It occurs to me now that this was the moment that Sarah made the disparaging comment about the amount of travel. She just couldn't believe that we were climbing back into those vehicles, and I suppose it didn't make a whole lot of sense to any of us until we made our way down a dirt street in falling darkness and came upon a lighted courtyard full of bright smiling faces eagerly awaiting our arrival.
The Happy Home is a home for HIV infected and affected children. It is run by a man and his wife who were inspired to open the home after adopting a child with HIV. The founder, with John Mark helping the translation, told the story of how his wife and he came to adopt that child who had been abandoned because of the burden of the disease and lack of hope for his future. He told how he had come to realize that there were many children in his new child's position; children who had lost their homes to HIV because they themselves were infected; because a parent was infected and couldn't care for them; or because they had lost a parent to the disease. While other looked at these children as hopeless cases, he had great hope for them and was inspired to do everything he could to give them a safe and secure future.He told us about how he found a place to rent 14 years ago, so that he would have space to take more children in and how, for the next fourteen years, he was forced to move these children from place to place because they were repeatedly kicked out by landlords when they discovered he was sheltering children with HIV. He beamed as he related the joy he felt when he realized that he had finally raised enough money to purchase the building and courtyard we were now in. That purchase had finally given his children the permanence he had wanted to provide them for all these years; it had finally given them a home.
We traveled a total of 8 1/2 hours on a bus that day to get this chance to visit the Happy Home, and it was worth every second.
No comments:
Post a Comment