street from where we were building our new home.  Lest you think we were too terribly cramped, we had built a room to the side of the trailer - 33 feet long and about 10 feet wide.  It was nice to have a 2nd bathroom also.  Trailer bathrooms leave much to be desired.  We started with one little baby boy.  His name was David.  He had great brown eyes and a somber look on his face.  I'll post a picture of him sometime.  He was a failure to thrive baby . . . 9 months old weighing just 7 pounds when he came to us.  I didn't want him.  I didn't think I was qualified to care for him, but finally agreed for 'one week'.  David stayed with us 3 weeks . . . learned to smile and broke my hardened heart.  I could hardly wait for the next baby.

The next baby was an 11 year-old who had been severely beaten with electrical wire.  She was such a beautiful little girl and her father such a monster!  How could we turn her away?  She was nearly raw from her neck to her ankles.  I can't tell you how many times I lay with her in my bed and just held her as she cried.  I cried too.  A lot.  There's a bunch more to her story, but I'll leave it there for now.

While we had her in our care, we got Andrea.  8 months old and 5 pounds.  A breath away from heaven, but God had other plans for her.  Then 4 little girls who had been raped by their father, a baby boy whose mother would have let him die at birth and so on and so on.  When my then husband died, we had 12 children in that 30' trailer w/extension.  4 of them were my grandchildren visiting for a month. 

In the following months, missionaries and others came to help finish our dream house across the street.  I moved in with just 3 children and quickly expanded to 14. It was wonderful to live in a huge home with 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  The kid population fluctuated from 8 to 16 most of the time, with an average of 12.  Then the unthinkable happened.  A land dispute forced us and 300 other beachfront homeowners from our homes. At the time we had 17 children and 5 adults in residence.  I'll write more about that later, too.  

We moved to our pastor's ranch.  He had a 2-bedroom 1 bath house for us.  We sent a mother we'd had in protective custody and her 3 children to a women's shelter, the 3 other adults moved out, taking 2 of our children with them and I was left alone with the 12 remaining children.  We lived at the pastor's ranch for about 14 months, during which time Robert and I got married.  We had a volunteer to live inside with the kids, so for the first 6 weeks or so of our marriage we stayed in a tiny trailer with one baby.

At that 14 month point, the pastor's brother had asked for his house back.  Go figure.  We looked and looked and finally came upon a 3 bedroom house.  We were elated.  It had city water instead of well water, so we didn't have to worry about filling the storage tank.  They even gave us a break on the rent because we were missionaries.  The rent was $150 a month.  We paid too much!  We were so far up the hill that the city water only made it up there a couple of days a week.  We had to fill two outdoor storage tanks with water, but there was no pump, so we became bucket bathers.  If you wanted hot water, you had to heat it on the stove because there was never enough water pressure to keep the water heater lit.  We did have an out house out back it someone couldn't wait, but we learned the value of showering same/sex  same/age kids together to save water.  If we were lucky, we could actually do 4 kids with a 5-gallon bucket of water.

We dropped to just 8 children right after we moved in and tried to stay at that level once we found out about the water.  Unfortunately, disasters won't wait.  We were asked to take 5 children whose mother could not care for them properly. She had left her abusive husband, but the only babysitter available for her was her oldest - a skinny 8 year-old girl.  She had a choice.  Give them to us or let the state take them away from her.  We couldn't refuse.  Then came 5 more children - their mom was in jail.  What were we to do?  We let sisters sleep together on the bunks, put babies in our room and brothers together as well.  It wasn't over, though.  As the holiday drew near, we got 6 more children.  They were short-term care, but there were 24 kids now and 2 adults living in that "huge" (what were we thinking?) house with only ONE bathroom.  We all learned to dance pretty well that winter!  We sent the 6 kids home, but ended up with 2 more and had 20 children in residence when the state came to inspect us in May.  Their question:  Where do they all sleep?  How do you keep them clean?  Our kids looked wonderful that day, but the state was extremely happy when we moved to the ranch. 

So there it is.  I told you I'd get to the point.  I just needed a little history to get you there. It's nice to have 3 of us and one bathroom!  I'm as happy as a clam.  I was happy in Mexico, too.  God kept our hearts full of joy even when everything around us was falling apart. 

Bless you today - stay safe . . .