It’s been a very difficult year with our decision to not accept babies due to lack of funding and full-to-overflowing homes. We have turned away too many to count, and then the calls stop coming because the social welfare officers know that we really aren’t accepting babies.

After much prayer and discussion, we recently made the decision to open our doors again and start saving young lives. You won’t believe who arrived!

Let me take you back a bit. When each child turns 12 years old, Ian and I sit down with them and share as much of their story as is age/maturity appropriate. We don’t know much about many of their families as so many of them were abandoned, but we have started actively searching for any family member or neighbor to connect them to so that they can get more “identity” questions answered. Auntie Khosie has been leading this charge.

A few weeks ago, Khosie found the mother of one of our oldest boys. I won’t name him for his own privacy, but he is one of the “favorites” when our visitors come. We have not heard from her in 13 years, and when Khosie found her, we discovered that she had seven other children and only the youngest lives with her. She has no home, but moves from place to place trying to find cleaning work. She was willing to come and meet her second-born, who is with us, if we could help with funds for transport. We shared the news with him, and he was really excited. He is one of our boys who has been struggling with his identity, so we felt that this could be a big help to him. We made a plan for mother and son to meet on a Saturday.

Unfortunately, the mom was too poor to have a cell phone, so Khosie had to depend on a neighbor to contact her. Two days later, the neighbor called Khosie back with the terrible news that the 32-year-old mom had dropped dead the day before. Cause unknown, but there was an 7-month-old baby girl on her back.

With no other family to care for that baby girl, she was welcomed to Project Canaan this week. I won’t share her name at this point so as not to connect the story to the child, but she is very sweet, very malnourished and needing lots of extra love and care. This sweet girl brings our home to 485 children who are safe, loved and have a bright future.

We are opening our doors again in faith that the Lord will provide the funds needed to fund the rest of the children this year. If you don’t currently sponsor a child, I am asking (begging) you to sponsor a child today, or even make a one-time gift to help us keep our doors open.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Janine