God Never Sleeps

The last couple days in Kotido were somewhat hard for me. The goodbyes. I felt like so much was unfinished. God gave me a lot of encouragement during this time and I am grateful, something I will hold onto and remember.

Wednesday morning I got up early to pray and I was crying out to God. Asking Him if we made any difference for the kingdom. An hour later I open my front door and this is what I see......

Let me explain (sorry if it seems gruesome).

Go back about 4 weeks. A girl came to our gate, named Betty. She is about 16 or 17. She has epilepsy and while having a seizure she violently fell into a fire, burning her back. It was severely infected and no one was willing to help her. She was also having problems with her appetite and was loosing an incredible amount of weight. We decided she could live with us for the remainder of our time in Kotido.

The woman changing her bandage in the picture is Winnie. Remember Winnie is our house help that lives on our compound. She has been a huge help in the ministry especially with her help of fostering the babies.
When I opened the door and saw this, I walked out to investigate further and to offer assistance. I have never seen Winnie doing first aid. I was rather speechless and didn't know what to say. Winnie then told me that she has seen me doing first aid to many people and it has given her confidence to really do it on her own. WOW! After this we continued to talk about Betty's future. This picture is 4 weeks after her burn. It is healing very slowly, but it is healing. It has to be cleaned and a new bandage put on daily. Winnie said she will continue to care for her and to continue sharing the word of God with her.

Winnie later that day, poured her heart out to me and shared the impact our family had on them. There was even a particular action that our kids did, that changed her husband, Victor's, heart. There were things I didn't even realize that had such an impact on her and her family. I was so grateful that God works so much deeper than we even realize. That He never sleeps and is always at work, even when we don't always see it. He gets all the glory!!

Before I close I ask that you would pray for Betty. Pray that her parents would have a change of heart and see that she is a gift from God, and they would not ostracize her. Pray that she can gain weight, and above all pray that she will know the presence of God and follow Him all the days of her life.

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We are now in Jinja (Southern Uganda), and we fly out Thursday. I ask that you would pray for our family during this transition. It is difficult for some of our children (and for me (: ). Pray that all would go well on the plane and our luggage and such would not get lost. Pray that when we get to Colorado we can find a vehicle. We are looking at purchasing one, but we now need a 12 or 15 passenger van which is harder to find in our price range.

What has been going on around here for the past month

I haven't been very good at blogging lately. I have not been spending as much time on the internet. I have been struggling in different areas, so I have been trying to devote more time in the word and prayer.  As we prepare to leave my mind goes between being excited to come to the states for our furlough and being despondent about leaving our life here in Kotido. Many things I am not understanding but I just take each day a step at a time.

Here is what we have been doing for the past several weeks in picture:



We went to visit the twins and say goodbye. They are doing pretty well considering what they had gone through. Their mother is doing a great job taking care of them. 

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We also went to say goodbye to Reema and Akiar. Reema is very healthy and is quite fat as you can see in the picture. Really refreshing to see since we have seen so many malnourished babies. Her family is doing an amazing job of taking care of her!! This is a picture with her and her aunt is holding her.

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This is a picture of Reema's and Akiar's grandmother. They don't really smile in pictures but this picture of Akiar's grandmother (the one on the right of me) is comical because she looks so angry. 

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Here is Akiar with his uncle. They too have done a great job. Akiar's grandmother doesn't have as much confidence about taking care of him without us but we assured her that it was not us helping but it was God. They too have done a great job taking care of him and he is very well attached to his family. Huge praises all around!!

 

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Our friend Victor will continue checking on all the babies and their families. For the last several weeks he has been going there to share God's word with them. We are very thankful for this. 

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One of our friends wanted to take us to Kidepo which is the closest game park. We drove there in the morning and just spent a couple hours there but we got to see all kinds of animals, before driving back home. Here are a few of our favorites. 

A game park guide helped us find these female lions who had just finished eating so they had no interest in us at all. We were about 12 feet away from them in our Land Cruiser and they didn't even care. It was amazing.  There were 6 total.

We saw about about 100 elephants during the time we were there. The babies are sooooo cute! This male was not excited about us when we stopped to take his picture. He trumpeted at us and flapped his ears to tell us how unhappy he was about our presence. 

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Janaya and Samuel mimicking a scene from a book we were reading about Native Americans with Neveah and Rikot Williams. It was very cute and I love seeing the things they have learned coming out in play :)

              

Janaya giving Eliana a ride in the wheel barrel. Too cute!

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Carter doing school with one of our baby ducks. Someone stole our ducks one night from the coup. One of the ducks had eggs that were days away from hatching. We managed to keep 4 alive with our makeshift incubator. They were so cute and followed us around everywhere because they thought we were their mother. Unfortunately they all died of some disease after about 2 weeks. The kids really enjoyed them. Especially our animal lover, Carter.

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There are other things that we have been doing that we don't have pictures for. LIKE PACKING.... school (lots of it)......and sorting...and more packing. Fortunately we were able to find a place to store our things.

Malachi Update:
Malachi seems to be doing really well. He is even good at reminding me to give him his seizure medicine since I need to give it to him 3 times a day. We are hoping we can see a specialist when we are in the States to get their opinion about his seizures, but since being on the meds. he has not had any.

Please continue praying for us as we leave and go through more transition.  It has been quite stressful for me to get everything I need to get done while still not feeling the best.