These last few months Nathanael and Sharon, along with a great team of people, have been visiting the God is Love Orphanage about 1 hours drive away from the ship. It's actually not too far away but when you figure in the Conakry traffic the drive takes a little longer.
(Nathanael with crew member friend)
The orphanage is run by Pastor Michael and his wife, (Michael from Sierra Leone and his wife from Liberia) who both came to Guinea as a result of the civil wars in both countries. Naturally we have connected with them easily having visited both of their countries. Another plus is that they speak English and so communicating has been easier.
(thank you to crew member Lianna for this photo)
Visiting these 22 delightful children is a highlight of the week. We play games, sing songs, hear bible stories and get crafty with the paper and scissors and it has been a great introduction to teach Nathanael how to give back to others.
(thank you to crew member Lianna for this photo)
The ages range from 4 months old to 15 years and there have been times when they have found kids who are just skeletons and they have lovingly brought them back to health. They totally rely on God to supply their needs. With not much money coming in, Pastor Michael goes knocking on the supermarket doors asking for food to feed the children, so for this time we are glad that we can help get some things going that will help them for the future.
Teaching Cat's Cradle which we continued playing for an hour! She picked it up really well.
Higher Higher Lift Jesus Higher song
Story time.
One of Pastor Michaels dreams was to have a website, the more he asked about it, the more people wanted to charge him to create and maintain one. Meanwhile whilst some of our team go buying food, others try to renovate things at the house, Sharon designs a webpage for them. With the easy use of blogger it seemed a great solution which could potentially reach the far corners of the earth and spread the word of the God is Love Orphanage. We will also be adding a donate button at a later date so people can give to the amazing cause. So watch this space and we'll let you know when it's up and running.
It was fun to share Christmas with them too. We created a big nativity scene with toilet roll people, camels, angels, sheep, you name it, it was in there. We used leaves to cover the stable and it was great to share about the birth of Jesus. Following a kind donation from a crew members friends in Holland we were able to put together Christmas presents for every child. It was a joy to see the delight on their faces when they opened them all up.
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