girls day... shopping and babies

so yesterday I wasn't able to update the blog because currently I'm fighting a cold so I wasn't feeling too great by the end of the day and went straight to bed. for someone who hardly gets sick, I sure picked a great time this year. yesterday, we were given the morning to rest and relax here at the house. a lot of people did laundry, read, wrote, talked, or just took it slow to regroup and process the past week. in the afternoon, we went into town to do a little shopping at the African markets. really neat stuff and I wanted to buy one of everything. fortunately they only take shillings so I didn't go too crazy. after we bought some souvenirs, we went to sanyu babies home where 48 kids ages 0-4 live. these kids were abandoned by their families and now must live fighting for attention and affection. there's only 24 of us on the team so it was impossible to please all of these kids. it's heartbraking seeing kids cling on to you, call you mama, hog attention and cry when you try to put them down or pick up a second. all of them just need love and with only a few staff members, how could that ever be possible? they had towels for diapers or nothin at all and were on a strict schedule for feeding and changing. there were several autistic children that I fell in love with. one boy, Watson, stuck by me for most of the day. he called me mama and was playing with whatever was around. this whole trip has been about moments of joy through the heart wrenching experiences and this was a very extreme example of that. when we had to leave I almost thought it would have been better if we never went. seeing them have to be left behind by new faces just made me wish that someone would come and stay. someone would take one home. someone would love them. a few of our teammates went to the hospital for the day because as we've been doing medical clinics, we've been finding some critically ill that we've felt the need to take to the hospital. we had one boy with cancer, another girl with a cyst on her forehead that was not properly drained before so now needing surgery so she can regain vision. another little 3 week year old baby with no rectum and a hole in his side where his intestines would dump out. the clinics have been really neat but also very sad to see. so many sick and unable to get treatment or any kind of help. it's amazing to see the love and willingness of our team to help any and all that they can. God's characteristics are shining through this team and it's so neat to be apart of.