Help Us Help Huguette

Let me tell you about my friend Huguette.

I met Huguette more than 12 years ago when she stumbled into a church service looking for information on ESL classes.

She spoke almost no English, and the vast bulk of our conversation was non-verbal; just a whole lot of pointing and gesturing, peppered with random French and English vocabulary words. Happily, ESL was offered next door at Catholic Charities where she ultimately took those classes. But the Lord told her to come back to 1st Church. And she has come back just about every Sunday for the last dozen years.

Huguette speaks English fluently now. She earned her US Citizenship.

She got her first part-time job, and then a second, better job. Now she works full time at Macy's. If you've met Huguette, you may know that. You may know that she's a fantastic cook.

If you've met Huguette you probably know that she has spent her entire adult life raising six beautiful children to become the amazing people God has called them to be.

You may even know that on Sundays, she drops off her kids for class at 9:30 wearing a bathrobe and slippers, her hair in a towel, then shows up at 11 for church looking like a movie star.

But there's a lot about Huguette you probably don't know.

I doubt that you know that she is s decade-long survivor of domestic violence. You wouldn't know that her husband beat her since before her youngest was even "a twinkle in her father's eye". You wouldn't know that, alone in a country where she barely spoke the language, the only person she could possibly think to help her was the pastor at her new church, who sat with her and prayed with her as the swelling filled in and color from the bruises continued to erupt on her face.

You probably wouldn't know that the last time he laid hands on her, he grabbed her neck and she fought back. She tried to push him away and in doing so, scratched him just enough so that when he called the police, there was cause for her arrest. The only time she fought back, she was punished with three terrifying days and nights in the county lock-up. When she was arraigned the following week, he dropped the charges "out of the kindness of his heart." He asked her to leave her church in return. She clearly did not.

I doubt you ever knew about her husband's threats and insults. And you would have never known about the calls from unknown women threatening Huguette, her home, and her place in it. You probably never knew that her husband would leave for days and months at a time, often without a word about where he was going or when he'd be back. And I doubt you knew that when he left last October, he actually said out loud that he might never come back, and as if to prove the point, stopped paying the mortgages he had taken out on the house.

You wouldn't know because Huguette never complained. Sometimes she would just be very, very quiet.

Last October, Huguette finally filed for divorce. This week it was finalized, including the distribution of all of the marital assets. The great news is that Huguette was granted primary custody of the minor children. She was also awarded the house. The bad news is that the second of the two mortgages her husband stopped paying when he left is now in foreclosure. Huguette needs to raise $10,000 by Tuesday September 25th to stop the foreclosure.

If you would like to help, please pray. First pray that the bankers will speak with her, which they have been unwilling/unable to do up to this point. Then pray that they are able to find a reasonable way forward.

If you want to, and you can help financially, then please do take the opportunity to donate.

Thank you!