Meeting Gabriela for Breakfast

Rev. Joel Van Dyke needed to take a few deep breaths in order to keep his composure before giving a presentation one recent morning to a group of pastors and others about ways they can work together to minister to thousands of children living on the streets of Guatemala City.

In his speech, the Christian Reformed World Missions missionary planned to use a man named Italo Castro as an example of how to do street ministry with children. Castor was a "holy clown" who ministered to hundreds of street kids before his death in a drowning accident earlier this year.

Castro, says Van Dyke, is also the inspiration behind a documentary film that he is hoping will be made. Titled "Becoming Fools," it would tell the story of the lives and challenges children of the streets face every day. The film would also focus on how street kids in Guatemala City are learning to be professional clowns as a way to support themselves.

Just as he stood at the breakfast meeting to speak to the pastors, ministry leaders, and organizational executives, Van Dyke saw a 14-year-old girl named Gabriela, one of those very "street kids" who had been helped by Castro.

Surprised but elated to see Gabriela, Van Dyke immediately ran over and gave this teenager, who meant so much to he and his wife, Marilyn, a big hug. He hadn't seen Gabriela for quite awhile.

Van Dyke is director of The Strategy of Transformation, which is supported by CRWM. The Strategy of Transformation uses a range of ministries, approaches and spiritual exercises in working with people in Guatemala City and elsewhere.

Van Dyke says he and his family first met Gabriela and her sister Elena several years ago. Gabriela was attending a school run by a woman named Tita Evertz in the community of La Limonada. Evertz is also a leader in the Strategy of Transformation.

"We felt very drawn to Gabriela and her little sister. They came over to our home for several weekend sleep over's to have play-time with our kids and our neighbors," says Van Dyke in an email to supporters of his ministry.

After a few years, however, Van Dyke and his wife lost contact with Gabriela when she went the way of the streets, leaving a difficult home environment.

"We lost complete contact with her until a year ago when Tita called to tell us that she had been brutally beaten and then left to die in the 'river', actually sewer water, of La Limonada. We were heartbroken for the little girl that we had played with in our home on several occasions," says Van Dyke.

Miraculously, she survived the attack and was brought to a Guatemala City hospital where she recovered. When released from the hospital, Gabriela went back to the streets, but eventually turned up in the group of street kids to whom Italo Castro ministered and poured out his life.

Before he died, Castro was a professional clown who dedicated more than 10 years of his life to working with the estimated 4,000 - 6,000 children and youth that live on the streets of Guatemala City,

Once she met Italo, says Van Dyke, Gabriela was loved and nurtured and eventually accepted an invitation to move off of the streets and into a rehabilitation program run by another leader of the Strategy of Transformation.

Van Dyke had wondered how Gabriela was doing. And then he saw her having breakfast that morning with Italo’s sister, Velvet, who had promised to bring her to a medical clinic immediately after the meeting of the pastors and others.

"I had no idea she would be there . . . Her presence to me had profound significance," says Van Dyke, adding that seeing her again was an example "of God's scandalous grace."

Van Dyke had been invited to the breakfast meeting "to cast the vision for a street-youth focused conference" to the group that has begun to meet once a month over breakfast in Guatemala City.

The group represents 14 different churches, organizations and para-church ministries that are trying to see what they can do collaboratively for the street kids of Guatemala that they have not been able to achieve on their own.

Having never met each prior to these gatherings, they are now uniting, praying together, meeting at their respective ministry sites and making collaborative plans on how to serve and work together. Likely, their work will also be featured in the documentary "Becoming Fools."

"The breakfast yesterday morning and the almost haunting image of Gabriela’s guarded but smiling face looking back at me has increased my resolve to invest in this campaign (to help raise money for the film) . . . so that this incredible story can be told and a movement unleashed."

Scott and Amelia Moore, owners of the film production company Athentikos, made a film titled "Reparano" that told an aspect of the story of the work being down on the streets of Guatemala City. They are friends of the Van Dykes and plan to make the documentary "Becoming Fools" once they raise enough money to do it.

To learn more about supporting the documentary, go to Becoming Fools.