Our mission team worked at four of their feeding centers (I will be making posts about each center).  Their centers were very simple... spacious, open buildings with two enclosed rooms at one end and a roof spanning the entire structure.  The floors were concrete.  The enclosed rooms were used for an office for the head overseer  as well as for serving food or storage.  Our team delivered a VBS story and craft to the orphans, presented a hygiene clinic teaching them how to brush their teeth and wash their hands with soap and water, offered a medical clinic, and read scriptures and prayed with the older kids. Also at one village, we built a chicken house... more details to come later.  I had an idea in my mind that we would most likely be seeing many orphans and very sick people.  But it didn't really sink in until I saw ALL the orphans sitting side by side listening eagerly to the Gospel being presented and ALL the sick people lining up to see our doctor and nurse.  Sometimes issues don't hit home until you SEE them with your own eyes.  We had heard about it, read about it, saw it on the news... but in this case, seeing with our own eyes made it real.  It has impacted Ryan and I forever.

MOH provides the only meal for most of the orphans three times a week. Their meal consists of Nsima, which is just like our cream of wheat except their's is made of ground corn. It contains absolutely no nutritional value at all- it is merely a hunger filler.  The centers now have maize mills, complete with a generator, to grind the corn at a much faster rate than would by hand.  Also, the orphans are fed some type of bean and green, which are grown in their gardens.  MOH introduced gardens at the centers to help the villages become more self-sufficient. And it is working!!  Ladies from the surrounding villages cook and serve the food, but at one center, the kids were serving each other!  And helping each other rinse their hands with water before eating, as well as washing the plates off (with water only) after the meal. Even at their young age, the kids are being taught to serve others!  

We also visited one of MOH's crisis nurseries.  These nurseries provide a refuge for infants who are orphaned or abandoned.  There were about 15 babies- from infants up to age one- at the nursery we visited. They were being loved, fed, clothed and cuddled.  At the age of one, the workers try to locate an extended family member who will care for the child, or they try to find a loving family to adopt. One of the workers told us that they had found baby Moses in a basket by the river.  Another baby was found in a plastic bag.  His umbilical cord was still attached.  It was a miracle he survived.  All the babies were HIV positive, but because of the antiretroviral medication they were providing for the children, none of them had AIDS. The good Lord is providing these precious babies with their needs, and more importantly, with love.  We got to rock and hold the babies, and even feed some.  Our time there went by way too fast.  It was hard to leave.

The Lord had us do His work there- and though we presented the Gospel, though we helped to meet their physical and medical and spiritual needs, just being there- spending time with them, playing and running and kicking their homemade soccer ball back and forth with them was such a blessing to all of us who went. Holding their hands... and showing them the Love of Christ!

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12: 30-31