With a beep this morning at 8:30, our power was out. But today, that was the last thing on our mind because we were off to Loving Hearts Baby Home. We were welcomed again with the warmest of welcomes, as it always is here (maybe it’s the heat). We toured the home, which was very nice. Finding the babies was not difficult;their noise echoed through the halls. While the rest of the team went immediately to playing with them, Erika and I hung up laundry while Andrew cut wood. Unfortunately, since the power was out, we were not able to do our original job of ironing (I am the ironing master!). But after awhile, we followed the noise back to the babies again.
The babies’ ages varied from two weeks old to two and a half years old. These children have either been abandoned, or they have lost their parents. We were interested to hear that of the 19 children at Loving Hearts, only 6 were girls. Girls are much more frequently adopted than boys, so most of the boys were older. But regardless of gender or age, all were energetic. Calen hung out with a boy for awhile that was a miniature version of himself; climbing windows and doing flips (with a bit of help, obviously). Irene was a hit with William, singing “The Grand Old Duke of York” in a voice not possible to reproduce online. It upset me to see a little girl struggling to breathe, probably suffering from pneumonia. What really stuck with me, though, was a two-week-old boy, weighing five pounds at most, who was so hungry that he devoured his bottle in one gulp. I held him for a long time.
The power came back on at 5:30, which we were thankful for. Yet, our special experience today with those wonderful children taught us to be thankful for a lot more than electricity.
