We're out of here!

We leave within the hour. Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us up to this point. Keep it up. We are going to need it. But the pieces are falling together. We have work to do and a place to stay now for the second half of the trip! Thank you Lord!

• For those that want the general details: We will be in Soroti starting Jan 25th working with Amecet n'ainapakin (Shelter of Peace) who is a part of YWAM.
• For those that want more details: Here is an excerpt of the e-mail we got yesterday from Amecet.

Our project is mainly for children infected/affected with HIV/AIDS. The majority of the children that we work with are total orphans, whose parents have died of AIDS. Amecet isn't a orphanage in the conventional sense of the word. Children come for a short term stay of 2-3 months and then they go back to their village to be cared for by the family. We believe the best place for the children is with their families and not in a home. During their stay in Amecet the children receive good medical care, treatment and plenty of good food. Once a child has returned to the village we closely monitor them through home visits and encourage/advise the families in the care of the children. A lot of children we work with have also been diagnosed with TB, so they continue medication at home, monitored by us.

For some children Amecet is the place where they come in their final stages of their disease, so there are children that have died here. We believe that that is also part of what God has given to us to do, as painful as it is. For some children Amecet is a doorway to heaven. When we began in December 2001 we were with 3 fulltime staff, at the moment we have 9 fulltime staff, but we have 3 fulltime helpers, who also live here, and 3 other fulltime helpers, who come in during the days to help. Then we have people who help us with the cooking, cleaning, laundry and the garden. We have mostly around 18 children here, but the highest number has been 21. The eldest child we've had was 13 years old and the youngest was 3 hours old! So there is diversity!
We are a short term help house, but we have seen that when the children go back to their families, they are much better cared for. We have had also quite a number of children who were proved to be HIV-, even both parents had died from AIDS. Those children were also sickly due to the lack of care and the relatives all thought that they had the same sickness as the parents. When we bring them back with the good news, they are very happy and we know that those children have a chance now to live.

Recently we have got several older children (age 6-12) who had AIDS, some have been very sick, close to death. When we were able to get them a bit fair, we realised that Anti viral drugs is the only chance for them to live. But it is important to take those medicins on the right time. Most of those older children were not welcome in the families of the relatives, or old grandmothers care for them. They can't give the medicines. That made us to buy another plot of land, nearby our present house. There we built ‘Amecet n’amun’ (shelter of hope) a house for the older children who are on the ARVs but can't go home. Since July 2006 there live 10 children as a family. It is such a joy to see children who were so close to death, now running around, go to school and enjoy the fact that they are alive!!

We also get newborn babies, their mother died after the delivery and the family doesn't know what to do with those very vulnerable little ones. Some of the mothers die shortly after the birth, because of HIV/AIDS. The babies are often also infected and doing very poorly. We have almost always sick children and a child can just get sick very fast.

We have 8 hour shifts and we work 6 days a week. We do make long days, that why it is important that you love children and that you have a commitment towards the work. As a volunteer you will be working together with our Ugandan staff and be involved in the care for the children. We always have a lot of babies, so bathing, feeding and changing diapers will be a big part of the work. Also playing with the toddlers, who are mostly very behind in their development. There is also a possibility to go with us on home visits in the villages.