Finding hope through heartbreak.

This morning I asked Ian what I should write today’s blog about and without missing a beat he said, “HOPE. Write about the hope that we saw as we walked around the farm this morning. It’s all so exciting, you need to help people see what we see even though they are reading it on a computer.”

Like many of you, in 2015 we are trying to eat better and exercise more.  Exercise to us means walking around the farm. The “loop” as we call it takes about two hours and it is up and down rolling hills on gravel. (I HATE exercise), but we are trying to do it regularly and the bonus of the walk is seeing Project Canaan slowly and up close. It is truly the best two hours we spend together.  Today I will share a bit of what we saw on today’s walk.

I will start with a story about a baby whom we HOPE will make Project Canaan his home in the weeks ahead.  

This little guy was born on December 13, 2013.  His mother died, his father ran away and then he was being cared for by his very old Grandmother, who is also very sick. The baby was found starving to death and was admitted to the hospital for severe malnutrition.  We guess that his weight (at 1-year old) is around 6KG (13.2 lbs).  As you can see from this photo, his skin is bursting and peeling off from the malnutrition (not to mention his diaper was a plastic grocery bag).  He is severely developmentally delayed and can’t even sit yet.  What does hope look like?  It looks like this little one getting the treatment he needs to reverse his malnutrition at the hospital, then for him to come to the El Roi Baby Home and start his new life.  El Roi sees him. Please pray for this baby and all involved.

On the lighter side of “hope”, I present you with a photo of the vegetables that were harvested this morning on Project Canaan.  The fields are producing again and we are harvesting zucchini, patty-pans, baby eggplant (aren’t they cute!) and soon we will have green beans.  Another wonderful thing about our “loop” walk is that we get to stop in to the ISO building, which is REFRIDGERATED!!!! :)

 

This next photo is one of my favorites.  It is a view from the inside of The Oasis, which will be the new kitchen/dining/meeting hall for the “big kids” – with capacity to feed 200 children at time. The view is from the pass through window of the kitchen, looking in to the dining room, with the large window/door walk-out to an outside patio.  We will have a stage inside for children’s performances and it will be home for movies, homework, crafts and family meetings.  I CAN NOT wait to see this finished!! But even at this stage of construction it brings me joy and hope for their future. 

The next photo is a view from the Kindergarten looking back to the toddler home on the left and Emseni East and The Oasis up to the right.  It’s a beautiful sight and we plan to move 20 children to their permanent home at the beginning of March.

Last but not least, I give you the real Face of Hope – baby Seth.  This little guy is HIV positive and has been very sickly since we received him after his mother dropped him in a pit latrine and left him for dead.  He spent most of this past week in hospital trying to get several blood transfusions because he was severely anemic (due to a change in his Anti-retroviral medication).  Yesterday he was discharged and he is home, sweet home.  

Last Sunday our Pastor, Andy Stanley, preached a message called “Re:Solution” (http://northpoint.org/messages/resolution/the-better-question/) , which asked the question “What breaks your heart?”.    Suffering children break my heart and I am driven to action when I see them. But I have learned is that it is through their suffering and through my own heartbreak, that I find HOPE… I find Jesus, and He is my only hope. Without Him we could not do what we do. Without Him, there would be no Saturday blog because there would be nothing to blog about.  I can’t imagine a world without hope.

2015 is a year of HOPE and I am looking forward to being overwhelmed by His plan.

Live from Swaziland … hopeful in a land filled with hopelessness.

Janine

"Do for one person what you wish you could do for every person" - Andy Stanley

If you are a faithful reader of this blog you may be tired of hearing about babies who have been found in pit latrines or in the bushes, and I don’t blame you. Today I am not reading about a sad story, but rather a story with a happy ending.  Do you remember back in my October 13^th blog I wrote about a young woman who gave birth to “Baby HOPE” and simply couldn't keep the baby?   Well, today I have a wonderful update on that young woman whom I shall call “Jabu”.  

Jabu grew up in rural Swaziland and when she was old enough she left home to get a job in town.  As often happens she met a young man and “fell in love”.  Love turned to sex and sex turned to a set of boy twins for this single mother.  The father didn’t work and wasn’t able to provide for the boys, but he did come and visit from time to time.

