Still you have hope

By Megan Ruiz, Presentation Lantern Center Executive Director

Dear FSPA sisters, affiliates, partners in mission and donors,

Imagine it’s the year 2023. You’ve been standing in line at a public grocery store for 12 hours. You have three hungry housemates back home, waiting for your return. Like 95% of Venezuela, you’re employed full time, but along with the majority of those residing in the country and stagnant wages, outrageous prices and extortion, you can’t make ends meet. (In this scenario, nearly half the country makes minimum wage: $1.50 an hour.) Bread costs $12 per loaf. Milk, if you can find it in the store at all, costs $15 a gallon. After paying rent and bills this week, your remaining $30 will have to sustain you until you get paid in 12 days. You wouldn’t have had $30 “leftover” if it weren’t for your brother, a Venezuelan refugee living in Colombia, who sends what he can. Your sister, Sofia, helps on rare occasions when she is able.

Still you have hope. With desperation, bravery and a lot of faith, your sister took both her savings and yours and made the life-threatening journey from Venezuela, through the 60-mile wide Darién Gap — a wild jungle full of poisonous snakes, monstrous mosquitoes and raging streams, seeded with violent cartel members ready to hold her hostage or assault her — to the United States.

Unlike hundreds of others who walk the same treacherous path annually and succumb to death by gang violence, serpents, drowning in the river, thirst, hunger or severe injury, she survived the 2,500-mile journey to the U.S.! She was fortunate enough to find a checkpoint at the border that allowed her legal presentation to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to request asylum (which has been legal to do at our borders since the end of World War II). Like thousands of other asylum seekers, she has continued to update her address in the asylum system.

Now, two years later, Sofia finally has a job, making a living wage at a factory in the Tri-State Area. Her search took twice as long as her passage to the U.S. for two reasons:

1. Due to our country’s immigration laws, it typically takes asylum seekers or folks seeking Temporary Protected Status a minimum of 12 to 24 months after applying to be considered for and potentially receive a work permit. Due to no fault of their own, but rather the ever-changing immigration laws as well as the simple timing during which they apply, many are never afforded an opportunity to seek or receive work authorization.
2. Sofia needed intensive English tutoring before local companies would consider offering a living-wage job. She sporadically cleaned houses, babysat and mowed lawns for cash; spent hours walking to and from these jobs in all weather. She survived last year by using the minimal cash she made, living with a friend who did not charge rent and utilizing occasional, temporary support from Presentation Lantern Center’s student need fund for things like medicine, medical appointments, food, shoes and hygiene products. You, the FSPA, and your supporters have donated generously to this fund the past few years.

In 2024 she and her Presentation Lantern Center English tutor — who has “become like a sister” to Sofia — spent 125 hours working together to improve her English. Presentation Lantern Center, located in Dubuque, Iowa, is an organization missioned to offer “hospitality, education and advocacy to adult immigrants who are striving to better their lives.” Sofia credits Kelly’s patience, persistence and the one-on-one individualized instruction for her success in learning English. She was also afforded the time and ability to seek help from Kelly and other staff with referrals to services like counseling as well as job and apartment applications.

With Presentation Lantern Center assistance, additional English classes at Northeast Iowa Community College and dedication to study every night, Sofia’s determination and hard work paid off. Instead of finding a minimum wage job for $7 an hour, her highly-proficient English language skills have her making three times that amount at a local production facility. She is thrilled to make a living wage, thankful to be somewhere safe and proud and grateful that, after these two grueling years, she is making it. Sofia is not just providing for herself but is also helping supplement her mother’s low wages in Venezuela. There, even though her mother and 95% of the population over the age of 16 work full time, 85% experience extreme food insecurity that has worsened over the past five years. This dire financial climate is only predicted to continue declining.

I tell you this story because I want everyone to know that, with your support and volunteerism, you have and will continue to change lives like Sofia’s. There were some low points over the past couple of years where Sofia was ready to give up and even had suicidal ideations. After referrals for counseling, the consistency of her friendly, supportive English tutor (the “only constant in her life this past year,” she shares), she hugged us tightly and said, “When I get my first paycheck, I cannot wait to donate. You saved my life.”

On a windy, chilly day in February, she walked two miles from her bank to Presentation Lantern Center and handed us a crisp $100 bill along with a bag of staff favorites for lunch.

The donations you have granted us have helped fund crucial staff to implement our programming as well as the recruitment and training of excellent volunteer tutors, allowing us to welcome people like Sofia. With your support, our urgent financial need fund, which has been expanded in 2025 to help people meet safety and family togetherness needs such as purchasing passports for children of immigrants — U.S. citizens. The fund also helps families make it to appointments with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (located hours away), apply for work permits and provide countless other necessities.

Last year we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with 250 immigrants like Sofia and the volunteers who provided 4,800 hours of support. Every day we pray and advocate for each one of them. We will continue to steadfastly carry on our mission and support their hope-filled journeys.

With love, hope and gratitude,
Megan

Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Suzanne Rubenbauer sponsors a ministry grant that is making an impact on services provided at Presentation Lantern Center, including salaries and immigration crisis funding. She volunteers there as an ESL tutor and invites FSPA, affiliates, partners in mission and donors to join her in support of the organization’s mission to offer “hospitality, education and advocacy to adult immigrants who are striving to better their lives.” For more information, visit thelanterncenter.org.

Presentation Lantern Center
Non-educational student needs met in 2024