Abortion. Suicide. Starvation. Disease.

Left: Wesley (17-months-old) and Right: Julian (5-months-old).  Wesley is ONE YEAR and 2 days OLDER than Julian.  Wesley doesn't sit up well yet. 

As a former marketer I am always looking for trends, intentionally and unintentionally.  I often see patterns, changes and trends, causing me to wonder if it’s the beginning of a shift in something as complicated as society, or as simple as a grocery store.

I have been sensing a shift in the past six weeks as we have received 15 babies (!). May I take a moment to say that we only got one baby from December 23^rd 2017 to February 28^th 2018, and in an average year we receive a baby every TWO weeks.  But in the past six week we have received a baby every 2.8 DAYS. 

I was recently been accused of taking in babies from young mothers who got pregnant by accident and don’t want their babies, like I’m a drop-off service or adoption service. That is not true, in any way, shape or form.  ALL children come to us through the Social Welfare office after they have thoroughly sought any family who is willing and able to take the child.  We have received children whose mother tried to abort and/or commit suicide, some have been abandoned in the forest or pit ditch, some born in a pit latrine (outhouse).

Aside from the sheer number of children who have been placed with us, we have been shocked by the severity of their health condition (including 27% of who are HIV+ and two with Tuberculosis).  On top of that 50%+ of the new children have been severely malnourished and one was admitted directly to the hospital with several deathly serious conditions including streptococcal meningitis. With malnutrition, comes stunting, which has a long term effect on a child's life (see

http://unicef.in/Whatwedo/10/Stunting)

I have included several photos of our children to show you real, live examples of stunting.  While we expect to get these children strong and healthy, the long term effects are unknown for each child. 

Left to right: Cristal, Wesley, Julian.  Cristal and Wesley are 17-months-old.  Julian is 5-months-old. Cristal came to us as a newborn.  The two boys arrived this past week.

Peace (left) and Comfort (right) were born on the exact same day, the same year. Peace came as a 1.4 kg newborn baby. Comfort arrived last month.

I hope, and pray, that the past six weeks have been an anomaly and that the wave of children will reside, but I may be hoping against hope.  It seems that hopelessness itself is on the rise.  It seems that life has become more disposable, babies are being abandoned at an alarming rate and children are dying of starvation and disease, in front of our very eyes.

We can't save them all, but we sure will do our very best to save the ones who are put in front of us.

Will you help us to help more children?  Will you sponsor one of these little ones today?

In the US: bit.ly/ProjectCanaanChildrenAngel
In Canada:  bit.ly/ProjectCanaanChildrenAngelCA 

Live from eSwatini … praying for our children.

Janine

P.S.  For those of you who are not aware, there is no adoption here in eSwatini for a variety of reasons, so the children placed with us are with us until they are adults.  We are committed to caring for them and guiding them until they are 22-years-old and are ready to step out in to the world.  Every time a new baby arrives, it’s another 22-year commitment.  Every time. 

He literally almost died of hunger

19-month-old comfort after his first bath and meal

Last week I shared with you that we received 7 babies in 7 days.  I have written 335 blogs since we moved to Africa in 2012, one every single Saturday morning, without fail, but last Saturday’s seems to have struck a chord with many of you because it became my 2nd most read blog of ALL time in just 7 days. I have wondered all week what it was that made you share it more?

“7 babies in 7 days” (read at:  https://janinemaxwell.blogspot.com/2018/10/7-babies-in-7-days.html) had 9,300 reads in 7 days.  Coincidence?  Or just lucky #7?

Last week I also shared with you about us picking up little baby whom we have named “Comfort”.  He is 19-months-old and is the size of a 5-month-old.  He was found living with his 90-year-old Great Grandmother and was literally starving to death.  Yesterday our Social worker, Margie, sent me a photo of Comfort, only 10 days after arriving at Project Canaan, with the caption, “Baby Comfort after 10 days of good food and lots of love.  He’s crawling and smiling often!”

