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Hi, my name is Lane Dos Santos. I would like to tell you a little bit about myself so that you can get to know me a better. I was born in the southeast region of Brazil, in a very small town called Machado Mineiro. I grew up there with my mom, my dad, and my brother. I also have two other sisters, but they were living in another city far away from Machado, where they went to work and go school. My dad was always drunk, and he didn’t really care much about us, so my mom worked like crazy to provide us with everything we needed, as best she could. My mom has always been an example of love and perseverance to me. She still sacrifices a lot to help me and all my brother and sisters.
I also would like to tell you a little about the most important experience of my life which is my relationship with Jesus. When I was about five years old, a neighbor took me to church for the first time. I don’t really remember it well, but my mom says that since then, I decided to become a Christian, and nobody could take that out of my head. Of course, I was just a kid and I didn’t really understand who Jesus is, or what it means to follow him, but as time passed, I learned a lot and grew more and more, spiritually.
Now, getting back to my family, the situation with my dad got worse, to a point where my mom had to go away to work, because he wasn’t helping at all and all the jobs in my little town involved working on plantations, and things like that, so in times when the weather was very dry, there was no work. The first time, she took me with her, but it didn’t work very well because she was working as a cleaning person, and at that time I had to start going to school. So the next time she went to work, she left me at home and hired a woman to stay there and take care of me, because my dad was always working in his farm, which was in a different town nearby.
When I was about six years old, my mom left for almost one year. The woman that she entrusted me to started to mistreat me, not feeding me properly or bathing me. A couple of months after my mom left, I had an accident—my arm got burned really badly with hot coffee. I also had a really bad fever and my dad, for some reason, didn’t take me to the hospital. One day my cousins, from a little town near Machado, came to visit us and they saw my condition. They told me I was so skinny that you could see my bones, my hair was infested with lice, and that even my skin color had changed—it looked yellow.
Not only did my dad not care enough to take me to the hospital, but he also didn’t even call my mom to let her know what was happening, because from her earnings, she was sending him money to take care of me and my brother, who he made work like a slave all day on his farm. Instead of using it to take care of us, my dad was spending all the money on alcohol. So when my cousins saw my situation, they asked my dad if they could take me to stay with them at their house. My dad let me go with them, and after that my life got a lot better. I stayed there until my mom got back.
After this experience, my mom still had to leave to work a couple other times, but she tried her best to find good people to take care of me. But no matter how good people were, they were never a good substitute for my mom. In some of the houses I stayed, the kids were really mean to me, and their parents would treat me very differently. During these experiences, I really missed my mom. When I was about 10 years old my mom left me with one of our neighbors who was really nice. I kind of liked to stay there, but they weren’t very loving or affectionate with me. They at least fed me well, and took good care of me. They had a dog in the house, and it was usually very friendly with me, but one day when I was alone with a friend in the house, without warning or reason the dog attacked me. He made two very deep bite wounds in my right leg. My friend said that she could see the bone inside and there was so much blood that I was afraid to look. The dog also bit me on the arm and in a couple other places in my left leg. The only reason he didn’t kill me was because, at one point, my friend hit him really hard in the head with her back pack while I ran into one of the rooms and he came and locked the door. Because of the bad injury to my leg, I wasn’t able to walk for about fifteen days. They took me to the doctor, but again my dad didn’t tell my mom because he was afraid she would quit sending money to him and come home.
Every time Mom left, something bad happened, but she had to go. She told me that she cried all the time while she was away because she had to leave me. When I was about twelve years old my mom and my dad separated. Having my father gone helped my mother financially and also allowed some healing time for all of us.
I would like to share another story that just made me realize how awesome God is, and how blessed I am that he had entered my life so early. It’s actually about my best friend, Leni. She and I had similar situations, but hers was even worse than mine. Her mom died when she was six years old, and her dad, like mine, was always drunk. Also, she had to take care of her little brothers. But unlike me, Leni had never accepted the Lord, and even though I was there for her, she didn’t trust in me enough, I guess. When I was fourteen years old, on a Tuesday afternoon when I was coming back home from school, I saw a big crowd in front of Leni’s house. People ran up to me saying that she had killed herself, but I didn’t believe it. When I got close they tried to stop me from looking through the door because they knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the sight. I looked anyway and I saw Leni—she had tied a rope around her neck and hung herself from the kitchen ceiling. She had jumped from the dinner table, and it must have broken her neck immediately.
