Hope for the Fatherless

"The last memory I have of my dad was when he took me outside, and he made me a chair out of ice and snow. That was a long time ago," says Rita Viselli.

When Rita was 5 years old, her father left. His involvement in the Italian mafia had him cycling in and out of prison. And when he finally faced a very stiff sentence, he opted to become an FBI informant and join the witness protection program–leaving Rita, her four younger siblings, and their mother to a life of severe poverty.

"I remember not being able to communicate how I felt," Rita says. "I just knew I didn't feel right because I didn't have a father."

FINDING A FATHER

Rita spent several years in foster homes and an orphanage. She had lived in 27 different places by the time she turned 18; one home didn't even have indoor plumbing.

Rita was confused about why God allowed her dad to abandon her. She spent her childhood shying away from social interaction and trying to cope with feelings that she wasn’t as valuable as other kids who had dads in their lives.

"I figured, as a child, that God didn't love me because he didn't give me a father like everybody else … and so I thought, Well,  if He doesn't care enough about me to give me a father, I don't care about Him either."

At the age of 14, Rita began to abuse drugs and alcohol and spiraled into a 17-year-long drug addiction that left her homeless.

When Rita landed a contract job that would bring her a few thousand dollars, she planned to purchase an ounce of methamphetamine. But while sitting in her cubicle one day, she felt a heavy weight come over her and heard God's voice say to her, "How many more times do you want to do this?"

Rita called a Christian friend, and he invited her to church. In that church service on February 12, 1992, Rita accepted Christ as her Savior. She ran up to respond to the altar call. "I felt like I was floating off the ground," she recalls.

For the following 12 days, Rita went without drugs. She describes that time as "horrific" as she struggled to break her old habits, but her strength came from focusing her passions toward her Heavenly Father rather than feel-good substances. She joined a program for recovering addicts, and God provided a long-term job for her.

Rita started reading her Bible and came across a psalm that said, God is "a Father to the fatherless." She rejoiced because she had finally found her father figure:  "He didn't hate me or forget about me. He loved me. And He was the best father I could ever ask for."

Rita and her daughter, Hannah, at the 2013 Angel Tree Star of Victory award ceremony.

SHARING THE LOVE

Shortly after becoming a follower of Christ, Rita heard Chuck Colson talking about Angel Tree^® on the radio. She started participating in the Prison Fellowship^® program each year–delivering gifts and the Gospel to prisoners' children.

In 1995, Rita became a single mother. She wanted to offer her daughter, Hannah, the best life she could, so she trusted God to provide and went to college, graduating with honors in accounting. She and Hannah were active in their church, and Rita worked hard to keep Hannah in a Christian school.

Every year since Hannah was born, Rita has taken her with her to deliver Angel Tree presents.

"We went into the scariest neighborhoods," Rita remembers. "But I didn't care. It was like I had no fear because I knew what these kids had gone through, and then I was a single mom at the time, so I knew what the moms were going through, and it was like the most natural thing for me."

Rita remembers one Christmas when she and Hannah drove out to a home in a very poor neighborhood to deliver gifts. "The linoleum on the floors was gone, so it was just dirt coming through. The women were alcoholics with yellow eyes. There were cigarettes on the floor."

Rita quickly realized that there were not one, but three families living in the house. While the mothers were not interested in talking, Rita and Hannah took the kids outside and told them how much God loved them. All of the kids accepted Christ into their hearts, and Rita and Hannah went shopping to buy more presents so that all the kids could receive Christmas gifts on behalf of their incarcerated dads.

Former Prison Fellowship President Garland Hunt presents Rita Viselli with the Angel Tree Star of Victory Award.

MINISTERING TO MOTHERS

Every year, Rita also gets to take some of her single-mother friends with her to deliver the Angel Tree gifts. "They love it," she says. "They get to go into people's houses and tell them about Jesus."

Over the past 13 years, Rita has worked to share God's love with other single mothers through her nonprofit organization, The Single Moms' Ministry.

When Rita and Hannah first started attending their church, Rita felt that the Bible study for single adults wasn’t enough for her. Something was missing: a ministry for single mothers.

"Most of these moms are working full-time–the finances, the housework, the homework. These women isolate themselves, because they are so overwhelmed and overworked. When they are done, they just want to sit down, because they have to get up and do it again," she says.

In 2000, Rita started the ministry in her home with one other woman. Within a month there were several moms attending.

After about 12 years of leading the ministry, the Lord impressed upon Rita that she should create a turnkey packet outlining her ministry curriculum so that churches could easily incorporate The Single Moms' Ministry into their programs.

In October 2012, Rita finished the project. Now churches in three states in the U.S. and a church in Kenya, Africa, have implemented The Single Moms' Ministry. Rita's ministry is blessing moms all over the world!

Rita lets her past be a testimony to how God can change a life. She tells other single mothers–at her church and during her Angel Tree deliveries–to "let Jesus be the head of their household and seek Him with all their heart."

ENCOURAGING THE KIDS

This past August, Prison Fellowship awarded Rita with the Angel Tree Star of Victory Award in Grapeland, Texas, at Frontier Camp, which hosts six weeks of Christian camp every summer for more than 600 children with an incarcerated parent. The award is presented annually to recognize the courage and accomplishments of a person who has overcome the adversity of a parent's incarceration.

After humbly accepting the honor, Rita spoke to an auditorium full of children at the camp–many of whom have been blessed with Angel Tree gifts in the past or will be in the future. As she told them her life story, they sat very quietly and listened intently. They could relate to the feeling of being fatherless, but Rita shared with them that, like her, they do have a Heavenly Father who will never leave them.

She encouraged the kids to begin searching for the calling that God has for them. "What are things that you see in the world and you think, That's not right; that's not how it's supposed to be … That might be the very purpose that God has in mind for you."

Rita knows that her calling is serving the fatherless and their families–bringing them hope for their futures and an understanding of how big God's love is for them.