Happiness bringing toys for Comfort

I was at the airport in Chicago when I read that and saw his photo and almost burst in to tears. 

And do you know what made it even better??  I was working on child sponsorship updates to send to every person who sponsors one of our children and Margie also told me that our baby girl named “Happiness”, who is ONLY 13-month-old, was very quick to welcome the “new guy” and has deliberately spent her time moving over to sit beside Comfort, bringing him special toys and making sure that he feels welcome.  He is being COMFORTED by the Comforter, through another baby who was loved back to life this past year. Unbeknownst to me, that is common behavior for Happiness when a new baby arrives at the El Roi Baby Home. That to me is the hand of God working right in front of our eyes, daily.

Child sponsorship donor update

From last week’s 9,300 blog reads and shares approximately 15 of our our children have been newly sponsored!   THANK YOU to those of you who said “YES” and took action and joined us.  We are still very much behind on funding for the 29 children who have arrived this year, so I am asking again (still) for your help.

If you read this blog regularly, or if it’s your first time, please consider sponsoring one of our children today.  You can make a one time gift or sign up to give monthly.

In the US: bit.ly/ProjectCanaanChildrenAngel

In Canada:  bit.ly/ProjectCanaanChildrenAngelCA

We can’t save all the children in eSwatini who are in desperate need of help, but we do our very best to help those who are brought to us through Social Welfare with the police and hospitals who see the desperate need every single day.

Peace and Comfort share the exact same birth date.

Live from Vancouver, Canada … I am thankful for the support of our friends.

Janine

Just tears

These two girls are the same age (20-months).

This week has been filled with tears.  Tears for starving children, tears for children who are being hunted so that can be cut apart and sacrificed by a Traditional healer (witch doctor) to allegedly give people power, tears for helpless and hopeless teenagers who are being raped and impregnated by an enemy, tears of hopelessness.

Yesterday we received two children, a girl and a boy. I was told that two girls were coming, because that is what the mentally disabled/drunkard/abusive father told social welfare.  When social welfare picked up the children and found the eldest to be a boy, he asked the father about it and his response was, “I didn't know I had a boy”.  The child is THREE YEARS OLD and has been living with his father since last August … and he didn’t know he was a boy.

The youngest child is a girl. She is 20-months-old and weighs 13.4 pounds (6.1 KG). 

Each day that father would lock the two children outside his mud hut and go drinking. When he arrived home at night, drunk, they would move inside. Neighbors alerted social welfare and when they arrived at the home the little girl was almost dead from starvation. They were both rushed to hospital and have been treated there. Yesterday they came home to Project Canaan. She is the size of a 4-month-old and the 3-year-old does not walk well, and doesn’t speak. We have a policy of not accepting children over the age of two, but the father told social welfare that the children were ages one and two.  He didn’t know he had a boy and had no idea of their ages.  We made an exception.  I wept.

We always pray over the children as soon as they arrive, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t speak.  How can this happen in 2018?  How can this happen where we live?

We have received nine children in 2018.  Six of them arrived severely malnourished, two were newborns (product of teenage rape) and the last one is a child who was called an “animal” and was being hunted.  I can’t go in to any more detail on that story for privacy and security reasons, but it is THE MOST EVIL story I have heard to date.

I know that Jesus is our only hope, and I cling to that each and every day. Some days are just harder than others.

Please pray for our staff. We have a lot of children who are in desperate need of healing, love and hope.  We are also in need of more funds for the new children who have arrived and have a steep hill of healing to climb.  Please consider making a one time gift today, or become a monthly donor.  

In the US.

In Canada.

We can’t do this alone.

Live in Swaziland … come Lord Jesus come.

