THURSDAY, July 24: Visit to Orphanage

Several months ago, church and trip member Chris Howell gave us a DVD from his father to watch called "Mama Heidi", the story of Rolland & Heidi Baker of Iris Ministries who came to Mozambique to visit and were overwhelmed with the conviction to start an orphanage after seeing all the children living on the street without parents. They now have several orphanages and different churches and ministries all around Mozambique - even one in the city dump where we passed by and were shocked and saddened to see a ton of children pawing through trash looking for food.

After seeing the video, I contacted Iris Ministries and arranged for our group to have a visit at t he Zimpeto location after work on Thursday evening. It is located on a busy city street that we travel on everyday, and we were pleasantly surprised to see the school buildings and dorms offer a cleaner and better life than what most of these kids have available to them. At this time, they have 350 kids there, around 40 of which are HIV positive and only 50 of whom are girls which are more valued in this culture due to the work load that they carry. They accept HIV patients and take care of them, provide treatment and then get them back to their families when they're more stable. They also told us that only citizens of Mozambique are allowed to adopt Mozambican children. Guess we won't be coming home with that baby that my daughter asked for as a souvenier of our trip!

One striking observation that we have made while being here is that most people don't look happy - if you saw their living conditions and extreme poverty they live in, you would understand why. Even the children look so much less carefree and uninhibited than our kids at home, and the smiles don't come as often. They work hard and help out their families a lot more, carrying around and caring for babies when they're only babies themselves.

However, when our bus pulled in we were greeted with more smiling faces, hugs and kids wanting to hold our hands than we have ever seen! They were thrilled for the interaction and immediately started infiltrating our large group and talking to us. Some just wanted to hold our hands or give us hugs. The kids here just love seeing their pictures on the digital camera screen after you take a photo, and also enjoy taking the pictures and seeing them as well as video, so there was a lot of that going on. Chris Howell gave a few judo lessons, and Kim Ragenovich was seen on the climing wall of the playground with one of her new friends. David Newman was showing the kids his PDA and the kids were fascinated by that.

A few spoke English, but a particular boy that clung to me the entire time we were there named Ayobe, didn't even speak much Portuguese, but Shangan, a local dialect. Still, we were able to connect on an unspoken level as he led me around on my own private tour, holding my hand and leaning his head on me everywhere we went. I learned that he had only been at the orphanage about 2 months, and was there because he was HIV positive and his family couldn't afford the treatment he needed. He was lonely, being the new kid there, his face was sad, and he needed love. I was honored to both give and get that from him that night.

Our visit lasted nearly 4 hours, and was both heartbreaking, and gratifying to learn about and love on these kids. We joined them for worship in the evening and were so happy to see the level of joy that they had while praising their God. Another particularly endearing boy named Genito, told Dave and Ron (our volunteer coordinator here) that although his parents and sisters were all dead from "the disease", he had a new family there at the orphanage and that Dave & Ron were now his brothers too, "because we are all in God's family". An entire sermon was spoken to us with just a few words by a boy who has lost everything but hope.

As we reflected on the evening during our sharing time, we all agreed that it was a gut-wrenching but powerful experience, like most things here have been. The needs are so overwhelming that there seems to be no hope and no solution to fix all these problems. However, all through the week we have had experience after experience of what happens when you take the time to really see, touch, and connect with "just one" person at a time and that has made it all worthwhile.