One girl's scraps are another girl's cool beans!

If Jesus were once again in human form and visited the orphanage in Kimbondo, I wonder what He would do there.  Would He walk straight to the infirmary and begin healing all those kids with HIV, tuberculosis, ringworm, scabies, and malnutrition? Would He walk to the gardens and make them grow bigger and better vegetables? Would He send all the staff on a much needed vacation, saying "you go on and get some rest, I've got this covered?" Would  He teach in the chapel?


Would He play with the kids? Tickle their dirty little feet and kiss their ringworm laden heads? Pick up the crying ones and sing to the sleepy ones? I think He would!

We've been to the orphanage a few times since I last wrote about the kids there.  Yesterday while I was there, I mentioned to Nori, one of the volunteers, that the kids were unusually subdued.  She said it was partly because some of them had colds and partly because she had managed to get the key to the toy closet and they had toys to occupy them. They weren't subdued, they were calm.

That's Nori on the left, holding Emmanuel.  Emmanuel is almost always happy and easy going, but he was crying because Nori was trimming his fingernails, which he really dislikes.


That's Charmande sitting on my lap.  She peed on me that day. She peed on me  yesterday too. I still love you, Charmande.




People donate toys to the orphanage fairly often, but the toys are quickly loved to death.  It takes a tough toy to stand up to forty or so preschoolers.

Recently, someone gave to me a couple of big bags of scrap fabric.  Another friend brought me polyfill from the states a while back. Another friend (yep, I have lots of friends, lucky me!) found a pattern for me to make a plush ball. This morning I managed to whip out this prototype in half an hour, from printing the pattern and rounding up supplies to getting it all put away afterward. It's far from perfect, but the kids won't care, the ball is too soft to be made into a weapon (important) and it's washable. I probably won't take it to the orphanage until I've made several more so that there will be plenty to go around.


This is very cool beans!  Toys here are poorly constructed and cost a fortune. This cost me very little, just some thread and my time. I often have to take away tiny parts of broken toys, that I find in the toddlers' mouths. These should hold up pretty well and there are no buttons or anything for them to pull off and stick into their mouths.