Janine

People starving, babies getting needles and summer interns serving

It has been a great week with our 2012 summer interns.  They are smart, hard working, funny and willing to do anything.  They visited a dozen families in the Project Canaan community to find out what the real needs are in the community homesteads. They collected garbage and recycling from all the buildings on the farm (THANK YOU REECE!!!). They worked at the Baby Home and Farm Managers Building. They gave away new TOMS Shoes up at El Shaddai and best of all, they brought us all joy and made us laugh. 

The community visits to our new “neighbors” were tough.  Every homestead that we visited seemed empty.  Death has wiped out the very life and vibrancy that once filled those homes and the hearts of the people who have been left behind.  Visit after visit we found one person, often an old grandmother, left caring for the children as the only income earner had gone off to work at Project Canaan.  That income earner was trying to provide for six to twelve dependents, which was clearly an impossible task.  Traditionally, Swazi families farm the land around them and provide much/most of the family food from their own farm and garden.  The family used to be subsidized by income earned outside the home, which was used for school fees and other family needs.  With the drought of recent years very few families are able to grow any food and their cupboards (or plastic buckets on the mud floor where they would store their harvest) are literally bare.  There is no food. Several women told us (with embarrassment and a sense of shame) that the only food their children ate was at school from Monday to Friday.  There is nothing in the morning to give them for breakfast before they leave and nothing when they get home at night.  Weekends are a difficult time for the family as they sit around a fire with nothing to cook. The people around us at Project Canaan are starving AND yet they are some of the “lucky ones” because they are employed.  A single income from farm work is far from what these families need to survive.

The unemployment rate in the Kingdom of Swaziland is estimated to be upwards of 70%.  ONE of the many challenges we saw with our neighbors is that there are so few adults left and so many children that it is really impossible to provide for all the hungry mouths, even if every available adult was able to find employment.  One family we visited only had four people living there, but in housing that once accommodated 30+ people.  The woman’s husband had died.  One of the sons told us that his mother had lost a lot of weight (a typical sign of HIV/AIDS), but we were assured it was because she had a common cold.  The homestead was void of people, void of food and we saw very little hope for the future.  But they were very happy that we had visited. 

Next week we will visit these twelve homes again, this time with our volunteer teams bringing warm clothes (it is very cold here as it is winter in the southern hemisphere), new TOMS Shoes for the children and warm beanie hats for all to wear.  But we can’t go without food.  The would be like Marie Antoinette saying, “let them eat cake” when she was told that there was no bread for the people to eat.  We will take life-giving, high protein “Manna Packs” from the wonderful people at Feed My Starving Children so that the children can get a healthy meal, a full belly and the knowledge that someone really does care about them.

I won’t lie to you though.  The problem is overwhelming and can’t be solved quickly. This is an investment over time, and one that we need to stick with.  But we can never underestimate the value of a visit.

Matthew 25 says that we are to visit those who are in prison because when we do it for “the least of these” we do it for Him.  I believe that “prison” doesn’t always have bars on the windows and locks on the doors.  The women we visited this past week are in prison because they have no choices and no options for a better today or tomorrow.  When we visit them, we bring hope, love and encouragement.

On a happier note, the eight little babies who are living at the El Roi baby home all went to the clinic today for their inoculations.  Each is at a different stage so each one had a different combination, but with eight women to happily hold them they got through the ordeal in less than 2. 5 hours and they slept all the way home in the van.

Another week has finished at Project Canaan and tomorrow Lori Marschall leaves us for California, Ian and Jimmy will drive to Johannesburg to pick up the June team of volunteers coming to serve, and my #1 son heads back to the US to have some time off before he starts at Florida State University in August.  I think Sunday might be a very hard day for me so please keep me in your prayers.  I know Spencer will be just fine, but I will miss him desperately when he is away.  I am not sure where the last 18 years has gone – they flew by and now Spencer gets to stretches his wings, a long long way from home (and his mama).  Gulp.  I am sending my love and prayers with him as he goes.

It’s Saturday morning in Swaziland and I am pensive.

Janine