Jaci Obayon was devastated. She was an immigration attorney who had just lost an asylum case that she was convinced that she was going to win, and she then suffered an ectopic pregnancy miscarriage.
From Epoch Bright:
“My hair fell out from the shot that they gave me to terminate the pregnancy,” Ohayon said. “I was just so heartbroken and so devastated. My hair was coming out in my hands, and I was bleeding heavily. I felt like my whole world was breaking apart. I just didn’t know what to do.”
In a bid to heal and figure it all out, Ohayon planned a family trip to the Dominican Republic with her husband and two children. That’s when they met a Haitian boy named Jonas.
“It was a really incredible experience. I went down grieving the loss of my baby, and I still got to love another child. He’s not my baby, but I get to love him,” she said.
Not long after arriving on an island in the Dominican Republic, the family was having pizza at a beach café when a teenage boy caught their attention. He walked past the family’s table, so they invited him to sit down and share their lunch. He didn’t understand their Spanish, so they tried French, and their new friend understood everything. It turned out he was from Haiti, and his name was Jonas.
Over the next month, the family spent time with Jonas, developing firm friendships.”
To make a long story short, Jaci Obayon aided by a missionary friend with a church in the Dominican Republic that had connections to Haiti, began the lengthy process of applying for the boy’s passport and visa. Ultimately, Ohayon bought Jonas’s plane ticket. He arrived in the USA nervous and scared.
That first weekend, Jonas, unaccustomed to acceptance and often chased away throughout his life, simply chose to hide.
“He would hide behind the curtain; he would hide under the table,” Ohayon said.
Today, after six years in the United States, the once painfully self-conscious teen has blossomed.
Now 20 and in his second year of college, Jonas speaks, reads, and writes English fluently.
“He’s working so hard,” Ohayon says, beaming with love and pride. “If he can get his college degree and ends up getting the career he’s going for, then he gets to change his life and his family’s life.”
“It’s the American dream that I automatically get access to because I was born in the United States. I didn’t choose to be born there; I just was. So I get access to this dream that people in other countries dream about or run towards or flee to, based on where they were born and their circumstances.
“You know, you can’t help everybody, but you can help some people.”
Kudos to Jaci Obayon who turned her life around and at the same time turned around the life of Jonas, a poor boy from Haiti.
12/29/24