Ice cream for the first time

The children at the Home just had two weeks off of school, they had their reports in for the last term, all but three did exceptionally well (we are moving the three back a class as they are struggling to understand). 4 kids got first and second out of their class, such a huge improvement from the start of the year when they could hardly speak a word of English. We we took them out for ice cream today (plus two kids that had the tidiest spaces). Only one of them had every had ice cream before so it was quite a day for them. Sakina kept shivering when she was eating it and I don't think Cidoni was impressed at all but all the others devoured theirs (as did I)!

Also had a very cool thing happen over the school break, we are friends with another orphanage about two hours away up in a village called Harvest Children's Home; they have been going for quite a few years and have 60+ children. Right now they they have an American guy volunteering for a few months, Justin. He's doing an awesome job of getting them organized, teaching the kids English and devotions, and nutrition (his area of expertise). Anyway, he suggested that 10 of his kids come and do a short "Mission's Trip" to Helping Hands Children's Home. We though it was a great idea and they came for three days. They laid a sidewalk, help put up a security light and taught our kids lots of songs and games and helped lead devotions. Our Children just loved it and haven't stopped singing the new songs. It was also great for our kids to see that children can make a difference and spread the love of Jesus too. We are hoping to return the favour in the near future.

One thing Justin mentioned was how impressed he was with the food we give our kids, the portion size, quality and the variety, in the village they get the same pretty much all the time. This is something we were really glad to hear as we strive very hard to make sure our children are getting good nutritious food, 3 times everyday.

Laying the sidewalk

Mixing cement

Their kids washed our kids' feet (and legs!)

We were able to give each of the children a new t-shirt as we had a lot shipped over in the truck

Let's see if this work's

So, we get our internet through Wycliff Translators here which has been a real blessing. But recently they just redid all the proxies (or something) and lots of website's have been blocked, to help save on bandwidth and anything inappropriate. Well it seems that my blog is one of those websites (not sure why), so try as I may I have not been able to get onto blogger.com, very frustrating! They guy that does all the internet stuff is in the capital and not sure when he will be back so until then it can't get fixed. So I just remembered that i can send email blogs out so we'll see if this works; hopefully I will be back up on the blogger by the end of the week.

Here is a short update on Godwill:

We praise Jesus that Godwill was released early from hospital as he has responded so well to his chemo treatments. The tumor in his face has already gone down! He was sick the first few days of treatment but since coming back home he has been running around everywhere and keeping up with the rest of the children. He has also been eating really well. Godwill still has to go back to the hospital for one more treatment and then for some check ups after that. Thank you so much for everyone that joined us in prayer and believing for his healing, all I can say is, "What a mighty God we serve!!"

 

Look at that smile :)

Please pray for Godwill!

We have a prayer request to share with you. Godwill, one of the children at Helping Hands Children's Home, was admitted into hospital today, Just over a month ago the side of his face started swelling. We took him to a dentist who pulled a tooth. The swelling went down a little after a few days. It started to bulge again after another two weeks but he said it wasn’t painful. We took him to a different dentist who said his teeth were fine but that he had a small infection so he was put on antibiotics. But still the swelling didn’t go down so we finally decided to take Godwill up to the Baptist hospital today where an American Doctor works. The doctor straight away diagnostic it as a tumor, Burkitt's Lymphoma, a cancer caused by the malaria parasite. He said that this type of thing is very common in the villages that Godwill is from and they have a special ward just for it.

He has been admitted into the hopital and will be there for three weeks while he undergoes his first round of chemotherapy. We will have a WON staff with him at all times. The hospital will cover all his medical costs as he is an orphan, a huge blessing! They have already treated over 500 of these cases and are extremly confident that he will make a full recovery. If Godwill was out in the village, he would never have received medical treatment and most likely it would have been fatal. We praise God that He brought little Godwill into our care!

Please join us in praying and believing that Godwill will make a full recovery and that the chemo won't be too hard on his little body. We praise God that He is Jehovah Rapha, the Healer of all our diseases!

Fun weekend

There's a couple in our neighbourhood that are of the Baha'i religion, he is American and She is from Iran. They've lived in Cameroon since the 70's and used to be school teachers and actually get a pension from the Cameroon government (which I'm still amazed at!). Anyway since moving up here we've been to their house a few times and we've had them over for dinner. She is an avid gardener so we often trade seeds and clippings. Anyway I had a free Friday afternoon (how did that happen?) this weekend so walked down to their house for a visit, I had a bunch of dill seeds I wanted to share. I ended up spending over an hour and half as we got in a really good discussion on "religion." I know very little about the Baha'i faith, only what they have told me but got a bit more insight into it. Basically they believe that all the religious leaders; Abraham, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Krishna, etc. where manifestations of God and that their Leader (Bahaum?) is the last one, that he's the second coming of Jesus that Christians are still waiting for. They don't believe that Jesus truly is God but say they believe in the Bible. So of course I pointed out some scriptures where it tells us He is God, and other's about his second coming. One of my biggest points was that if all the religions are from God, why are they so different? They say they're not and all point to one thing. I explained the Christianity is unique in the fact that we can't do anything to earn our way into heaven, we just have to accept what Jesus has done for us by faith, I can't make God love me anymore just because I pray, or do good things, as is the emphasis of other religions. God loved me while I was still a sinner. So anyway it was a good talk and I hope it gets them thinking. Praying the Light of Jesus will shine into their lives. Please keep them into your prayers.

