We are together. The theme of our conference this year was appropriate and inspiring and meaningful. I spent the first week of our conference here in White River with all the Hands staff from Zambia, DRC, South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, in workshops in the morning; we covered topics like Hands' family tree, our culture (vision, mission, core values, code of conduct, etc.), communication. I spent the afternoons in meetings, usually with the Hands' staff working in Zambia, since it's my job to support our two offices there. It was incredibly exciting to make plans for major expansion in west Zambia, east Zambia, and the Copperbelt. Remember, we're aiming to support 100,000 orphaned and vulnerable children (the
poorest of the poor) with food security, home visits, and education by the end of 2010. About a quarter of those children will come from Zambia! (We supported around 6,000 children last year.) In the evenings, we often had our African visitors over for dinner. (I posted a few pictures of that a while ago.)
After the Africa Conference, we were joined by staff from Hands at Work offices in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, South Africa, and Canada. We spent a couple of nights at a beautiful lodge and ate amazing food--like kudu and wildebeast! We spent the days talking about what's happening in Africa...how Hands at Work is empowering the local Church in Africa to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic by reaching out to some of the 12 million children who have been orphaned by the virus. As George says, the house is on fire! Today (literally, just today) over 5,000 children were orphaned by HIV/AIDS. It's easy to gloss over that fact, until you meet somebody like Lorraine.
This is Lorraine. She is 14 years old. She is caring for her to younger brothers, Clarence and Remember. Their parents died a couple of years ago, and they have no one. No granny, no auntie, no older sister to look after them.
They live in a small block building with broken windows. They sleep on an ratty old straw mat on the dirt floor. When Jed and I met them, they had no hope. Lorraine wrecked us. Jed and I couldn't sleep the night we met her. We struggled to put our feelings into words for days. We could only cry out to God on her behalf.
In the last few months, however, things are starting to look a little better for these children. A few ladies in the village were encouraged to help look after orphaned children in their community. Many of these ladies don't have much to give. They struggle, just like their neighbors, to put food on the table each day and to purchase the school uniforms their children need to attend school. But one of these ladies, a special lady named Mina, understood that she did have something to give. Time. Compassion. Love.
Mina now visits Lorraine and her brothers twice a day. She listens to them and tries to help whoever she can. She brings hope. Mina is my inspiration. She is what keeps me going.
The best part of the conference this year was that we kept our focus on children like Lorraine. You see, many of us have seen and cared for children like Lorraine. But even in Africa it's easy to get caught up in day-to-day office stuff--reporting and emailing and fund-raising. But at the end of the day, it's all about Lorraine.
Aren't we so blessed? We have such great nieces and nephews who love us! To Jordan, Taylor, Morgan, Carter, Christian, Haley, Amanda, and Xavier, we love you so much!
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