Ashes for Beauty

There are so many negative ways we can react to an injustice or something we feel shouldn’t have happened to us. Usually the younger we are when a wrong was done, the more we feel it just wasn’t fare and we tend to use whatever that was as a crutch for the rest of our lives. This is the case until God sends just the right people at just the right time to bring healing in our lives. It’s during this time that God does something amazing and in time a beautiful transformation takes place. He exchanges our ashes for beauty!

Here at Prince of Peace, a home for girls in Guatemala, I see this beauty running around, jumping, dancing, singing and giving me the best hugs ever. Yes, sometimes they fight with each other or sometimes they don’t listen to the “Tia” assigned to oversee the house, but God still sees them as He destined them to be and calls them beautiful. The pain that some of these girls have had to face cannot be fully understood by most of us. You must be thinking, how can they smile after everything they have had to endure? An encounter with Jesus changes EVERYTHING!

Vilma de la Cruz is the Social Worker at Prince of Peace. People can look at her at first glance and never realize just how much she can relate to the girls at the home. Vilma was a girl herself. She was placed at the home when she was about eleven years old because her stepfather sexually abused her. At first her innocent mind wasn’t able to understand why that had to happen to her and having a hard time adjusting to her new home, she began her journey of healing. All the pain she had to go through was not in vain because God still had a plan for her life. Vilma finished her education and received a degree in Social Work. She is now happily married and has two children. She has been serving at Prince of Peace for ten years, impacting the lives of many girls with her testimony. God changed everything the enemy intended to harm her and used it for good. The ashes of her past became her beauty so that she, and everyone who sees her will glorify the Father!

Vilma de la Cruz

Isaiah 61:2 & 3

To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.