Also we had all the kids from HHCH come over yesterday, as always it is a lot of fun. They played on the trampoline, with toys, raided my guava trees, looked at photos, we had a big meal out in the garden and the kids actually asked for seconds on salad! That is a first, it's something we have been making them eat at the home 3 times a week and at first they hated it, never having anything like that in the village. But they are really enjoying it now. Here's a few photos:

Jude and Bena out in the garden, munching on guavas

Seth teaching the boys how to play Connect 4

Legos and cars

Farming time is here!

WON got 10 more hoes for the Children's Home this week, it was really funny because the kids were so excited, they were all scrambling to get one! As all our children came from villages they're all expert farmers. As you can see from the photos that African hoes are a little different from western ones, but let me tell you, they sure can till up ground with them! I'm completely useless with them, (they hurt my back), but Seth is starting to the hang of them :).

We have a bit of farming land on the HHCH property but we really need some more. It helps us keep our food bill down as well as teach the children a valuable skill. Jake and Tim have visited the Fon (chief) of the area and have requested he let us use some land for farming... we're waiting for his reply. It is pretty normal for a Fon to do that, it would be great if we got the big field right behind the Home. There is a ministry in town that will come help us plant when we have more land and give us tips and techniques on farming, as well as give us seed. Please keep all of this in your prayers.

Kids with the new hoe handles

Putting the hoes on the handles

Trying to look very serious about their farming duties

Library Time

Here are some photos of our library time yesterday at the Children's Home. The children were so excited to run and get their books and exchange them for new ones. Not one child lost their book, I think that's pretty amazing as it was the first week! Even all the neighbourhood kids brought their books back and we got another two signed up.

We have two shelves so far, this is the easy book shelf; we're still teaching them how to put books back nicely on the shelf, something they've never done before.

This is the more advance shelf, we have a few kids that borrow books from here. We are believing one day the whole room will be filled with shelves and books!

Dorcas even gets to check out a book, how cute is she!

Checking out books; I make them read me the titles of the books they are checking out, some of them really struggle with this but have improved so much since coming.

Couldn't resist posting this one of Jude and Simon who's from our neighborhood. Simon is like our fourth son, he's always over the house, has sleep-overs, he's Josh and Seth's best friend even though he's 13. He loves the Lord and is a very sweet boy.

Land rover video

Jake finally manage to upload a the video of when we took the Land Rover up the Children's Home for the first time. Click below to check it out, it is pretty cool!

http://www.winournations.com/Win_Our_Nations/HHCHs_Blessing.html

Family News

The first children that we received into the Home were 3 siblings; Ocilia, Marvelous, and baby Bernadette. They came from a pretty desperate situation in a village. Their mother had died (they all had different dads who weren't in the picture) and they were living with their elderly grandmother. The grandmother had a serious leg wound that had basically eaten away her calf down to the bone. She was unable to walk or or care for the children who were basically just looking after themselves, running wild. We agreed to take the three kids but left the grandmother their oldest sister (14 years) to help look after her. We also gave her some money for meds for her leg. Jake and Tim went back about a month later to visit her and see how she was doing... her leg was the same and she didn't even asked how the children were (made my heart sad).

Last month we heard that the Grandmother was in a hospital about 45 mins away. Jake and Tim took Ocilia, Marvelous, and Bena to see her. She had been in the hospital for a few weeks, in preparation to have her leg amputated. She was so excited to see the children! Their oldest sister was there too and she was really excited as well. Marvelous who is about 5, didn't remember them but Ocilia did. They got to spend the whole day together, we're really happy they had that opportunity. Since then the Grandma has had her leg amputated and is doing really well. She will have to stay in the hospital for a few more weeks, praise God a family member from the SW is paying for her fees. We'll take the kids back to see her before she heads to the village. Please keep her in your prayers, that she will make a complete recovery, and will now be more mobile.

Grandma singing at the sight of her grandchildren

Ocilia with her big sister

Also we have a new cook at HHCH, we have been looking for quite a while now. Olive has been with us for about a month now and is doing a great job.

Portraits from my garden

Since the rains have come my garden has just taken off, everything is in bloom! It's amazing what three weeks of rain can do. I spent all of Saturday in the garden, one of my favourite pastimes.

I'm back!

Been having serious internet issues, but looks like they are all sorted out now. I've upload a bunch of pictures to Facebook of our two week home schooling session, click on link below to see them (you don't even have to be a facebook member)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48490&id=1080983117&l=69e4374aaa

It's great to be back to normal schedule though and to be doing kid's club again (I really missed all my kids!). We've had a few cases of chicken pox this last week at the children's Home and Dereck has got the mumps... looks like they are all on the mend now though. Keep them in your prayers.

Also we had out first library day on Tuesday at HHCH. The last team that was here got the room all painted. We had bought bookshelves a while ago so we got those all set up. We've had lots of books donated already, mostly from missionaries here but some people have even sent boxes from the States. We're starting off with library time on Tuesday evenings, everyone gets to choose two books (also got some neighbourhood kids coming). They were all so excited and had a great time choosing. We really want to nurture a love for books in our children, not a typical thing for most Cameroonian kids as they just don't have the opportunity to read much. Schools rarely have libraries and don't even provide text books for the children... so they only get them if their parents can afford them. I'm hoping to do a read aloud time each Tuesday too, we do need to get lights installed in the library and could use some mats or couches. It was very exciting though to see the kids so excited. I will get some pictures next week and post them.