I have to apologize for the silence, you were all tracking with us last week as we held our breath waiting for word from Lale and the child rescue he was attempting.  When we finally did hear from him he had tragic news for us, the two families had disappeared into the bush and no one knew where they were. At that same time the long awaited car was finally finished and we did what we had to, we loaded it up with our family and some hurriedly packed bags and made the two day trek south. Lale said that the chances were that the kids were already killed but there was a possibility that he may be able to get to them in time.  We raced our way down through the rain and over washed out roads to met Lale in Jinka where he continued on in the car to try and find the families.  He came back with the news that we were all fearing, both children had been killed, the elders found them hiding in the small town and brought them back out to the village where they killed both babies.  He was able to make contact with another family who said they would bring a child to the market this coming week that they had been hiding, we are praying that they actually are able to make it.

This has to be the hardest part about being over here, we are often so close but miss a child rescue.  There are more than 130,000 people in these tribes that practice mingi and its not always possible to be at the right place at the right time.  We know that God is in charge and knows the pain these families are going through right now.  The good news is that there is now a good strong car ready and waiting and we will be out the door the second we hear of a child in need of rescue.

Today instead of focusing on the tragedy of these two kids, we are going to celebrate the ones that we did rescue.  We now have Beanium living with our family, he is about 2 months old and the sweetest little boy you ever met.  He is a fighter, for the first 9 days of his life he only had water to drink as the tribal elders would not allow his mother to feed him. But now after only 6 weeks in the orphanage he is strong and has a bright future ahead of him.   Its stories like Beanium’s and his strength, that we need to focus on when days like this come up.

The week is just getting going on this side of the planet and I wanted to sit down for a second and catch up on things around here, lots of randomness so I am going to revert to bullet points.

• The rental car is supposed to be finished at the shop today and we will finally be able to get out to rescue the two kids we heard about.  This has to be one of the hardest things about running an orphanage in such a remote location, nothing seems to work properly and always takes longer than you planned…
• The newest addition to the orphanage is a little two month old boy named Vineum and he is quite small. He is the one who I mentioned came to us in early June and was 10 days old at the time.  We are trying to get enough nutrition in him to help him grow but he is still very small and fragile.  Often these kids are born from mothers who are malnourished and it makes the first months of their lives a struggle. Vineum seems like he will make it, but its never easy to see such a small baby.
• Sometime today we will know if we are going to get license plates on the new car.  Its now been four months since we received the donation for the purchase and it will not come a moment to soon.
• Micah and Emily are in Jinka with their kids and have been working on getting the existing orphanage in better shape. Today Micah is working on getting a water tank purchased and installed in the orphanage so that we will have water all the time, even when the city water is turned off. We are using the funds raised from the Riverbend Charity Carnival to make these much needed improvements to the children’s home. Its likely going to be a long process to install the tower and tank system, but its definitely well worth the effort.
• School is out and the older kids are running around the place like mad, its easy to see that they miss the structure and routine of school. Its time to break out the Play Dough!
• Donations are coming in nearly every day from the Amazon wish list and its super exciting!  Problem is its all in America and we are all the way over in Ethiopia, we are now looking for ways to get it all over to this side of the planet. If you happen to be heading this way and have some room in your bags send us an email and let us know!
• You may have noticed that we are now talking about Ethiopia and Jinka (The little town we are in) on the blog again. Its because we finally have an official letter from the government that allows us to talk about the work we are doing here.  This helps a ton as it was kind of weird not being able to say where we live…

Ok thats all I have this morning.  More soon….

Levi