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Category Archives: Africa

Reaching out to the Unseen …

This has been my labor of love for the past several days. I finally have it finished and published. Just watching the images again brings tears to my eyes. I miss these precious widows and orphans so much. One usually goes on a mission trip to serve someone else in need, but it is so true … the person going on the mission is the one hugely blessed by the journey. These women and children changed my life forever.

The incredible music you hear in this slideshow is by Casey Darnell. The title of this post is borrowed from his lyrics. I am a huge fan, so I am honored and thankful for his permission to use his songs on the slideshow. Thank you, Casey!

Please visit www.wiphan.org to learn more about how you can help these women and children. To read and see more of our journey to Zambia, just click on Categories above and choose Africa for all the posts.

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Life in America

Wow, what a week. I seriously underestimated the effects of jet lag. Adding that to the emotions of my trip, and I was physically and emotionally drained last week. Thanks to my amazingly patient husband and kids, hours and hours of sleep, and some incredibly dear friends, I have felt better day by day in the last week.

I asked my friend Melissa if I could share the email she sent me. It came at just the right moment last week and helped me tremendously in processing the feelings I had after coming home.

Hi dear friend,
I’ve never come home from Africa, from the level of poverty that you witnessed.  But I’ve come home after living away from this place for months or a year somewhere completely different, and it was never easy.  When I moved home for the last time, in 2007 just before Randy and I got married, I sometimes thought my heart was going to break.  I was running around registering for expensive wedding gifts, and while I absolutely knew that this was where God wanted me and where I wanted to be, HERE just felt so very foolish to me sometimes.

My little coping strategy made everyone laugh, but it was serious to me.  I marveled at how quickly I could do laundry here, and would say, “God bless America!”  I was overwhelmed by the choices of just where we could eat for dinner – “God bless America!”  I had to keep repeating this to myself and out loud, to remind myself that there were many things here that were easier – sure – and that I now lived in a place with very fertile soil, literally and figuratively.  I had to tell myself many times that this place was not better or worse, that the OTHER place wasn’t better or worse – just very, very different.

I don’t know why God picked me to be born here, to my parents, and some other girl to be born in eastern Europe.  That puzzled me for a while.  But I came to realize that God’s grace is all over – a great “fairness” leveler.  A sweet layer of God’s grace was spread all over the orphans you met, through you and others at Wiphan.  He has allowed you to see his grace in action somewhere else, and it has broken your heart.  That’s AWESOME.  And you got to be a part of it!  His grace is in action right here, too – not through our wealth (don’t you wonder just a little if our wealth is truly a blessing after what you’ve seen?), but through each other.  Just like in Africa.  And you’re a part of that HERE more than you can imagine.

I received another email during my trip that brought tears to my eyes. It is from a very sweet client and friend, who also gave me permission to share it here …

Just wanted to let you know that I am thinking about you and following your blog.  The girls are following it with me and have been very touched by all of the pictures.  As you might imagine (since I am certain you will be answering the same ones for your daughter), they are asking a zillion questions.  The picture of Fostina’s house really shocked them with the blanket to sleep on the floor, and we talked for about an hour afterwards about how so many children aren’t lucky like they are (why doesn’t she have a bed, mommy?  why is her house dirty?  why doesn’t it have a potty?  where is her mommy?).

In honor of your experience and because you have moved us and the girls so deeply with your words and your pictures, we would like to sponsor a Wiphan child.  So, if you happen to come across any in your travels who touch you and are in need of a sponsor, please let me know.  I would absolutely love to find a child for us to sponsor that you have actually met and hugged for us so that you can tell the girls about him or her and where s/he lives.

Both of these emails, and others I received offering prayers and encouragement, made my experience in Africa even more meaningful. It helped me realize that I wasn’t just traveling with the 9 people on the team, but with hundreds of friends who were invested in my time there, invested in the lives of those I met through their prayers and support. I am so blessed to be united with loving hearts like these, who traveled with me in spirit, and who care as I do to share their abundant blessings and make a difference for someone less fortunate. Thank you all.

If you would like to sponsor a Wiphan child, please click here.

I’m going back today and adding images to my posts from abroad, where my computer troubles and sporadic internet access got in the way of sharing the photographs along the way. I hope you will go back and see some of the beautiful faces I had the pleasure to see.

I’m also wrapping up a slideshow from my journey. I’ll be posting that here as soon as it is ready!

Much love,
Shannon

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Home

We are home. Over 26 hours of travel from Livingstone, Zambia to Atlanta, Georgia. The sun chased us home, finally catching up with our plane as we landed just before dawn yesterday. To see my children running toward me at the airport, to hug my husband at last, was exhilarating. And yet, to say that I am exhausted is an understatement. I know all of our team is. I finally crashed into bed about 6 p.m. yesterday and slept solid for 12 hours.

