Ups and downs...

I don't really think I have much to say, but I thought that it had been a while since I wrote anything so I better write something...

Our wall is finally being rebuilt...so that is a positive. Stray dogs and cats seem to be finding their way into our yard, so it will be nice to have that up again.


The Zambian election is finally over and things went relatively smoothly. The election was on October 31st and we didn't hear the results until November 3rd, which seems a bit crazy to me. When the results were announced, there was apparently a bit of violence and we know of one man who was killed, but since then, we have heard nothing. We are thankful for that.

This week has been a very emotional week. We have been working with the Zambian governement to try to get this adoption program up and running, but we seem to hit obstacles at every turn. There are so many orphaned children, yet the government seems to want to keep the children in Zambia, even if that means keeping them in orphanages until they are old enough to live on their own. We have so many willing families, yet the government is making the process very difficult, if not impossible.


This has been hard for several reasons. Before we were offered the job here in Zambia, Chad and I had begun the process of adopting from Zambia. We have recently realized that this is most likely not possible anymore. We have come so far and even received our approval from the Ontario ministry, but it seems we can go no further.

It is also hard because we were supposed to come back to Zambia after christmas for another 3 months, but now it is looking like that will not be possible. If things remain how they are now, this home that we are working at will have to close -we have no choice. This just breaks my heart because there are so many children in Zambia who need to be cared for by someone. The other orphanages are all full and understaffed. We have a great bi home with lots of room for more children, but without the help from the government, it is impossible.

All that to say, we have no idea what our future holds. We don't know where we will be living after Christmas and we don't know if we can continue with our adoption. Right now, we are focusing on loving the kids that are currently in our home as well as trusting that something will work out and God does have a plan for us, even if it is very different than we originally thought.


As another note, our social worker showed up at our gate this morning with another child for us to care for. This child is 2 years old and his mother just passed away on Tuesday. His father is sick and unwilling to care for him anymore. His great-aunt brought him to our home with our social worker, as she is unwilling to care for him anymore. This little boy is very sick, but we didn't know that until they had left. He is 2 years old and weighs only 5.5 kg. Last year he weighed over 9 kg. He is going downhill quickly, it seems. We only realized how sick he was after the social worker had already left, so we called him and told him this child needs to be in the hospital or he might not live. I have seen a lot of very sick, very malnourished children, but I have seen none like him. We bathed this little boy and as he sat there, scared and alone, I prayed for him. I could see every bone in his body. He was too weak to stand on his own and there was a definite look of hopelessness in him. We put him in some clean clothes, and they just hung off of him. I continued to hold him and try to comfort him, but he was shutting down. We tried to feed him, but he wanted none of it. All we could do is love him and then get him to the hospital quickly.

On the way to the hospital, we contacted his aunt who dropped him off to see if she could go with us to the hospital. The difficulty is that we cannot just leave him in the hospital - someone needs to be with him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We experienced this with baby Juliana when she was in our care and it is very difficult. We don't have enough staff to send someone to the hospital every day and every night so we asked the aunt how she could help. She was certainly not interested in helping at all, but did agree to go to the hospital with us. Needless to say, this child was admitted right away as he is visibly very sick.

After a bit of discussion we convinced the aunt to spend the days at the hospital and we would find someone to cover the night shift there. We don't have enough staff for our home already, so we couldn't spare anyone. In the end, we decided to hire someone to just sit at the hospital with this little boy, so that should work out well. I think he will have to be in the hospital for quite some time, so hopefully this will work for everyone.

My heart just aches for this little boy. He has been neglected and he is sick. His mother died on Tuesday from AIDS and he is also HIV positive. They were both on ARV treatment, however, I'm not sure they were taking the drugs regularly. Unfortunately, if they weren't taking them properly, they wouldn't be effective. The studies have shown that you need to take the drugs properly 95% of the time in order for them to be effective. Now this boy is starving, alone, and very sick and I feel so helpless. And he is just the picture of one of the millions of children like himself. He is innocent and he is the one who is suffering. But how is this problem ever going to change when it has gotten so out of hand?

I hope that we can have some more positive posts in the next little while...I'm sorry this was such a downer!