Cradle of Love Baby Home

What a surprise to see Emily visit us today with her mom. I would not have recognized her as she has grown up so much.

 Emily as a baby…. and Now!

It is so rewarding to see these children happily adjusted in their families!

Today we had a party for the twenty children who live at Havilah Village. This is where Cory, Simon and Ben are living now. The children range in age from 3-7 years old.

Katie had planned and arranged all the games for the kids. They were in three groups and rotating playing such games as "duck, duck, goose", "simon Says",  throwing a bean bag through holes in a board and tossing water balloons.

   Katie giving instructions

We have a pool in our yard that we have not had water in, for a couple years. But we filled it just part way up, so the children could play. Boy, did they LOVE that! The weather is perfect for it these days.

   They loved the slide and playing with the balloons.

Just before lunchtime, a friend, Larry Robinson came with his vehicle full of cases of food he had received from ShopRite. Chips, drinks, pudding and cake mixes and huge tins of strawberry jam. I shared some of everything with Havilah as there is far too much for our little ones.  So we added chips and cheese curls to our simple lunch of greens, rice and beans, cakes and carmel popcorn.

  Simon

   Ben Staci had her buddy Ben back for a few hours!

We had a wonderful, noisy time and will invite the children to come again.

Baby Helena had a PCR/DNA test done in Dar and she is HIV NEGATIVE! Praise God. She will go home with her adoptive mom, Meredith, next Thursday. She already has a little adoptive brother who is 3 months younger than her.

God was good and kept TANESCO from turning off our power!  And this morning we were able to pay the big bill for August and September, then they promptly gave us the bill for October! We are going to switch over to a pre-paid electricity system.

The roof is going on the new building.

 
We will paint the roofing a brick red later, to blend in with the roof on CoL.

Found out about an abandoned baby boy who is at Mt. Meru Hospital. Hoping to get him soon. When our special unit is finished, I am hoping that the police will bring abandoned babies directly to us. We will have to educate them to what our facilities can provide.

We were not awarded any funds from the organization in Spain that we applied for. That's OK because God knows what He is doing!

Yesterday afternoon two things happened. The rainy season started, just as if God had turned on a water tap! Suddenly! It poured rain all night and at 9 am this morning it is still coming down.  We didn't get the roof on the new building on time!

We received a beautiful 9 month old boy named Joshua. His mother is sick in hospital with AIDS so we will care for him until she decides what she wants for his future.

 Joshua

Today is the day TANESCO is to cut our power. Maybe God will see fit to help them "forget"! Or, He will bring someone with the money we need, this morning.

Rebecca continues to do well at CoL.

One of our wonderful caregivers, Fatina. She was making a funny face, because Staci was taking her photo!

Staci is a budding photographer! She captured Katie hugging on Ramah!