On the Caribbean coast the River Motagua forms the border between the countries of Guatemala and Honduras. On the Guatemalan side of the river lies the village of Barra del Motagua.

La Barra, as it is most often called, is a collection of grass-covered houses built on stilts with no electricity or running water. Each morning children go to shallow wells near the edge of the sea and collect the water that seeps into the holes. They carry the water home in buckets. Most of the men fish and raise rice. Dried fish on poles decorate the front of most every dwelling. A straw roof covers the most valued possession of each family, their boat or dugout canoe. The only way into the village is five hours by boat down the Motagua River or around the Caribbean coast many hours from the Guatemalan town of Puerto Barrios.

Lutheran missionaries found their way to this village in the early 60's. They encountered an eager group of people whom they could instruct with the story of Jesus, teach hymns and songs and eventually conduct services.

It was on one of these infrequent visits to La Barra that a new missionary noticed a ten-year old girl, Gloria, whose curiosity and intelligence attracted him but who had never studied in a school. Knowing that no schools existed in this Caribbean village, he invited her to come live with his family and attend school in Zacapa, a town where the Lutheran church had a six grade school, Divine Savior Lutheran School.

What a change for her! She had never been to a doctor or a dentist and had never gone to school. She had Jesus in her heart, however, and with His help made these adjustments to living with an American family with all their strange ways and gadgets like refrigerators, flush toilets, electric stoves and hot water coming from a shower.

She passed the first and second grade in the first year, but in her fourth year it was time for the missionary family to go back to the United States. They loved Gloria and wanted her to be able to continue studying. They also knew she needed to be in her country close to her relatives. What a dilemma!

Through the Lord's guidance, they were able to build a boarding facility in Zacapa to help children such as Gloria who had no school in their villages. But how do you support a boarding school filled with 30 children whose parents can pay nothing but some produce from their tiny plots of land? So, the Children's Christian Concern Society was created to find persons who had the love to sponsor a child in the boarding school for a year. It took $10 a month, not a huge amount.  Gloria graduated from the sixth grade and then a local high school.

The Church school, Lutheran School of the Divine Savior, has gradually added classes and today it has classes through high school. Today, Divine Savior School serves almost 800 students and the boarding school has been enlarged to hold 85. The students living in the boarding school are older, most of them seventh grade and above, but they still are students who could not study any other way.

And what has happened to Gloria? Gloria married her childhood sweetheart who was from Zacapa and is now a Lutheran Pastor. They served in the Guatemalan town of Gualan for 15 years and had four children. Since 1993, Rev. Hector Canjura, his wife Gloria and children Luis, Marcella, Ricardo and Mauricio are living in Cicero, Illinois. Hector was Pastor of La Santissima Trinidad Lutheran Church in Chicago and now serves as a church planter among Hispanics in Chicago. Gloria teaches preschool at Grace Lutheran School. Ricardo is a senior at Walther High School in Chicago, Mauricio graduated from Walther last year and is attending a local Community College, Marcella graduated from Concordia University-River Forest and is working in Chidago and Luis, a Concordia graduate, is married and employed in Houston.

But the story does not end here. The pastor who is now serving in Gualan, Luis Jasinto, was from a village similar to Gloria's and able to study with a CCCS scholarship and eventually attended the boarding school in Zacapa. The Children's Christian Concern Society, which was started to sustain children in the Lutheran Home for Students has grown to provide scholarships for children like Gloria in fourteen countries including: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Haiti, Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, Chad and Bethlehem, Palestine all through Lutheran Mission Programs or National Lutheran Churches.

You can be a part of this opportunity of providing Christian Education to children in our world who have no opportunity to go to school. It takes an average of $300 per year to send a child to school in a day school and $700 per year in the boarding school. Each contributor receive a picture of a child to pray for. To be a part of the Children's Christian Concern Society, contact: CCCS, 1000 SW 10th St., Topeka, KS, 66604. You may also phone the CCCS Executive Director David W. Saving at 785.357.7688 or email him at cccs@kslcms.org.