“At first, I thought three months was forever. I counted ninety-six days; “Oh God, that’s insane!” But imagine, now, I’ve already been here for more than four hundred days.”

I have been living in this church for more than a year now, and it hasn’t been easy at all. It is exhausting, for me and for my family. But with the help of God and with people like you and others, I’ve been able to endure. The hardest part is not being able to be with my four kids for day-to-day life. Sometimes I get a notification that my daughter’s bus is delayed, and I feel that desperation—wanting to know what is going on, imagining the worst, and I’m here, locked away, unable to do anything. One time, the bus was really late, but I didn’t get any notifications. It turned out that the bus had crashed into a stop sign, so it was delayed because of that. And I felt that anxiety, I just wanted to run to see what had happened.