Meme hosts a soup kitchen each Saturday for the women and children of the Rio. This week when I arrived Meme sent me and 4 of the neighborhood girls to invite the people to come eat and hear the word of God. The girls and I trudged through ankle deep mud to knock on doors and tell the people to come. While I was a bit slow with all the mud, the girls were bouncing through it and around it very much accustomed to this kind of "street." We invited the people and on our way back to the soup kitchen, the girls and I came across a patch of beautiful yellow daisies. These daisies were growing right out of the mud and trash that are the essence of the Rio. Against the backdrop of the dilapidated houses, stinky mud, trash piles, old bones, and smelly weeds these daisies were surprisingly beautiful. With girlish instinct we all immediately started picking the flowers. The girls and I were putting them in each other's hair, collecting bouquets, and having a fine time amidst the mud. While we were collecting the daisies I looked up and realized how very similar these little girls were to the daisies growing in this place. Living in the Rio does not give these girls much hope. Their lives are filled with the muddy messes of parents' bad choices, neighbors' anger, brothers' addictions, and family tragedy. Yet despite the "mud" they are able to grow up beautiful, radiant, and cheerful. The girls and I started talking about the daisies, about the mud, about beauty in an ugly street, about Jesus and His miraculous ability to give us a "crown of beauty instead of ashes"- to change ugly circumstances into beautiful things.
With arms full of daisies we returned to the soup kitchen to share the yellow happiness we had collected with others. Worship followed and all I could do was praise God for the amazing way he changes us and saves us from the mud in our lives. He cleanses us, plants new life in us, and helps us to grow amidst hard and ugly circumstances. He is at work in the Rio. He is protecting and growing these little girls. He is turning muddy lives into daisy patches.... Praise Jesus! 
"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.... to comfort those who morn and provide for those who grieve in Zion- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair..." Isaiah 61:1-3
Two of the teenage girls who come often to the soup kitchen doing a beading craft.
