It's all fun and games, until it isn't.

When Ian and I sit outside on our patio in the evening we hear a wave of children’s voices coming over the mountain – children at play, children laughing, children singing. It is magical and emotional.  There are 115 children living at the Emseni Campus now and keeping them all active and organized is a monumental task, done with excellence by our Emseni team. 

Part of what helps keeping them active is having bicycles to share, wagons to pull each other around in and balls to kick. Our toddlers enjoy playing outside and learn balance on tricycles, and teeter totters, and our littlest ones learn to climb up small ladders and slide down small slides.

This video shows Hosea playing ball with his sister Princess because she cannot walk. I LOVE this.

Today I am asking you for YOUR help.  I am asking that you go to our http://bit.ly/hfadiaperdrive link and do some shopping for our 194 children. There are bikes, tricycles, educational material, Little Tikes toys, dump trucks and pencil sharpeners. These are all things that we cannot buy here in Swaziland, and would really help us out. We still need diapers and wipes too, and the container ships from Atlanta in two weeks. 

Our children love to play, they are learning to share toys, and we want them to be physically active as part of being well rounded.

Juxtaposed, we have a little girl named Dinah who doesn’t play at all. She doesn’t walk, doesn’t move and is completely inactive.  Dinah arrived when she was 18-months old and only weighed 15 pounds. She was in and out of hospital for much of her short life, being treated for malnutrition, but sadly, no one noticed that she had an enlarged heart and a significant heart murmur.  This week we took Dinah to South Africa to see a pediatric cardiologist and were told that she needs to have surgery as soon as possible, and that damage done to her lungs is irreversible.  We have sought council from a specialist in the US and are working on understanding the costs of pediatric heart surgery. 

Some of you are likely wondering how I could be asking for toys and bikes, when Dinah needs heart surgery, and it’s a good question. But each of us needs to do what we are called to do. There are many people reading this blog that love to shop, and love children at play, so we offer the http://bit.ly/hfadiaperdrive link to allow them to do that.  There will be others who want to help directly with Dinah’s surgery, and I know that they will contact me directly at janine@heartforafrica.org. 

“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.”  We have all sang that song, and I believe it to be true.

Please join us in loving our children by providing for them today.

Thank you.

Live from Swaziland … I am going shopping on http://bit.ly/hfadiaperdrive today.

Janine

PS - this photo shows the second floor of Emseni #4 going up quickly!  Thank you to those who gave so generously to build a home for 40 children.