That was just the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. Even two years after she died I couldn’t hear her name or think about her without crying. What hurt me the most was knowing that she had never accepted Jesus, and also that she didn’t say goodbye or even leave a letter. I have no idea what led her to do something like that, and it troubles me not knowing. I am just really thankful that the Lord started to work in my heart since that first day I went to church at five years old, because without the Lord in my heart, I feel like it wouldn’t be so hard to picture myself doing something like that.
Now that I’ve written about those sad things, I want to tell you about a much happier time—how I was able to come to the United States. My oldest sister come to the U.S. while working as a babysitter for a rich lady in Brazil who later decided to move here and brought my sister with her. My sister lived here for seven years until she met the love of her life and got married. After that, she and her husband did everything they could to bring me here to go to school. After lots of headaches and hassles, they were finally able to do it. My dream had always been to come here, but the chances were very little. I knew some other Brazilians who had been able to afford the trip but were still unable to get a visa to enter the U.S. It was completely by God’s grace that I was able to come, so here I am.
When I arrived in 2007, I had a really difficult time because even though I had taken a few preparatory English classes in Brazil, I was still very unprepared to go to school here and I had only one month before classes started to get up to speed. The school gave me a three months grace period to learn the language and get good grades; otherwise they would have to send me back to Brazil. I was so stressed out because every day in school was a nightmare, I couldn’t understand anything, and I saw people looking at me weird and laughing at me, but I didn’t give up. I had promised God that if he would give me an opportunity like that I would do everything I had to, to make it. So I stayed up late every night, often until three or four in the morning, trying to translate my homework and study for my tests, and I did that for a long time. It was worth it, because at the end of the first quarter I got A’s in every class except for English, for which I got a B, which was better than I expected.
One thing that was very helpful to me during this time and even now is a promise from the Word, which I claimed and kept constantly in mind—Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. This helped me to keep going and not give up, which was a constant temptation at the time. It was just so hard, and I saw there were some people who thought I wasn’t going be able to do it, especially some teachers from school. I think one of the main reasons they thought that was because I was very shy and they couldn’t see how much I was learning, because I never talked. I was still in shock, I think, with all the cultural differences, and not knowing the language, and also that I had just left the little town where I had spent my entire life and had so many friends and family, and moved to a strange new country far from home.
After experiencing that by giving my best in something, and with God by my side, I could really get somewhere, I decided to learn how to play the guitar. I have always loved music, and it was something that helped relieve all the stress of school. Pursuing this skill was one of the best decisions I have made, even though I had to stay up late every night to find time to practice after doing my homework. It was challenging, but I had a lot of fun. Now I am playing in the praise band at my school—we lead worship during chapel once a week for the middle school and high school students. I also help with the youth group at my church and sometimes during the main adult services on Sundays. God has been amazing in my life, and looking back at my life in Brazil, I realize am living a dream here in America—even better that I ever imagined it would be. It is so much more that I had even asked God for.
Now, one of my main goals in life is to go to college. I would really like to go to college here in the U.S., but I have tried everything I can think of, including looking for scholarships and trying to find a way to work and pay for my college, but nothing has worked out, so far. The main obstacles are that, under the terms of my student visa, I am not allowed to work, except if it is for the school I attend, and the amount of money I am allowed to make is limited. It’s also very had to get scholarships here, because I am not a citizen or permanent resident, and I can’t get a green card. The few scholarships I am eligible for are extremely hard to get. The U.S. government doesn’t give any help for international students. But like everything in my life, I truly believe that if it’s God’s will for me to go to college here He will provide a way.
Since I have been here in America, God put a love for missions in my heart. I don’t know what major I want to study in college, but I am looking for something I can use in the mission field, and also be able to support myself and help my mom. At the very least, I definitely want to go to a school where I can minor in missions.
