Be creative.....

Today we decided to paint chairs... Our old wooden chairs had almost all collapsed, so it was time for some new ones. They make those chairs locally and it is nice to give them some colors together with the children.

They could do what they wanted and it was fun to see them working hard and creative!  

It is Holiday!!!!

 It is 3 weeks holiday and we are so mean, we bought holiday packets for the bigger children, to work a bit during the vacation! They were very excited and several went with me in the car to buy them in town. They do need a lot of help, many of them are behind, due to sickness or not being encouraged to learn and to go to school. If we have older children in Amecet we bring them to school as soon as they can physically, handle it. We do feel that education is a tool to come out of the circle of being stigmatized and poverty.

  We have 3 children in Nursery school, Moses, Jackson and Ruth (daughter of our staff Dominique) Jackson is trying to match the shapes and to count. 

 Jennifer has not been to school yet, she is 9 years. She has been sick a lot and we had to feed her via a NG tube. But she is gaining now!!!! We gave her the packet for P1, but I think that might be even to hard for her. We try to find the things she can do. She is very happy to be part of this. And that is also important.....

 Michel is most of the time outside, laying on a mattress, he can't play since he has the metal pins in his leg (read the last blogs). He has been for a very short time in P1. So we got him also a P1 package, it is very hard for him. But just trying is good, slowly, every  day a little bit.

Maliamu is not very long with us, she did very well and she wanted to go to school., We agreed for half days, but after 4 days she got sick and a lot of pain in the chest. We took her to the doctor and different tests and X ray. She started anti TB medication, a part of her lung had collapsed. We are now 3 weeks further and it is a joy to see her sitting at the table, trying to work a bit in her P4 package.  

Here are Jennifer, Cathy (my daughter) and Kenneth working. Cathy is in P2 and Kenneth in P4. We plan to have every morning some time, after snack time, to work with the holiday packages. The children are (still) very enthusiastic and it will be good for their performance in school.

We are quite full in Amecet, I am writing a lot about the babies, but also the bigger children are there! And they need attention, love and care as well!!

Update on Michel and new aprons....

Several people asked how it is going with Michel.... He is walking on crutches as you can see..... He got the operation, and they had to put metal pins in his leg. It was a big operation and still he has a long way to go... He is not allowed to put weight on his leg yet, allowing the bone to get stronger. Michel is very good, he is co-operative and also very happy to be out of the hospital and  back in Amecet. 

This are the metals in his leg, and they have to be in at least, for 2 months. We went to the doctor today to let it clean and to check how it is going. Michel was not happy about that... We ask your prayers for this healing process, Osteomyelitis is  serious and a lot can go wrong.

We have a German team with us at the moment, they have been a blessing with medical advice (two nurses and one doctor) and also in fixing many thing (+one handy man)! One of the things they blessed us with were new aprons for the staff! At the right two Kitchen Aprons and then the aprons fro the caretakers... Vielen dank!!!!!!

We are quite full, at the moment, I think, 27 children. We got this afternoon a new baby of 7 weeks in Amecet. The mother is in police custody , she killed her 4 year old daughter and she wanted to kill the baby as well. There are even old scars on the head of the baby... We took the baby to the doctor, she has malaria and a pneumonia. This little girl went to a lot already and she is only 7 weeks old!! Just at 5 pm, a boy of maybe, 11 years was brought by the Probation officer, if he could stay for one night? Tomorrow they will bring him back to his family in the village. So now we have probably 28 children in the home.

Three mini baby's.......

We have three very small baby's in Amecet. Two of them are under 2 kg and one just got last week over 2 kg. They are so vulnerable and so small. All three of them lost their mother after the delivery. In the middle is Jean, she is the biggest, but she is already 3 weeks old and she is the baby who just went over the 2 kg. We were very excited, because she was gaining too slow. We had to feed her by NG tube for more than a week, she was just too weak to drink, but now she can drink on her own again and she is gaining! Then we have Vincent, at the right  (sorry, he is dressed in pink), Vincent came to Amecet only 2 days ago, but he was already 11 days old. Also his mother died and he was fed for those 11 days only on sugar water...... He is malnourished and still weighs less than he birth weight. But he drinks well and I believe he will pick up, his weighed was only 1.8 kg At the left is Jesca, she was born one month premature and weighs only 1.7 kg. Also her mother died, there was a emergency Cesarean operation necessary, the mother had pre-eclampsia, but she didn't come well out of the operation and passed away. The first day Jesca drank a bit, but it was not enough, the drinking took a lot of energy and we gave her a NG tube, to help her getting enough feeding. When you see them laying on this picture, they are so cute, but so vulnerable. We have to stay alert all the time, please pray for these three mini baby's.

I promised to keep you informed about Michel, (read my last blog) he has been operated Friday evening. The doctor thought, from what she saw on the X-ray, that the good bone was still strong enough, but when she was operating, she saw that the bone was more rotten then she expected. So the next day, Saturday, she operated him again, to put the metal on the legs with screws. The first two days were not easy, but by now he is smiling, talking and asking for his favorite foods. I made a schedule to be with him in the hospital and day and night, one of the aunties is with him. It was so sweet, today he told Deborah that he had now so many nice aunties, he really enjoys the care and attention. He is a sweet boy and very co-operative, that is good, because he has still a long way to go.

