bed-for-every-childEloise Vincent founded SOFTLY International– Securing Our Future Today Loving Youth — to supply medical care, clothing and beds to families living in extreme poverty in Costa Rica and Honduras. Until recently, her funding came from individual donations, many from the Unity of Fairfax congregation in Vienna, Virginia, her home church.

One of her Unity beliefs, that “All really is in divine order,” was tested and ultimately strengthened this winter when SOFTLY’s abundant funds ran out.

Upon visiting a village she had worked in for several years she saw one of her “favorite little guys” coming home from his first day of first grade, wearing the only school uniform his family could afford, a hand-me-down girl’s dress from a neighbor. She was “filled with pity.” Looking around some more, she saw that “none of the kids had any shoes to wear to school.”

She returned to her house — frustrated by the poverty of her kids and now herself — just in time to receive a call stateside. She was told that after reading about SOFTLY on her Unity church’s Web site, a colonel from Korea had sent in $5,000 “to help continue her mission”.

“That was a miracle phone call,” Vincent exclaimed, “to have received it on that very day — the day I really needed it!”

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