ONE

Monday morning this past week we decided that we needed to get out of the apartment. We were going stir crazy!   We ran some errands and did some shopping to bring supplies to the baby home where Anita had been.  We delivered sugar, flour, eggs, fruit, laundry soap and some other much needed food items for them.  We spent some time with the babies, who all just cling to anyone who offers any attention whatsoever.   It is a very sad place!

Many of the babies that they have at this particular orphanage are unadoptable.  They have a family member who will not sign them over so that they can be adopted.  The family does not want them but they refuse to allow these children a chance at a better life.  So, here they sit every day until they are moved up the system to homes that take older children until they turn 18!  Some of the reasoning for this could be religion (Muslims do not believe in adoption), some corruption (the families are hoping for money), or possibly just for lack of understanding.  It is very, very sad.

The workers do a good job managing the 24 babies, but they are hurting for supplies.  The children play outside in the dirt with broken toys, soda bottles and sticks.  There is no purpose to their play.  It is simply survival.  They are dirty. Most of them smell.  When you pick them up you are more than likely to put them down only to find a stain of some sort of body fluid still clinging to you.  But, that does not stop you from picking up the next one.  There was one child (I do not even know if it was a boy or a girl because they all share the same clothes) who would not stop clinging to my leg.  Whenever I would put "it" down he would return, clinging and crying, looking up at me with those big brown eyes pleading to take him away from there.  My heart broke.  All I could do was hold him and love him for the time I was there. I cooed at him, held him, rocked him, smiled at him and before leaving I prayed God's blessing over him. I do not know the plans that God has for that little life. I pray for something so much more than what he knows to be his life right now.

It breaks my heart for him, but more than that it breaks my heart to know that he is only ONE.  ONE orphan who will never know the joy of a forever family. ONE orphan who will never have his boo-boos kissed. ONE orphan who will never have a birthday party.  ONE orphan who will never be tucked in and kissed good-night.  You may say, "yeah, so he's only ONE. What is the big deal?"  The big deal is that he is ONE orphan out of 163 million!!!

The problem seems so huge and so helpless.   I am so thankful that God has given us the opportunity to love on not just ONE, but FIVE of His precious children and that these beautiful faces won't be ONE more lost soul in the sea of orphans around our world: