Day 13 - July 18

Sundays always seem to give me a new outlook here. It’s almost always started out by going to church, but then there usually seems to be some other bonus that lets us know that we are moving forward. Both of the other times we’ve been here, we’ve seen God helping us along the way and guiding us where we need to go. This trip especially has been that way. Whenever we get discouraged, he places something right in front of us to help us out and give us new hope. Last night we prayed together about what to do with the village and about where we could use our resources most wisely. Today during worship, the pastor had people break up into groups of three to pray for each other’s needs. I prayed with Emmie and Grace. It was wonderful to be able to lift up requests for each other, even though we had never met. That’s a beautiful thing about the body of Christ. It’s not limited to one geographical location or one particular group of people. We are all citizens of the same earth and we can come together with the bond that is Christ.

The message today was about the church as a family. Pastor Chris talked about how our families can be frustrating sometimes but when it comes down to it, they are the people that impact us the most. They are able to guide us when we are lost or confused. They give us advice when we are unsure of what to do. They make us laugh and bring us joy. They comfort us when we are sad. Just because we are not related by blood doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same relationship with our church family around the world. We can rely on people in the church to help us in our walk with the Lord. When you think about the family of the church in a global context, it gets to be really overwhelming. To think that there are people in every corner of the great big earth that are praying to the same God that loves all of us, despite our shortcomings, is simply amazing! I have a hard enough time sometimes just loving my close family or friends that are near. Can you imagine how much love there is to cover the entire world?

During church, a heavy rain came down and you could immediately feel a coolness in the air. It’s the first real rain since we got here and I know we needed it. Hopefully the dust will settle for at least a day or two. After the service, we met up with Angella’s sister, Kate, for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (which also serves local, Indian, and Asian food). I don’t think I’ve been to many restaurants that stick to just one food influence except for the Indian restaurants! It is fun to see the interaction between Angella and her younger sister. They laugh and joke with each other and make fun of each other for crazy things, but you still know that they really love each other. Family here is much more important than it seems to be at home. When somebody needs money, an aunt or uncle will provide it. There is no expectation that anybody will ever pay you back for it. If Kate comes to town, Angella pays for her food, transportation, and anything else that she wants. We do that to some extent back home, but I don’t think it is as widely accepted across families. In the states we have this weird mentality that is so focused on self preservation, that we often overlook ways to be really supporting each other.

After lunch we met Angella’s friend Godfrey, who had told Angella about an orphanage we should visit earlier in the month. He offered to take us there for an impromptu visit. It turns out there was an old woman who kept taking in orphans off the street. She ended up with over 20 children living in a very tiny home, which Godfrey pointed out along the way. She passed away about a year and a half ago, but the community didn’t want to abandon the children. People worked with the local church and found a home for them to rent and a woman to step in and take care of them. There is a social program that provides a month of food and rent at a time. The church supplies some clothes, beds, and toys for the children. Another program allows the kids to all go to school up to a certain age. Some local sponsors are going to help the children attend the older children when they need to attend school.

When we arrived at the house, you could tell it had a fell a lot like Need for All, only it was much better kept and when we learned about the programs involved in caring for the children, we realized it is much better than Need for All ever was. The only thing they are missing is health care! PERFECT! When Ross wrote the grant, this was exactly the description that we were looking for. The mother, Hilda, was wonderfully welcoming to us, even though we came on such a short notice. Only a handful of the 22 children were there because the rest were at church. They were super polite and you could tell they care about each other. When we handed out some cookies, they all shared with each other, which is unlike a lot of little kids we see. We are going to come back next week to meet with all of the children and discuss the study with them some more. We walked away feeling so good about the day! This place is within walking distance of Angella’s house, so it will be a great location. God really has a way of connecting us to where we need to go and at the right time. Angella’s friend Godfrey is a teacher at an international school with the same age kids as my mom. I think it was great for my mom to e able to meet and talk with him. He’s going to take us to see his school on Wednesday before we go back to the orphanage to meet all the kids.

We got back to Angella’s apartment and made a spreadsheet and some pages of information for Deo to fill out about the children at Good Hope Initiative. It is not that hard of a list, it just needs to be a list of 100 children who are actually orphans with no living mother and father. Although Deo has claimed that the children are orphans, we don’t really know for sure. In order for the study to be valid we need to make sure that we are working with an orphanage rather than just a program to get the village kids together. It’s really hard for me to say that we can’t help all of the children with the benefits of the medicine in the study, but in the long run, we won’t be able to help anybody if we don’t have a valid set of data. We have other money and projects that we are planning to do with the village so we won’t be leaving all of the kids out. There just needs to be some organization or else we will never get any work done when we go there.

It was nice to come home feeling like we accomplished a lot today. It’s weird how just one little visit can change your whole outlook.

On another note, food is getting to be a challenge. You find that everything has the same texture and not the same kinds of flavors as at home. Fruit is always delicious. It’s the main courses that get monotonous. Everything has the rice and beans type of texture. I find myself craving something, but I never know what it is. Today was the first day I didn’t have a Cliff bar for breakfast, but Digestives with really weird peanut butter really didn’t do the trick either. Maybe tomorrow I will find something more appetizing than the usual stuff we’ve been cramming into our stomachs! The thing I miss most is salad! It’s not like I eat it super often at home, but at least a couple of times a week it’s in my diet. It’s not really safe to eat it over here because it’s generally washed in the water. In the interest of not risking getting sick, I avoid it. I still have a few weeks to go so I better try not to think about salads too much until then!