I haven’t written because I don’t know what to write. Should I tell you what we have been doing? Should I tell you our most recent developments for projects and improvements we are working on for St. Jude’s and Purse of Hope? Should I tell you what God is opening up in our personal growth and spiritual development?
The needs at St. Judes are becoming more and more clear to us and they are overwhelming. We have a new petition for you. Ask everyone you know. This is extremely important and the future of St. Judes will not be okay without it. St. Judes needs prayer. They need prayer for the administration and staff. We need a new head mama with energy and education to come take over Mama Filda’s spot. We need to hire a new nurse who can concentrate on and take awesome care of the nursery and the kindergarteners. We need a reliably liaisons to take responsibility for all the sponsorships we are finding for the children of St. Judes and in the community. We know that the material needs are endless and the most important thing we want from St. Judes is for each and every staff, caretakers, administration, and teacher to be motivated and passionate to teach and love and care for the children at St. Judes. THIS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH GOD. So we ask for your prayers in this area.
The only thing I really miss: washing machines. Dryers. Dryer sheet smell. Everything I put on, even after double, triple, quadruple washing it, smells AWFUL. Now I better understand why all my children at St. Judes can’t seem to get clean dry clothes put on them. Its nearly impossible for me.
This week has been action-packed so far. This is probably mostly due to the fact that Jen is already half-way done with her time here and trying to squeeze every possible activity into each day. Its great though because we have been exploring tons of new opportunities and meeting new people so I am happy its all working out how it is. Yesterday we moved! Into our house, finally. Then we spent the morning at St. Judes and during the afternoon we went to Saint Monica’s tailoring center because the older girls there were learning to cook and cater and they need visitors to come and test the food and let them practice their waitressing skills. It was fun. After we were served each of the girls had to walk in one by one in front of all the visitors, parents, and faculty, and do a spin and show their nails and be graded on personal hygiene and presentation. It was kind of disturbing and we mostly just felt really bad for the girls. After we left Saint Monica’s we went to town for light bulbs and water and then did a little unpacking. At 8 we went over to the purse of hope girls house and watched Mrs. Doubtfire. Super cute. During the movie it started to storm, so we hadn’t to walk a long distance at 10:30 to find a boda.
Today, we went to St. Judes with Scovia and Juliette the two most wonderful girls ever and they taught us a lot about taking good, culturally sensitive care of the babies. We were floored with their ability to take care of the babies so well with the simple resources they were provided with. We took them out for soda’s after and got to talk to them about future planning for their own lives and how they could continue the volunteer after we are gone and even go on someday to get jobs with them after they go to university.
We have been dreaming up a huge new action for St. Jude’s: sponsoring a nurse. The one they have now only has time to be with the special needs kids but our kids have the flu, and colds, and pneumonia, and ringworm and skin infections and we need someone with them everyday administering medicine and then we need the caretakers to be adamant about administering the medicine at the correct times throughout the day. So were going to assist the nurse during her visit tomorrow morning and then working on getting a salary to pay for another nurse to come in take care of our babies. Other projects we are working on: partnerships between our college and high school to have volunteer opportunities to come and volunteer, making a volunteer guideline for future volunteers to come, making systems for organizing and finding the kids clothes, and spending time every day with the social worker to help her stay updated and on top of everything. Jackie, the social worker, is so educated and helpful and energetic and we want her to be so involved with everything we want done but instead of burdening her we first want to take as much of the work burden off of her so she has time and energy to help us make major changes and meet bigger needs.
Tomorrow is thanksgiving! We are so excited and planning a great day with the purse of Hope girls and Kelsey and baking whatever might be possible to make here.
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