Trapped beneath the crumbled wreckage of her home for two days, Therissa Leo, sang gospel songs.

She tried to ignore the shooting pains in her right arm as above frantic rescuers tried to find the little girl somewhere in the wreckage caused by Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.

Finally, her father and neighbors were drawn by the soft singing, and hauled the crumbled blocks off of her 7-year-old body.

Therissa’s mother and 11-year old sister did not survive. Their bodies were entombed beneath the concrete blocks where their home once stood.

Later, Ernst Leo said his daughter told him she was singing to God.

“She didn’t know if she was going to make it or not. She started singing all the songs she learned in church hoping God would hear her,” Leo said.

Nearly two years later, father and daughter are struggling to start a new life in a small one-bedroom North Miami apartment.

Therissa lives with a permanent reminder of the day that claimed more than 200,000 lives. She calls it “the day the earth shook.”

Part of her right arm is amputated from an infection she developed where the concrete blocks pinned her arm. To others, Therissa may appear as a handicapped child, but that is not so, Leo said.

“She is very capable of doing anything the other kids can do. She is a fighter,” he said.

This holiday season is bittersweet for the family.

Leo, who had a job with Boston Scientific Corporation, a Doral-based medical supply company, was laid off on Dec. 7. The company is moving to Costa Rica.

He doesn’t have another job lined up yet, but said he’s looking. Christmas time in Haiti is a very festive season, recalled Leo. He always looked forward to spending the holidays with his wife and two daughters, he said while choking back tears.

Despite his losses, he said he is grateful he and Therissa have a place to call home and he is optimistic about their future.

“I know I have to thank God because I am alive and Therissa is alive,” he said.

Leo is a doting father. Mindful of the challenges his daughter would have to overcome, he purchased notebooks and pencils for her to learn how to write with her left hand. From inside their tent home in Haiti after the earthquake, sometimes by a flickering lantern light, he encouraged her to write her ABC’s over and over again.

“It wasn’t easy at first and her handwriting isn’t as pretty as it used to be, but she can write with that left hand pretty good now,” he said.

Leo would like to attend a trade school or community college to earn a degree. Meanwhile, he is open to accepting any job offer to make ends meet. He studied computer programming in Haiti and would like to further his education to someday be able to afford a home of his own with a backyard where Therissa can play.

For now, the one-bedroom apartment has to do. Leo sleeps on a couch in the living room and Therissa has the bedroom, which includes a desk for homework.

Therissa jokes her father doesn’t know how to do her hair. Her grandmother, who lives in an elderly facility, does her hair after school with colorful barrettes.

At home, Therissa, a fourth grader at Biscayne Garden Elementary School, likes to play princess. Her favorite color is pink. She often pretends she is Princess Aurora, a fictional character in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.