New projects

Alyssa and I have been keeping busy the last couple of weeks with different programs at Esther's House!

This week we've started our new guardian home visit program. Joshua, one of the houseparents at Esther's House, pointed out last month the importance of being on the same page as the guardians of our community-based children. While the children are in our care for part of the day, the rest of the time they are in the care of those that they live with. Our desire is to be able to assist the children in our program with any physical, emotional, or spiritual needs they may have. By going to their homes we have been able to assess the environment that each child is living in. To help meet physical needs, we have been assessing the condition of their homes--there will be many short-term teams coming to Malawi next year and one of their aims will be to assist with home repairs of those that participate in our widow and orphan programs. To help meet the emotional and spiritual needs of the children, Joshua has been ministering to their guardians. In the few homes that we have visited, we have seen two guardians accept Christ into their lives, and we have gained information about the environment each child lives in and how their behavior is outside of Esther's House. This info will be really useful for the one-on-one counseling that we will doing with each child.

Alyssa and I (and any white person who visits a Malawian village!) usually attract a crowd of children whenever we venture out into Madzanje. As we went out to visit the homes of our community children, there were a few sweet girls that followed us from house to house.

This is Jesse! She wanted to hold my hand any time it was free, and she thought it was really funny to kiss my arm! She is such a sweet girl--I'm sure we'll run into her the next time we go out to visit homes. =)

The shoes that you typically find in Malawi are made of cheap materials and fall apart within a matter of weeks. Our residential kids have been going through these kinds of shoes pretty quickly, and we decided to get good quality shoes that they will be able to wear for a long time. The only place to find these kinds of shoes are on the big "market day" in Kompepusa. Vendors lay out large tarps and pile up different products---shirts, belts, pants, shoes---for people to dig through. We measured each child's foot size by marking it on a piece of notebook paper and spent over an hour and a half going through piles and piles of shoes looking for shoes that were of good quality and were roughly the right sizes. It was so much fun to see the kid's reactions to their new shoes, and we were glad to finally get rid of all of the old shoes!

Busisiwe and Patuma wearing their new shoes

Alyssa and I have been working on a wall mural of the Ten Commandments in the classroom this week! There are still a few details we want to add to it, but for the most part it's finished. I really want to do one more mural in the dining hall and a couple in the boy and girl dorms--pictures will definitely be posted when that gets done!

A lot of the projects that we mentioned previously are still being worked on. Things are definitely progressing, but are running on "Malawi time." We planned on having the carpenter assemble the bunk beds with our kids yesterday, but there was a funeral in our village that cancelled our entire Saturday program. It was the funeral of an important village elder, and as a result all of our widows and all of our community-based children were either involved with or attending this two-day funeral. All church services in Madzanje were cancelled today as well for the funeral. We are planning on having the carpenter return next Saturday to finish the bunk beds.

Alyssa and I will be visiting a feeding center (also called a CBCC: Community Based Care Center) tomorrow morning. You can read about what a feeding center does and about our first visit to the Kanjati CBCC last week at Alyssa's blog!

I’m so sorry for not updating since Christmas!! Time has really flown by.

Right after Christmas Cindy and I were busy making preparations to host a team of 11 people from Living Hope Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. They were such an amazing blessing to us! I’m sitting here trying to think of how to describe this group of people, and I don’t even know how to put it into words. They were so incredibly focused on serving and loving this Malawian community, and they did it with so much passion and enthusiasm. God accomplished some amazing things through them, and I’m so honored to call them friends.

Kristin Copher packed paints with the team, so after their departure I started working on murals at Esther’s House. The first mural was done in the dining hall, and it’s of Jesus sitting with children, with the Bible verse Matthew 19:14 underneath.

“Let the little children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven”

Over a year ago, when the Kennedy’s were living here, they stenciled James 1:27, the verse that Esther’s House was built on, on the wall but didn’t have paint to fill it in. This is also in the dining hall.

"Religion pure and faultless is this: to look after the widows and orphans in their distress."

The next week I started on a mural in the classroom of Noah’s Ark. Eugenio and I picked out the best verse pertaining to the story of Noah’s Ark, and decided on Genesis 9:16.

“The rainbow will be in the cloud and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature on earth.”

This one was the most fun to do, if for no other reason than the excitement of the kids that were watching! As I was painting the lions, all of the kids started roaring and walking on all fours, pretending to be lions. Peter was an especially cannibalistic lion--he spent most of the afternoon chasing all the other kids around!

The last couple of weeks we focused on having some of the older kids work with art. Most of them had never used colored pencils, and none of them had ever used paints. They all had so much fun and did really well!

We’ve been having fun just playing with the kids--when it’s rainy, they like to do a lot of clay molding.

We spent the morning making trucks, buses, people, dogs, snowmen (although they don't know what snow is!), and cups.

We had the kids and the house parents over for dinner and a movie last Friday! =) We watched Madagascar 2, which they loved!! The next day they were singing "we like to move it!"

I think I have enough pictures of Enelesi to make an album completely of her! She's so adorable.

The last couple of weeks has been plagued with sickness. As the rainy season continues, the number of mosquitoes are beginning to multiply. Peter, our 5-year-old residential orphan, came down with a horrible case of malaria last Monday. A few days later Nedson, our 6-year-old residential orphan, developed a milder case of malaria. (Both children are better now!) Two of our house parents fell ill with different sicknesses, and a 3-month old child in our village passed away with malaria. We’ve taken multiple numbers of our non-residential orphans to the doctor for malaria. Going into the weekend I developed a stomach infection that kept me at the house for 3 ½ days (unfortunately). Today Cindy is showing signs of the same infection that I had, so please be praying for her to recover quickly!

I’m so grateful for all of the new friends that I’ve met since living here. I’m overwhelmed by how people, who were strangers to me 6 months ago, have been so supportive during my whole time here and especially during the last week as I’m preparing to go home on Sunday. I’m going to miss everything about this place so much, and the fact that I’m leaving in a few short days seems to just now be setting in. Driving away from Esther’s House is now all it takes to make me cry! I expect that acclimating back into Western culture is not going to be an easy thing, and I’m so grateful for all of the support you've given me!