My wife Karen and I have sponsored Perla Marina Flores Hernandez since 2008, when she was among the first girls to enter Villa Esperanza--a program for at-risk girls in Nicaragua run by the Christian non-profit I founded in 1983 (Forward Edge International).

We first met Perla inside the main garbage dump in Managua, Nicaragua, where more than 2,000 people were living in makeshift shacks and where young girls were being sold into prostitution to the truck drivers bringing in the garbage. Barefoot and wearing a traditional Nicaraguan dress, 14-year-old Perla performed a beautiful dance for us in the courtyard of a Christian school inside the dump--a school someone once called " a flower growing out of a cow paddy." We have loved and supported her ever since.

Today, Perla is a confident 30-year-old woman who knows her true worth and actively pursues God's plan for her life. She's a teacher at the local Christian school and a living role model of who the children in this school could become. Unlike many girls in Nicaragua who desperately hitch their wagons to often-exploitative boys in hopes they'll take care of them, Perla has remained pure, godly, and fervent in her love for Jesus. She truly is PRECIOUS.

That's why we're inviting you to join us in providing Perla with her own modest home. For the past few years, Perla-- who has no family other than her friends at the school and at Villa Esperanza--has lived in a tiny room in someone else’s home but has longed to have her own safe place to live. In Nicaragua, one-bedroom homes go for as little as $22,000--what a used pickup truck would cost here in the States! Perla has agreed to invest $1,000 of her own money--both before and after the home is bought--to go towards the purchase of her home, an almost unimaginable feat given her meager salary of just $211/month.

One hundred percent of the funds raised through this GoFundMe campaign will be wired to Wilbert Alvarado and Gloria Sequiera, directors of the Villa Program, who will help Perla find a safe, modest home near the Villa property. Our goal is to raise these funds by December 17, when Perla will graduate after four years of study with her teaching certificate. Karen and I hope to personally inform her that friends here in the States have made it possible for her TO BUY HER OWN HOME. Won't that be fun!!!

Karen and I sincerely hope that you'll prayerfully consider joining us in providing Precious Perla with a home of her own. A donation of any amount will help us reach our goal by December 17, hopefully, sooner!

From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU!!!

-Joseph and Karen Anfuso