But even more than my physical exhaustion, my emotional exhaustion has me drained. I had hoped to write a moving, maybe even inspiring post today, summarizing my experience in Africa. But now I know that I can’t summarize it. I can’t even put words together this morning, not the words I’d like. All I can say is that I am still processing. I arrived home with an overwhelming mix of emotions, some I never expected to feel, and my heart is sore this morning. It has been broken, not by someone, but for someone. Here I am, home with my husband and kids, home where I should feel safe, even elated, where I should feel like “me”. But I’m finding that I don’t know who Me is. I knew this trip would be life changing. I naively failed to realize how that change would leave me feeling so unfamiliar within my own skin.

I scheduled these next couple of days off work, thank God. I will be spending them with my family. I’m not checking emails or returning voice mails until Wednesday. Clients and friends, I thank you for your patience. I just need this time to rest, recharge, and redefine. The staff, women, and children at Wiphan have a responsorial saying. “God is good all the time … all the time, God is good.” I’m focusing on that this week. It certainly has new meaning for me.

For now, I can say this:

The world got much smaller for me these past ten days, and God got much, much bigger. I will never be the same. Life will never be the same.

The stars over Zambia.

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Children raising children

Each of our visits to one of the villages attracted a crowd of children who followed us sometimes for a mile or more. Most if not all of our little followers were very young children. It is hard to estimate their ages, because lacking adequate nutrition, they don’t grow like our kids do. Time and time again, I was shocked by the answers I got when I asked a child how old she was. Dozens of kids I met, who seemed smaller and younger than my own 3 year old daughter at home, told me they were 5, 6 or even 7 years old.

Without a doubt, the kids who followed us could not have been more than 7 or 8 years old. Many were only toddlers. We saw many 4 or 5 year olds with babies in a sling on their backs.

One immediately wonders how all these very young children are running around without supervision. It is simply this culture. The mothers must work, so the children are left on their own every day.

As the 10, 20, or 30 kids trailed us on our walks, they would clamor to be the first one to hold our hands. Usually we each had a child holding both of our hands, while some held onto our sleeve or shirttail.

Not only are they left on their own, but the older children must care for their younger siblings while their mother is gone, sometimes all day. On one of our walks, we spotted a pair of kids, the oldest probably 3 or 4 years old, holding a baby on her lap. She was patting the baby’s cheeks and had her arms around his belly. They were all alone in the middle of a dirt field.

On another day, just on the edge of the Mapalo School grounds, we saw three babies together. The oldest might have been 2 years old. The other two babies were only crawling, so they must have been under a year old. The toddler found something on the ground and we watched as he divided it and shared it with the two babies to eat. It looked like styrofoam.

The hazards for children in the villages makes their lack of supervision even more alarming. There are many wells that are just open holes in the ground, a foot or more in diameter with no rail or fence around them, like the one we saw at Fostina’s house. A baby or toddler could slip through the hole in an instant. Charcoal being the main source of cooking in the villages, there are pits and containers of smoldering charcoal scattered in and around the homes. I was told that the primary injuries treated at the local children’s hospital are burns on kids who played too close to these pits and either fell in or caught their clothing on fire.

Kidnapping is a problem as well. There are stories of relatives snatching older children to care for their own babies while they work, or to work as extra hands on a farm, etc. School enrollment declines over time. Whether the cause is kidnapping or the mother herself keeping the child home, some older kids are told they must babysit rather than attend school. Wiphan is working hard on a solution to this decline. Educating the mothers about the importance of educating their children is an important step.

And in far too many cases, children become mothers themselves. A girl is often married by the time she is 14 or 15 years old, and pregnant soon after. Their husband is usually 5 to 10 years older. That thought causes a pit in my stomach. Fostina is 13 years old. To think she could be married and pregnant in the next year or two is heartbreaking.

We were invited to the home of one of the widows in the Wiphan Skills Training Class. Her name is Charity. When we arrived at her home, we met her beautiful and tiny baby, Jane, who is 7 months old. Jane was cuddled in a sling on Charity’s hip. Charity lives in a rented home for which she pays approximately $3 per month. It was a single room home, about 10×10 feet square.  The roof of her home was made only of plastic grocery bags between wooden slats. She had a mattress for her and the baby. Her older children sleep on the dirt floor. When her husband died about six months ago of tuberculosis, his family came and took most of Charity’s belongings – her furniture, plates, bedding, etc. – and left her and her young children on the street. This is a common occurance when a man dies in this culture, called “property grabbing.” Charity is now selling sweet potatoes to support her family, and she is learning jewerly-making in Wiphan’s program.

In addition to her baby, Charity has a 6 year old and a 2 year old. Charity is a widow and single mother of three kids.

Charity is 19 years old.


This is Charity and her baby, Jane.

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