One day Jabu was walking through the woods to visit her boyfriend when she was attacked by a man and could not get away.  He held a large knife to her throat and brutally raped her, then left her to carry on. She turned back and went home to her one-year old boys, ashamed, afraid and injured.  She kept the rape a secret until she discovered that she was pregnant, only a few weeks later.  The pregnancy was bad news and she did not want that baby.  She could hardly care for the two that she already had and besides, this was clearly an unwanted child.  Twice she tried to abort the baby, but it didn’t work on either attempt.  Finally she went to her Pastor who discouraged her from trying to kill the baby and encouraged her go to the police to report the rape.  She did just that.

The police (and Pastor) had a bad feeling that this young mother might dump the baby when it was born because she was in a desperate situation.  The room she was living in was made of mud and was not safe for her and her boys, and a little baby would make life more impossible than it already was.  She worked hard on a 13-hour shift, six days a week and made $100 US each month.  She had to walk an hour to and from work and had to give almost half of her pay to an old woman to care for her twins.  There is no way she could care for a new baby.  She decided to go home and tell her parents about the rape and ask for their help. They accused her of being “loose” and didn’t believe the story of the rape.  They kicked her and the twins out of the homestead and told her that she was never to come back as she had shamed the family.  Jabu had nowhere to go.

One day I received a call from the police asking if I would meet Jabu and convince her that if she gave birth to the baby and didn’t harm it that we would bring the baby to the El Roi Baby Home.  I agreed and that was the day that Jabu and I became friends.  I started visiting her and her boys regularly, bringing food when I could, driving her to work a few times to help her tired body rest while she continued with her pregnancy. Through our visits and conversations I came to believe that this was a very hard-working woman who loved her children dearly and cared for them well.  I have a good friend back in the US who read my blog about Jabu and started sending me money so that I could buy essentials for this little family.  Then the happy day arrived and I had the privilege of taking Jabu to the hospital for Baby Hope to be born.

It was a happy day for me, not so happy for Jabu, but the baby came and she was perfect.  We drove Jabu back home, bought some “post birth” essentials for her and then left her with her boys.

Baby Hope at 2.5 month old

Now… I do have some readers who are very angry that we don’t help the mothers more and only care for the babies.  In most cases we never meet the mothers and in this case the mother didn’t want the baby, but Jabu and I had become friends and I wanted to help her if I could.

Since October the Project Canaan team and I have been trying to figure out a way to have Jabu and the twins come and live at Project Canaan, but we could never make it work.  There was no safe place for her to live and if she worked at Project Canaan there was no one to care for her twins. We went around and around in circles and kept coming to a dead end. Each time we would stop and pray and ask the Lord to find a way.

Yesterday we found a way.

Yesterday Jabu and her twins moved to Project Canaan and I hope that this is their permanent home.

They are temporarily living in the Farm Manager Building (FMB).  That only became possible when Denis arrived back from Kenya with his wife and two young girls.  Now there are other children there and a mother to care for them while Jabu goes to work. 

We got the details sorted yesterday morning and called Jabu to ask if she was ready to come on Friday.  She said, “NO, I want to come today!  Come and get me at 3PM please.  I will be ready.”  So we did.  At 3PM Thabile, Chloe and I drove to Matsapha and help Jabu pack up all of her worldly belongings.  She had a small overnight bag with their clothes, a garbage bag with their blankets and a wash bucket filled with miscellaneous items that didn’t fit in to the other two categories.  An hour later we had groceries and arrived at Project Canaan to bring them to their new home. 

I was so happy that the entire FMB Family was there to greet them.  We took them to their room and Jabu was so surprised to see two beds in the room. Those are the first beds that they have ever slept on and she was happy, the boys were confused.  They got unpacked and spent the evening in the kitchen while everyone prepared a welcome dinner.  I went home with Chloe and tried to process the many emotions that I was feeling. 

You have heard me say this before, but this is a good opportunity to say it again… our Pastor Andy Stanley encourages us to not be overwhelmed by the size of the problems in front of us.  He says, “Do for one person what you wish you could do for every person”.  I don't know what the future holds for Jabu and her boys, or if she will even like living in the middle-of-nowhere-Swaziland.  Only God knows, and that is okay with me.   We must do what we can do to help others help themselves.  Jabu is well on her way to provide for her family and make a good life for herself.

