Orphanage

We recently visited the local orphanage.  Not sure how many kids there, but Allie and Natalie fell in love with them.  They immediately started making plans to return on a regular basis to minister to the kids there.

We have found out that most of the kids have mothers, but don't have fathers.  In this culture, someone without a father is an "orphan" because the mother has no means to care for the child.  These children eat meals at the orphanage but take supper to their mother and stay with her at night.  This way the mother is still involved in their lives, but does not have the burden of providing food for the children.  The proceeds from the chicken farm we blogged about earlier goes to support the work of the orphanage.

These pictures are from one of our visits there when Cindy and the girls presented a puppet show about the adventures of Noah.  They had a great time planning it, making the props AND working the puppets.  They can't wait to go back and actually want to make it a weekly ministry.  The other girls you see in the picture are Emily and Abbie Hewitt.  Their parents are Earl and Mona Hewitt, the long-term missionary-doctor family that we have known for almost 20 years.  They were instrumental in getting us to Ghana.

When we left, a lot of the girls wanted a ride closer to their homes so they piled in the back of our borrowed truck and we headed home, letting them out one by one whenever they yelled for us to stop!  Perhaps a "bus ministry" in the making ??

  "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  

to look after orphans and widows in their distress 

and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

James 1:27

Following . . . .