August 27, 2001

Scholarship gives vision for future
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___BELTON--Don't call Yolanda Garcia "amazing." She hates it when people say that.
___She sees herself as a typical 19-year-old college student who enjoys water skiing, rock climbing, attending Backstreet Boys concerts and hanging out with her friends.
___Never mind that five years ago, she lost her right eye, or that two years later, she lost

YOLANDA GARCIA

the remaining sight in her left eye. She refuses to let blindness define her.
___"I'm just blind, that's all. It's just a characteristic I happen to have, like having brown hair. I still have a full life. I just do things differently," she said.
___Garcia, a Texas Baptist Ethnic Missions Scholarship recipient who is entering the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton this fall, makes it clear she recognizes the source of her zest for life.
___"The Lord has given me everything I have and made me everything I am today," she said. "He is my strength, my courage, my spirit of life. He gives me the desire to keep on living a full life."
___God carried her through some "times of testing," she noted, times that began when she was in the fifth grade.
___The first symptoms of failing health her family noticed were when her ankles started swelling. As the swelling increased and symptoms spread, doctors offered an initial diagnosis of colitis, then influenza. They finally discovered a heart problem.
___Next, she showed signs of glaucoma. At first, physicians attributed the vision problems to steroids she was taking for inflammation in the colon.
___After extensive tests, specialists determined she had ocular vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels around the optic nerve that causes a compressed blood flow to the eye.
___In 1996, she lost the vision in her right eye. In the summer of 1998, just after she finished her sophomore year at Bowie High School in Austin, she lost sight in her left eye.
___In spite of that setback, she graduated on schedule with her class--on her birthday in May 2000. That resilience and perseverance is just characteristic of who she is, said her mother, who also is named Yolanda Garcia.
___"As a mother, I want to protect her, but she says, 'Back off,'" the elder Garcia said. "She has decided that she is going to live a normal life. That's the bottom line for her."
___The young woman attended a center for the blind in Rustin, La., where she learned to read Braille, to navigate with a cane and to live independently.
___She also has continued to be actively involved at Iglesia Bautista Betania in Austin, where her grandfather, Ciro Garcia, has been pastor for 40 years. She grew up in the church, playing the role of baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant when she was an infant and assuming the role of Mary last year.
___She was president of the youth group at her church when she was in high school, and in recent months she worked in the church nursery and with Vacation Bible School.
___Several months ago, after reviewing several options for college, she announced her desire to attend the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where both her mother and aunt were students.
___"I wanted the small, nurturing atmosphere of a school where I actually would be seen as a person, not just a number," Garcia said. "I had always heard from my mom wonderful stories about Mary Hardin-Baylor."
___Initially, her mother thought the cost of higher education at a private school would be beyond their means. But the university helped her find the funding.
___One source of assistance is the Ethnic Missions Scholarship, made available through the Baptist General Convention of Texas to qualifying students attending Texas Baptist universities and seminaries. Texas Baptists help to provide the scholarships through their gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions.
___"I'm really happy to be in a Christian atmosphere at Mary Hardin-Baylor," Garcia said. She plans to major in psychology and counseling, probably specializing in adolescent counseling.
___The Texas Commission for the Blind has helped her secure books on tape, a laptop computer with Braille screen, a scanner and other equipment needed for note-taking and classroom work.
___While she has learned to live with her blindness, other health problems continue. Last November, she had open-heart surgery to remedy a calcium buildup in the pericardium. She still deals with her body's inability to process calcium properly--a condition doctors say is totally unrelated to the cause of her blindness.
___But she refuses to pity herself, and she has little patience with those who see her as one to be pitied.
___"There are people my age who are dying of cancer or AIDS. I'm not dying," she said. "I'm living a full life."
___

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