Orphanage Visit

This past Saturday, we were invited to have lunch with some missionaries at the House of Moses, an orphange in Lusaka. Since Ricky was not feeling well, just Coby, Kelsey and I (Niki) attended. We got to meet a lot of new friends and were able to hold the babies and play with the toddlers. I'm guessing this home has about 30 children. I counted the babies from 0-6 months and there were 12. The toddlers are between 6 months and 24 months, and I didn't count them. Some of these children have a parent at home, maybe a father since the mother died in childbirth or from something else. Since they are still nursing from the bottle, and the father is too poor to take care of the baby, he/she remains at the House of Moses until the baby is older and the father is able to take care of him/her. Some of the children do not have any parents, and so they are either adopted or taken in as foster children to a loving home. I was able to talk a good bit with the lady in charge and she explained some to me on how their organization works. Kelsey and I were able to hold a couple of babies that were only weeks old. One of them was sick with a fever and thought to have malaria. In the toddler room, I picked up a little girl who was crying, and immediately she stopped, but she clang to me and would not let go. It was hard leaving her, but we have decided to return as often as we can. The kids are looking forward to going to the orphanage once a week to love on these babies. This organization, Alliance for Children Everywhere, has 3 separate homes in Lusaka for children. You can read about them on their website:
http://www.childreneverywhere.org/
I had my camera, but there were strict rules about picture taking. Maybe later they will allow me to take some pictures. Their website has a good many pictures and links to other sites as well. We are hoping to visit some other orphanges in the near future. This is definitely something that we can do while in Zambia.