This is the story of my life, so far, in a nutshell. There is so much more that I didn’t write about, but I hope this was enough for you to get know me a little better. I know that God has great things in store for me, and it’s so exciting to see all the miracles he is doing in my life as my future unfolds in front of me!
I also would like to tell you a little about the most important experience of my life which is my relationship with Jesus. When I was about five years old, a neighbor took me to church for the first time. I don’t really remember it well, but my mom says that since then, I decided to become a Christian, and nobody could take that out of my head. Of course, I was just a kid and I didn’t really understand who Jesus is, or what it means to follow him, but as time passed, I learned a lot and grew more and more, spiritually.
Now, getting back to my family, the situation with my dad got worse, to a point where my mom had to go away to work, because he wasn’t helping at all and all the jobs in my little town involved working on plantations, and things like that, so in times when the weather was very dry, there was no work. The first time, she took me with her, but it didn’t work very well because she was working as a cleaning person, and at that time I had to start going to school. So the next time she went to work, she left me at home and hired a woman to stay there and take care of me, because my dad was always working in his farm, which was in a different town nearby.
When I was about six years old, my mom left for almost one year. The woman that she entrusted me to started to mistreat me, not feeding me properly or bathing me. A couple of months after my mom left, I had an accident—my arm got burned really badly with hot coffee. I also had a really bad fever and my dad, for some reason, didn’t take me to the hospital. One day my cousins, from a little town near Machado, came to visit us and they saw my condition. They told me I was so skinny that you could see my bones, my hair was infested with lice, and that even my skin color had changed—it looked yellow.
Not only did my dad not care enough to take me to the hospital, but he also didn’t even call my mom to let her know what was happening, because from her earnings, she was sending him money to take care of me and my brother, who he made work like a slave all day on his farm. Instead of using it to take care of us, my dad was spending all the money on alcohol. So when my cousins saw my situation, they asked my dad if they could take me to stay with them at their house. My dad let me go with them, and after that my life got a lot better. I stayed there until my mom got back.
After this experience, my mom still had to leave to work a couple other times, but she tried her best to find good people to take care of me. But no matter how good people were, they were never a good substitute for my mom. In some of the houses I stayed, the kids were really mean to me, and their parents would treat me very differently. During these experiences, I really missed my mom. When I was about 10 years old my mom left me with one of our neighbors who was really nice. I kind of liked to stay there, but they weren’t very loving or affectionate with me. They at least fed me well, and took good care of me. They had a dog in the house, and it was usually very friendly with me, but one day when I was alone with a friend in the house, without warning or reason the dog attacked me. He made two very deep bite wounds in my right leg. My friend said that she could see the bone inside and there was so much blood that I was afraid to look. The dog also bit me on the arm and in a couple other places in my left leg. The only reason he didn’t kill me was because, at one point, my friend hit him really hard in the head with her back pack while I ran into one of the rooms and he came and locked the door. Because of the bad injury to my leg, I wasn’t able to walk for about fifteen days. They took me to the doctor, but again my dad didn’t tell my mom because he was afraid she would quit sending money to him and come home.
Every time Mom left, something bad happened, but she had to go. She told me that she cried all the time while she was away because she had to leave me. When I was about twelve years old my mom and my dad separated. Having my father gone helped my mother financially and also allowed some healing time for all of us.
I would like to share another story that just made me realize how awesome God is, and how blessed I am that he had entered my life so early. It’s actually about my best friend, Leni. She and I had similar situations, but hers was even worse than mine. Her mom died when she was six years old, and her dad, like mine, was always drunk. Also, she had to take care of her little brothers. But unlike me, Leni had never accepted the Lord, and even though I was there for her, she didn’t trust in me enough, I guess. When I was fourteen years old, on a Tuesday afternoon when I was coming back home from school, I saw a big crowd in front of Leni’s house. People ran up to me saying that she had killed herself, but I didn’t believe it. When I got close they tried to stop me from looking through the door because they knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the sight. I looked anyway and I saw Leni—she had tied a rope around her neck and hung herself from the kitchen ceiling. She had jumped from the dinner table, and it must have broken her neck immediately.
