Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Yes, ALL the donations were delivered!!!!

I had the privilege of delivering ALL the donations we collected to three orphanages in Ethiopia.

Kingdom Vision International (KVI) is the orphanage where Seth lived. KVI has three locations: Addis Ababa, Adama (Nazareth) and Wolaita. The picture on their homepage is the court yard of KVI Addis. I brought donations with me to KVI Adama, about 200 km south of Addis, when I met Seth.

Faya Orphanage (and Vulnerable Children Society) supports children with and without HIV. Faya is located in Adama and the orphanage is home to children abandoned due to poverty or relinquished by loving families who could not provide for their children, and is the permanent home of many children living with HIV/AIDS. Faya also supports a House 2 House community program, which provides care to children and families affected by AIDS/HIV in the community. My favor moment at Faya was when we were about to leave and two little twin boys, about 3-years-old, were playing in the van we came in and they refused to get out of the van - They were having so much fun pretending to drive. Finally, they had to be carried off in protest. They were so sweet - I wanted to let them play in there all afternoon.

AHOPE for Children is an orphanage located in Addis Ababa that serves children infected with HIV. Many of the children are adopted by families in the United States and some to Spain. I went with the other Imagine families I met and we were able to play and interact with the children for quite some time. We brought along candy for the children, which made us all BIG hits!!! My favor moment was when I showed the children pictures of Seth, Chad, and Sara - I was literally swarmed by children, all wanting to look at and hold the pictures. They would point to each picture and say "Chad-Canada. Sara-Canada. Biruk-Ethiopia." over and over as they examined each photo. It was a lot of fun! I have many pictures from AHOPE, but unfortunately I am unable to share them publicly; but I thought this one couldn't hurt - it was my favorite time with all the kids when we were looking at the pictures...

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