Holly in Cameroon: School days...

Above is the newest member of the Helping Hands' family, Francis. He is a lovely, 12 year-old boy who just came to us from the village. His 3 siblings have been with us for a couple of years now. Merander, Noel, and Dorcas all came to us malnurished and neglected. You might recall, Dorcas was two but was unable to walk or talk, she had sticks for legs, and had only her 12 year-old sister to look after. Since they came, they have all just blossomed and are doing so well. Dorcas has caught up on all her stages and started school for the first time this week. OK, back to Francis... his elder sister who lives in the city called us and told us the uncle that her two brothers were living with had died and the boys had no one looking after them. So Jake headed back out to the village to go investigate. An uncle had already come and taken the younger of the brothers, but Francis was still there. The family was happy for him to come with us as they could not provide for him. Since coming to the home, Francis has just been doing fantastic, he has probably adapted to his new life quicker than any of the other kids. He is friends with everyone and just fits right in, it is so good to see. The background on this family is that the father had two wives. He had 6 children with his first wife, and then married a much younger lady and had 6 children with her also. We have numbers 6, 5, 3, & 2 out of the last set of children. The Father died of HIV/AIDS and then the mother died of of the same disease when Dorcas was just a few months old (praise the Lord that Dorcas doesn't have the disease even thought she was breast fed). This maybe one of the reasons that the family neglected these precious children as there is such a stigma associated with HIV/AIDS here. We thank the Lord for bringing these precious children into our care and we know that He has a wonderful plan for them.

All the kids started school on Monday. We had two boys heading to secondary school this year (equivalent of middle school & high school). They are attending a government school now which are a lot different from the small private school they have been in the last two years. They now have classes of over 70 students and have very little room to ask questions or discuss something they don't understand. If you want to do well, you really have to study hard and give 110%. And there is of course all the different peer pressures that come along from being in a much larger school. Please keep Blessing and Aruna in your prayers, that they will stay focused, study hard, and be a light for Jesus in their schools.

We switched schools for all our primary (elementry) aged kids. We were not too impressed with the school they have been going to, even though it was a Christian one. We decided to take a step of faith and put them in a much better, but much more expensive school (there is no free education here). It is much more organized and is education focused. They also provide all the school books for the kids which is very rare, you usually have to buy them. It is about a five minute walk so it is a great location too. Jude is going there as well and is enjoying it so much. There are a lot of kids in Nursery 1 but he is having a blast. I'm not quite sure what they have been doing but he did tell me they had bread with hot chocolate and they sang a butterfly song (that's all I've got from him so far). Below are a few photos of the first day: