This is our most recent family picture, taken in beautiful Victoria BC this July. Notice Moses bald head...I went a little crazy and shaved off all his hair for the summer. The older kids would say to him, "Moses, come here. Can I kiss your little bald head?" and he would say either yes and bend his head for a kiss or no and run away, so funny. (S, you must be proud that my haircutting skills are getting so advanced!) Anyway, his hair is all grown in again and is very curly, very cute.Ayana's hair is very long now when it's not braided and I have to say I mostly keep it braided as it is a lot of work when "Au natural".
OK...news about Africa. We will be moving to South Africa in Fall 2009 to work with a Christian based agency called Hands At Work which works with widows and orphans affected and afflicted with HIV/AIDS. Once we have acclimatised to life in Africa and been established in their main base in S. Africa, we will move out to one of their more rural centres to continue the work. They currently work in 7 African countries and are actually African initiated and based which we love. They go into rural communities and work alongside local leadership and churches and ask how they can support and strengthen the community and mobilise the widows (already affected by AIDS of course) to take care of the many orphaned children. They give training, offer medical assistance and practical help and provisions. They run community centres where little ones can be dropped off while their older sibs finally get a chance to go to school. They have youth programs where youth that have never had a chance to go to school as they were taking care of dying parents and little siblings, now can get some life training and vocational skills. The list goes on and on, this is one awesome organisation that is spreading fast. I like that.
Our heart is for Eastern Africa and we feel that we will be moving up to either Uganda or Ethiopia at some point when we are settled into the way that things work.
Hands At Work has huge dreams, something that attracted us from the beginning. For example, they are currently caring for over 20,000 children in their own communities and their goal is to be taking care of 100,000 orphaned children by 2010, in many countries. Interestingly, UNAIDS has also recommended that because of the huge number of children, that they need to be in their communities and not placed in orphanages as the need is so big. Now, don't get me wrong, there are many people doing incredible work in many orphanages all over Africa...BUT....there are so many children that residential care is just not a reality for most of them. So, we want to be part of the solution of taking care of these millions of children that will never be part of a residential program. A huge need. A huge goal. I like that.
We will be working alongside them in psycho-social care of orphaned children, and training and teaching local volunteers for going out to work in communities.
A lot of what I will be involved with is training volunteers in home based care which means going out into the rural communities and being with the people very sick and dying of AIDS and making sure that their children are/will be taken care of. As you are aware, there are so many orphaned children in Africa (and other parts of the world too of course) that children are taking care of children, there are SO MANY child led households. Dave and I are particularly interested in developing this aspect of the work; coming alongside the children and making sure that they have the means to get to school, that they have access to food and water, that little ones and girls are not preyed upon by men that offer protection and food for sex and slavery.
This will be a hard job, a thankless task, often depressing and heartbreaking BUT also a glorious job, a joyful task, humbling and renewing.
We need to raise full financial support to go and do this as all staff at Hands @ Work are supported, not salaried. (Not just a little stressful!)
We have to go through our entire house and sort through what we can take, what we can't. We have to go through the jungle of Canada revenue to figure out how to pay taxes when supported and living overseas. We have the enormous task of preparing all our children to move and live overseas in, let's face it, not a great environment. They are all on board with this by the way, we would not go ahead and force this huge life change on them...it is something we have talked about and prayed about for years. They have been very aware and part of each step in the process. (Not Ayana and Moses of course, I mean Erin, Meg and Joshua)
There are 600000000 more things to do and plan and organise but I can't even wrap my mind around them on most days.
Anyway, that is an overview of what we will be doing. I will be eventually transferring this blog over to another blog which will be detailing our prep time to go as well as family life, but for now, this is OK.
We will be keeping you up to date with life when we are there by face book and blogs. We will also send out a PowerPoint of everything that we are doing and hope to do, explaining things in more detail if people are interested and also if people want to help support us in this.........adventure! (Let me know :) )
I have to say, this huge and winding journey that we believe God is taking us on is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time...come alongside me and walk with me. I need people around me that care and that will encourage.
