In Pursuit of Happiness

At one time, Roxana’s days revolved around drugs and getting high. She was in such a desperate place that she gave up her three daughters—one on the day she was born.

“I didn’t want her because then I couldn’t get high,” Roxana said.

When she got home from the hospital, she handed her brand-new baby girl to her oldest daughter—only nine years old—and she left them, without looking back.

“I just said to her, ‘Here is your sister. I give her to you.’”

As the years passed and her addiction grew worse and worse, she secluded herself to live in a cave. Dying and alone, she had lost all hope for her life.

“I just believed God made some people to be happy and some people never to be happy. And it was my chance [in life] to never be happy,” Roxana said.

Then one day as she was waking up from a high, something happened that made her want to change.

“I heard a baby cry on the street, and I remembered my daughter,” she said. “And I couldn’t remember what her face looked like. I couldn’t remember her face! And there I started to cry…and I said, ‘God, I don’t want this anymore.’”

At first nobody believed she wanted to change. They didn’t think it was possible. But Roxana was determined to get better for her girls.

A friend told her God could help her, and she learned about a rehabilitation center for women where she could get help—Siquem Lugar del Refugio, an outreach of Global Teen Challenge in Chile that Hand of Hope is honored to come alongside.

It was here where everything changed for Roxana.

She showed up to the program with only a little bag containing toilet paper, some sweets and a towel, but what she expected to receive was a new chance at life—the hope of finding God.

And find Him, she did.

Through the year-long program, she began a relationship with Jesus, regained her health, discovered God’s beautiful love for her and found a spiritual family.

Not only that, after a lot of work and due diligence by the courts, Roxana recently got her daughters back—the thing her heart longed for most.

“The Lord has returned everything the devil had taken,” she said. “The best thing that ever could have happened to me was to arrive here.

“Now I know what it is to be happy. Now I know there weren’t people who were born to be happy and those who were not. With God, anyone can be happy...[Every day] is a gift.”

You can be a part of helping more women and girls around the world at joycemeyer.org/ProjectGRL