Dear Friends, The month of January has been full with God’s grace in ministry. Our preschool resumed for second term, and we are blessed to continue ministering to so many sweet children each day sharing Christ’s love, providing a meal each day, and giving them a wonderful environment to learn and develop. Our hearts are full with two babies we are caring for. Noella was found the day after Christmas, while Alvin came to us just after the new year. Both are lovely...
It wasn’t the first time since I have lived here that I wished I had a medical background, and for a split second, I considered becoming a cardiac surgeon. A split-second later, I recalled that I am only one person, and can only do so much, that besides not actually being good around blood, bile, exposed body tissues, and various other bodily fluids, it would also cost me at least six years. Six years in which I couldn’t...
It was almost midnight as I made my way home. A young boy who had been staying with me for several weeks for medical reasons, had just left. The girls who stay with me had gone home for the weekend, and Baby Grace, whom we had been caring for for several months was on her way home too. I was looking forward to a weekend to myself. As the moto was dropping me off on the corner, for me to...
“Leave it! Just let her die!” I jumped up off of the bench, Bella still cradled tightly in my arms. “No, no, you can’t say that!” I told the new mother who had spoken these words. Her little girl was born the day before weighing 800 grams (1 lb. 13 oz.), and she was still fighting for life. I had never once seen the mother come near her child. Upon the hospital’s suggestion that her daughter be transferred to another hospital for...
Marie: widowed with 2 children, third grade education. Fabiola: Single, 20 years old, 5 siblings, sixth grade education. Jeannette: mother of 4 children, abandoned by her husband, sixth grade education. Joyce: married, two children, husband seeks day-to-day work, she has a first grade education. Gloriosa: Mother of 5 children, husband has difficulty finding work due to handicap. She has a third grade education. Sephora: One child, no husband, no parents, no siblings, no support systems, fifth grade education. Florence: Married mother of three, disabled from a...
“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” St. Augustine She was one in a mass several hundred children that turned up for Bible school. I noticed her, in fact, I hugged her, patted her head and talked to...
Love, it’s a wonderful thing. It is what relationships are rooted in, what we thrive on, what we need more of in families, churches and society. Love is easy, even fun and gratifying when there is genuine gratitude, joyful reception, productivity and reciprocity, but what do we do when Love doesn’t seem to be working. I love the lighter side of love, it’s the side we find most joy in, and the perspective of love you’ll see in most of my photos...
By now you well know, I have this special place in my heart for children in the streets, well, all kids, but especially the little scruffy ragamuffins with no place they call home or little interest in being at the home they have. I look at these little ones… mostly boys, and I think about their futures. If they continue on the path they are on, they’ll surely end up uneducated, extremely poor, living extremely difficult lives to survive, or ending...