We hope that he can come home to Amecet, this week. But those metals and screws have to stay in his leg for at least 8 weeks. Please keep Michel in your prayers.

Then I want to share with you a sad news: yesterday we got the phone call that Nathan had passes away. Nathan has been in Amecet last year and he was re-settled with his family. I wrote about his mother in the blog of 25/6/2017, his mother was one of the teenage mothers. They told us that he got a bad malaria and he died.. This morning, Simon brought a small coffin to the family, together with some posho and beans. We know Nathan as a sweet boy, he was handicapped and it was not so easy to get contact with him, but he changed a lot during his time in Amecet.
Dear Nathan, may You rest in peace and enjoy the beauty and love of Heaven.....

New Arrivals....

This is Jesca, she was brought yesterday, at the end of the afternoon. She was born earlier that morning. Her mother passed away after the Cesarean operation. Very sad, Jesca was born premature and her weight is 1.7 kg. Jesca drinks good and is very alert, as you can see! I love the little cap the staff had put on her, it suppose to be a dolls cap, but Jesca is so small, it keeps her head warm!!  

This is Michel, he was brought to Amecet 2 days ago. His family neglected him terrible. He is HIV+ and has a wound at the back of his left leg. There is an infection inside of his leg, they told us that it is like that for two years now. Pus is coming out, so Michel often had to sleep outside, in the bush, because the wound was smelling. Michel is 7 years old and such a sweet, kind boy. This child has suffered so much.... I don't know what is all in front of us, but I knew that we would take him in Amecet and we will see.... Yesterday we took him for X-rays of the leg, and we didn't get good news. He broke his leg, (upper femur) two years ago and got an infection. It devellopped into osteomyelitis. The only way was to operate his leg and get the old bone out and clean the infection... The doctors, we saw, told us that it was a big infection. last evening we had an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, but after more than one hour waiting we heard that she was still out and we could come back the next day at 8 am. So today at 8 am we were in the clinic again, she looked at Michel and the X-ray and told us that they could help him... we came back to the clinic a bit later and Michel was admitted in the ward. We decided we would take a small room for him alone, to make the chance smaller that he would get infections.

Our nurse, Deborah was sitting with him on the room, normally the family members are with the patient, but now we have to stand in for them. They waited for the doctor the whole afternoon, Michel hungry, as he was not allowed to eat. At the end of the evening I went to pick Deborah and bring Peace, one of the staff members, to stay the night with him. Cathy and Sarah came with me, Cathy wanted to bring him an orange, but I had to explain that that would not be a good idea, since Michel was hungry, but not allowed to eat, so she brought a drawing instead. Michel is on IV drip, still waiting for the doctor, I just called Peace right now (8.30 pm) and she told me that they just took him to theatre for the operation. please pray with us for Michel.. I will let you know how he is doing..

Who will stand up for the children???

I feel upset and I feel angry....... We have some children in Amecet at the moment, who are neglected and abandoned by their own parents...  If I see the suffering of these children, I feel angry, why are these people not caring for their own children? They might not be rich, they might not have always food to give them, but they must have a heart??????

We have a baby who was stolen from the mother, she was actually stolen by her friend, the friend is now in prison, but there was even doubt if the one who said that she was the real mother, was also not the real mother. It took some investigation and we know now that she is the real mother.

We have a girl of 11 months old, who was brought very sick and malnourished, the mother had died of HIV/AIDS. We took the child is, she was sick in the beginning, very sick, we also tested her and she is not HIV infected, So that is so good. Now we contacted the family that it is time for her to go back home, we visited them, and they promised to come for her, they have been promising it for weeks now..... Our Social workers went again to the village and after asking around they found out that the mother is not dead, she was the person who brought her to Amecet, telling us that she was the auntie. They all kept lying and lying and not willing to care for this beautiful little girl.

A boy of 7 years, was brought by community workers, yesterday. The father is neglecting him and he has a wound at the back of his leg for more than 2 years... We took him for X-ray, he has chronically Osteomyelitis, needs a complicated, orthopedic-surgical operation, he might even loose his leg....

I just get a phone call from the Probation Officer, there is a small 5 year old girl, who needs a place... The Police found her in town, this might be not so complicated???
We have a baby born in the village, the mother has a mental illness, so the family brought the baby to Amecet for the first months, now the family decided that they can't or they do no want to care for the baby. We have to find a family who want to foster and adopt her.

Please pray for those children, for their families and also for us. I feel emotional at the moment, besides those few I wrote about, we have more stories...... God knows them all, and he loves them, pray that He might use us to help some of them......

Before and after Grace....

Grace went home today, her father came to pick her. You can read her sad start in life on the blog of June 4th. but today was an happy day for us. Grace is doing so well, I looked for the same little cap I put on her head on June 4! As you see, it doesn't fit anymore!!!! She was 1.8 kg when she came and now her weight is 4.3 kg. She is healthy and laughing. It also gives us much joy!!

 It is a privilege to see a baby come in, very small and weak and just 2 months later you can give the baby back to the father, smiling and healthy! We pray that her family will be able to care for her and we pray that God will provide for them!