Adam Hanson is a senior team leader at Feed My Starving Children.

I spent ten days with Sevina.

At an orphanage in the northwest region of Haiti, a 15-year-old girl yelled out, “Hey Jesus! Hey you, Jesus!” It took me a second to recognize she was referring to me.

At the time, my long hair and scruffy beard made me look enough like Jesus for her joke to land home.

Each morning there-after, from across the orphanage compound, I would hear, “Hey Jesus!” and Sevina would come running over.

For those 10 days, Sevina, who could speak three different languages, spent a lot of her time outside of school being my guide to her little corner of Haiti: showing me around the orphanage, translating for me and helping get to know many of the other kids.

We talked about music, her friends, my family and her dreams for the future. Turns out, Sevina is smart as a whip, playfully mischievous and goes out of her way to care for the others in the compound.

By the time I had to leave, Sevina and I were BFFs. All the kids gathered to see us off and I vividly remember how difficult it was to say goodbye to all the kids but especially to my friend Sevina.

Sevina’s Story

Before I left, I asked the missionaries at the orphanage to tell me the stories of how some of the kids’ had come to be there. From them I learned that Sevina had been a slave in someone’s house.

Her parents, desperately poor, had made the decision to sell some of their children rather than watch them starve.

Brilliant little Sevina had spent years of her life barred from school, keeping someone else’s house. About her daily life in this home, the missionaries would only tell me she was “treated badly.”

When the missionaries at Northwest Haiti Christian Mission learned about Sevina, they rescued her from that home and brought her to live at the orphanage.

There she was cared for, well fed and safe. Soon, she was excelling in her studies and making lots of friends.

She roared to life like dying embers suddenly stoked.

Though caring for starving people in one of the poorest places in the world means danger, hard choices and sometimes just scraping by, those missionaries chose to rescue a young girl trapped in darkness and take in one more mouth to feed.

And because they did, Sevina is a blinding light, reflecting God’s glory.

YOU Helped Sevina

It has been almost four years since I have been to Northwest Haiti.

Since then, every time I remember Sevina I am suddenly aware of the overwhelming preciousness of life.

I hold my breath when I think about how close an irreplaceable brilliance came to being snuffed out by hunger. And I marvel at Christ who would not let Sevina be left hidden away and hopeless.

While I was there at the orphanage, the kids ate Feed My Starving Children food.

I love knowing that in some small way, the family birthday parties, the local businessmen, the brownie troops, the volunteers that I see everyday, helped Sevina get to be the beautiful girl she was made to be!

Do you believe there is nothing you can do to help starving kids?

Today, someone will volunteer to pack meals at Feed My Starving Children, someone will support a missionary bound for a desperate place, someone will sponsor a child through a partner like Northwest Haiti Christian Mission, and these will rescue a girl like Sevina out of hunger, out of hopelessness and into the light where she will shine!

Be one of those people.