Greetings from Lesotho!!
I have been here in Lesotho now for two weeks (along with my husband, Mark, and daughter, Tori), and I am so thrilled to report on the wonderful work I am seeing here!
Most of you know that in addition to our Crisis Care Shelter for victims of human trafficking, we began to care for orphans just a little over a year ago. The first 12 children that have been in our care now for one year are doing so well!! Mark, Tori and I will be having dinner with them tomorrow so I will be posting some videos and photos of our time together.
During this past year, we also started a small pre-school and elementary school for our children and the children are doing very well in their studies! The little pre-schoolers who had previously come from baby orphanages had never been to school before and could not even write their names. Now, they know their ABC’s, numbers and colors and are speaking English very well. They are so excited to learn about the weather! Like our home state of Oklahoma, there can be some very changeable weather here–cool mornings, hot afternoons and crazy, violent thunderstorms! I could have sworn that I saw tornado clouds the other day, but our friends assured us that there have been no tornados in Lesotho for 50 years! Anyway the children have fun changing the weather chart along with the many weather changes!
These children love their “Mami,” Selemeng!! Selemeng is one of our dedicated house mothers who is a member of Victory Church Maseru. Selemeng felt led and called by God to be the mother to eight of these children. She is a wonderful caring mother, and an excellent organizer of her household. Her children adore her. As you can imagine, being a mother of 8 former orphans does not allow her to work outside the home. That’s where we all come in. This is our part–to help care for these mothers and children. These children now have a mother and WE are their extended family!!
When God gave me the dream of a Lesotho mom with hurting children crying out, “Help Me!” I know that together we are helping to answer that call for help.
Thank you for your dedicated contributions to BDS!!! You are helping care for these future leaders of Lesotho.
Here are a couple of photos of one of our volunteers, Matthew Munger, and my husband, Mark, mentoring some young boys and teaching them how to help put together their new desks that your generous contributions helped to purchase!
For Healing,
Jennifer