That was just the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. Even two years after she died I couldn’t hear her name or think about her without crying. What hurt me the most was knowing that she had never accepted Jesus, and also that she didn’t say goodbye or even leave a letter. I have no idea what led her to do something like that, and it troubles me not knowing. I am just really thankful that the Lord started to work in my heart since that first day I went to church at five years old, because without the Lord in my heart, I feel like it wouldn’t be so hard to picture myself doing something like that.
Now that I’ve written about those sad things, I want to tell you about a much happier time—how I was able to come to the United States. My oldest sister come to the U.S. while working as a babysitter for a rich lady in Brazil who later decided to move here and brought my sister with her. My sister lived here for seven years until she met the love of her life and got married. After that, she and her husband did everything they could to bring me here to go to school. After lots of headaches and hassles, they were finally able to do it. My dream had always been to come here, but the chances were very little. I knew some other Brazilians who had been able to afford the trip but were still unable to get a visa to enter the U.S. It was completely by God’s grace that I was able to come, so here I am.
When I arrived in 2007, I had a really difficult time because even though I had taken a few preparatory English classes in Brazil, I was still very unprepared to go to school here and I had only one month before classes started to get up to speed. The school gave me a three months grace period to learn the language and get good grades; otherwise they would have to send me back to Brazil. I was so stressed out because every day in school was a nightmare, I couldn’t understand anything, and I saw people looking at me weird and laughing at me, but I didn’t give up. I had promised God that if he would give me an opportunity like that I would do everything I had to, to make it. So I stayed up late every night, often until three or four in the morning, trying to translate my homework and study for my tests, and I did that for a long time. It was worth it, because at the end of the first quarter I got A’s in every class except for English, for which I got a B, which was better than I expected.
One thing that was very helpful to me during this time and even now is a promise from the Word, which I claimed and kept constantly in mind—Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. This helped me to keep going and not give up, which was a constant temptation at the time. It was just so hard, and I saw there were some people who thought I wasn’t going be able to do it, especially some teachers from school. I think one of the main reasons they thought that was because I was very shy and they couldn’t see how much I was learning, because I never talked. I was still in shock, I think, with all the cultural differences, and not knowing the language, and also that I had just left the little town where I had spent my entire life and had so many friends and family, and moved to a strange new country far from home.
After experiencing that by giving my best in something, and with God by my side, I could really get somewhere, I decided to learn how to play the guitar. I have always loved music, and it was something that helped relieve all the stress of school. Pursuing this skill was one of the best decisions I have made, even though I had to stay up late every night to find time to practice after doing my homework. It was challenging, but I had a lot of fun. Now I am playing in the praise band at my school—we lead worship during chapel once a week for the middle school and high school students. I also help with the youth group at my church and sometimes during the main adult services on Sundays. God has been amazing in my life, and looking back at my life in Brazil, I realize am living a dream here in America—even better that I ever imagined it would be. It is so much more that I had even asked God for.
Now, one of my main goals in life is to go to college. I would really like to go to college here in the U.S., but I have tried everything I can think of, including looking for scholarships and trying to find a way to work and pay for my college, but nothing has worked out, so far. The main obstacles are that, under the terms of my student visa, I am not allowed to work, except if it is for the school I attend, and the amount of money I am allowed to make is limited. It’s also very had to get scholarships here, because I am not a citizen or permanent resident, and I can’t get a green card. The few scholarships I am eligible for are extremely hard to get. The U.S. government doesn’t give any help for international students. But like everything in my life, I truly believe that if it’s God’s will for me to go to college here He will provide a way.
Since I have been here in America, God put a love for missions in my heart. I don’t know what major I want to study in college, but I am looking for something I can use in the mission field, and also be able to support myself and help my mom. At the very least, I definitely want to go to a school where I can minor in missions.
This is the story of my life, so far, in a nutshell. There is so much more that I didn’t write about, but I hope this was enough for you to get know me a little better. I know that God has great things in store for me, and it’s so exciting to see all the miracles he is doing in my life as my future unfolds in front of me!