My goal and prayer is to build a very simple six room building (each room 12’ x 12’) with a shared kitchen, toilet and running water, that six women can move in to with their families. We are calling this project the Sicalo Lesisha Kibbutz for Women and we are starting to fundraising for it now.  Each of the rooms will cost $10,000 (that includes the building of all the common areas).  If you are interested in helping us provide a permanent home for Jabu and her sons please let me know.  My prayer is that Nomsa from my wednesdayswithnomsa.blogspot.com will be the second person living at Sicalo Lesisha when she is discharged from the TB Hospital.  By the way Sicalo Lesisha means “New Beginning” in siSwati. The women at El Roi chose the name.

Live from Swaziland … I have a new friend living on Project Canaan.

Janine

How many Grandchildren am I feeding?

Back in October when our friends from the US Bank were visiting I blogged about visiting a family where there were five children living alone in our neighboring community.  The eldest child is 11-years old and the youngest is 3-years old.  The parents of these children were murdered in South Africa and now they are left to fend for themselves and raise each other.  We had visited the home and given them all new pairs of TOMS Shoes and some food, and then wondered what could really be done for this family.

The blog was read by a woman in the US, who then contacted me and asked how she could help this family.   She said that she and her husband were elderly and living off his disability pension, but that if she sent us money each month, could we provide food for the children?  We have seen this time and time again. The people who  seem to have the least, seem to give the most.  It never ceases to surprise and encourage me, and when it happens I try to think carefully about how I am supposed to respond.

How can we help?  That is often a difficult question to answer for many reasons.  Helping can cause many problems if not done with care and caution.  There are so many Orphan Headed Households in Swaziland that we must be careful to not put the children in further danger by providing them with food and supplies.  We need to be sure that the food won’t be stolen by other people and or misused.  There is also the issue of physically buying food to supply them, the time required to go to town, the cost of the vehicle to drive and the petrol to get to town and then to the community.  It is so often hard and costly to help.  But how could I say no this woman who was willing to give sacrificially to help these children who have nothing?

So we met as a team and discussed how we could best assist these orphaned children.  I love our team at Project Canaan.  They have such tender hearts for people who are hurting and Antony, Denis and Pastor Mike worked on a plan and a budget.  Then the conversations started with the community and the children’s Grandmother, who lives in a different homestead, but was willing to help. The children would often go to their Grandmothers house after school, but she rarely had any food so they would go home hungry. If only we could meet their basic food needs that could help a lot.

While it seemed that it took an inordinate amount of time and conversation to help this one family, our pastor back in Georgia, Andy Stanley, encourages the people in our church to “do for ONE, what you wish you could do for EVERYONE”.  It is easy to look at all the poverty and all the hungry children and say, “well, that’s only one family who would be helped, and it’s a lot of ongoing work and effort to help them”.  I met three families in five days who had five children in each home, under the age of 13-years and had no adult living with or near them.  But we decided to do for this ONE family what we wished we could do for them all.

After a month of discussions, planning and negotiations we arrived yesterday to deliver food to the Grandmother of the five children so that she could cook for them and provide a stable and healthy diet to these children in need.  We sat under the tree in her front yard and listened to this very old woman tell about her family, her dead children and the grandchildren who were left behind for her to care for.  I asked how many grandchildren she was feeding?  She looked at me with some surprise at the question, then her face looked puzzled and then she shrugged her shoulders.  I clarified my question and asked how many grandchildren were actually living with her at the homestead, and whom she cared for?  She smiled, then asked if she could call them all so that I could count them (since I seemed to be the only one interested in the answer). 

The children were called and they all filed out of the one room house they were standing in. There were fifteen children in all. The eldest was 11-years old and the youngest was 18-months old.  We suddenly realized how big this Grandmother’s problem was.  She had 15 little mouths to feed and had no food to give them.  When we pulled out this week’s food allotment (including cooking oil, salt, sugar, beans, cabbage, bread etc) she looked at us and said, “God has heard my prayers and sent help.  Thank you so very, very, very , very much for hearing the voice of God and bringing help to me through this food.”   I quickly told her the story of the woman in the US who was the one who was praying for the family and who had sent the money for the food. But this Grandmother assured us that it was her heavenly Father who had provided. There was no doubt in her mind that the God Who Sees (El Roi), saw her in her need, and answered her prayers through an elderly woman in the US who has little to give, but is giving so much.

Yesterday was a good day and I am proud to serve with amazing people who love the Lord and serve Him selflessly without ceasing each and every day.

Live from Swaziland … doing for ONE, what I wish I could do for EVERYONE.

Janine

PS – for those of you who care about my farm animal update – we got our first baby chick at the nest at our house this week!  It is wonderful seeing new life around us.