God protects the widows and ORPHANS! (Week 24)

I talked last blog about three orphans that we had found. Well this week was me and another volunteer basically trying to find out how to help them and give them a safe place to stay! On Monday, Betty, a volunteer, and myself went and did a home visit to the children's home. They were staying with a neighbor the last time Betty had met them but since then they had returned to living on their own. They lived in a one room house with a bed and a little table. They had a little bag of food, no electricity or water. So we took them to the office. We talked with Alban, MYC's social worker, and he said we had to go to the Social Welfare Department in Manzini. So I went with the children and tried to talk with them about the orphans but they had an emergency they were dealing with so we had to come back the next day. So we went back to the office and I had to send the kids home to nothing. We gave them food and bus fare home but I don't know if I've ever felt more helpless in that moment. If I was in America, those kids would've been in foster care right away. On Tuesday, I went back and talked with the head of the department and he told me to bring the kids back with him on Thursday so he could talk with them. So that is another two days of them on their own. So after lunch on Tuesday, Betty and I took the kids some food to last them until Thursday. On Wednesday, was a relaxed day. I was in the office all day and really just needed a day where nothing stressful happened! So, finally on Thursday we took the kids to the social welfare department. The 3 kids were interviewed by the social worker, he wanted to check all the facts, just in case anything got mixed up because of the language. Their older brother also showed up to verify facts and be in on the decision of how to help the children. The brother has some sort of mental health instability and only has jobs here and there so he was unable to take the children. So through all of the conversation and all the facts being verified, the social worker decided that these children needed to be placed and asked if MYC was able to take them in. We shared the plan with him that they could stay in McCorkindales, our orphanage over the holidays until the kids who went home started to return and when the girl's home opened the two sisters would move there and the boy would move to one of the boy's home that was closer. The brother was okay to have them in care and for them to be together. Once the holidays are over we will need to return to the social welfare department and inform them of our plans for the kids. So once we received their approval of placing the children, we had to return to MYC office and talk with our head of social welfare. After, explaining to him the situation and him sharing the difficulties of bringing in more children he finally agreed to bring the children in to the orphanage. So they were placed there on Thursday afternoon. It was such a huge burden off my shoulders to know that they would be safe. The whole week was a real test for me. We had to go through the steps of the system and be patient with how slow everything works here. It was a huge challenge to not worry about these kids and be able to give them over to God and know that he would protect him. I didn't really have a choice though. I had to trust that God would take care of them because if I didn't I would have been a wreck! He really gave me peace about the situation and giving it to him was the best thing I could have done! It was a great end to the week.

Lastly, on friday, I went and saw the girls home. It is coming along and pretty close to being done. I am having some of the older MYC boys help paint and help outside. So it was cool to go see them working on friday and see how far along things are going! 

Some of the boys painting.

Bath tub becoming a shower.