Praying our children home

Every Wednesday we are joining others in praying for our children in Liberia. Please go to this blog to get more details: http://respondinginfaith.wordpress.com/
Thank you!

Orphans and Widows in Rwanda

The following is an excerpt from a newsletter I receive from Nancy Campbell from Above Rubies. I thought you may find it interesting and encouraging.

RWANDA PROJECT

When I was speaking at the Oregon Ladies' Above Rubies Retreat in November last year, I met a brother from Rwanda. I loved his vision for Rwanda. Instead of setting up orphanages for all the orphans after the terrible genocide in Rwanda, he is putting an orphan child with a widow and finding finance to provide the widow to help with the orphan. In this way, it gives a ministry to the widows and the children are in a home rather than an orphanage. The following letter tells more about it.

Pastor Emmanuel Sitaki Kayinamura, a survivor of the Genocide, was born in Ngoma-Butare in Rwanda, Central Africa. In 1992 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Management in Kinshasa, Rep. of Congo. He is the Founder and President of Evangelical Revival Ministries (ERM). He writes:

Rwanda is a country of 20 percent of orphans and widows, because of the genocide in 1994.The biggest challenges people face on a daily basis is getting enough food to eat. This is especially true for the widows and those affected by HIV/Aids, where the medicines they are taking are so potent that they must be taken with food. ERM wants to get the food and crops into the hands of those who need it both for sustenance and financial benefit.

We also want to teach our widows and orphans how to farm and care for crops in order to be self-sufficient and have the food that they need to eat. Getting the crops grown to market is a very profitable undertaking. Today ERM is helping children who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. With no family to take care of them they bear the financial burden of supporting themselves. There are also widows who lost their husbands due to HIV infected with HIV/AIDS. Many women were infected during the genocide by interahamwe (militia) soldiers who raped them spreading the disease as another form of harm, or killing, during the genocide.

Today many of these women struggle to just find enough food to eat. Many of these widows can get the medicine they need to survive easier than they can get food. The government provides the medicines to keep the HIV/AIDS semi under control, but if they cannot get enough healthy nutritional foods the medicine can be as harmful as the disease itself, and many have died from taking the medicines without having the right balanced diet. They need both the medicine and a stable nutritional diet. Many of the widows do not have the skills to provide themselves with enough income to obtain their daily needs.

ERM's helping to train widows with skills and knowledge to start a small business (giving those loans & credit) for income generating activities. Coupled with other financial services such as savings and insurance, this allows them to become financially self-sufficient. One hundred percent of all loans are repaid in full confirming the validity of the program and the value of self-sufficiency.

Through this program people are enabled to better provide for their basic needs such as nutrition, education, health care and housing for themselves and their families rather than needing a handout. We have started on a project providing widows with selected goats as a source of income, milk, and food. One goat cost $30.00.

We're praying to get people who can also help a widow directly by supporting them with a donation of $40 a month. The donation provides food, health care, and housing expenses.

May God bless you, Emmanuel Sitaki, manukay@gmail.com

Emmanuel also has children that are available for adoption. You can contact him about this.

We got it!!!!!

Our homestudy was mailed out on the 2nd of February and we got back our approval letter on the 14th! That my friends is unbelievably FAST! So at this point everything is done on this side except gathering a few documents for our dossier. Now we wait on Liberia.
The closure on adoptions should only be temporary. I know they are working on getting it up and running with the new reforms in place soon. This is such a good thing they are doing!
To God be the Glory!
Ami

Another Answer to prayer

Ami's DCS Clearance came on Friday afternoon. This means our homestudy can be mailed off Monday February 2, 2009!!!!!