a new home for Chico and his family

Here are Joao and Luisa- Chico's children in front of thier newly built house! The volunteers in Nhamatonda built it for Chico and his family after they saw what the family was living in (I have a picture of it in an old blog of mine).

servants

I am continually amazed, challenged and humbled by the volunteers that I work with. These people work so hard.

The man on the bicycle is a new patient named Louis that Rubatano took on last month. His elderly sister stopped us on the road and asked us to come help her brother. We walked about a kilometer into the bush and found him in a tiny little shack- his wife was gone at the time to her garden- it was about 10km away, and she would stay away from home for days at a time. On Wednesday three of the volunteers went to his house at 7:30 am and brought him to the road on their bicycle as he was too weak to walk. From there he was able to get to the hospital.

The two volunteers washing the kids are Inish and Adao- in this house there are three orphans that are being cared for by their grandmother. To wash an orphans feet- this is true religion.

To bring a sick, old man 1 km through the bushes at 7:30 am on your bicycle- this is true religion.

James 1:27- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in thier distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

made for t.v.

The last week has been a very interesting one! We have had a film crew here from Toronto filming first in South Africa, and then in Mozambique. The People's Church in Toronto sent a film crew along with their head pastor, Pastor Charles Price, to film Hands at Work and Rubatano Home Based Care.
They will be doing three, one-hour specials about Hands at Work and will be airing it on their television show, "Living Truth", in the last three weeks in October. One show will feature South Africa (where I worked the first two months of my time in Africa), one in Mozambique, and one in Malowi. I may even make it on t.v. myself. They filmed me doing some homebased care visits and asked me a few interview questions.
You may notice in the picture of me with the stethoscope that I'm not actually listening to anyone's chest! I had listened to a woman's chest moments earlier, but they wanted me to do it again to get a close up of my face so I'm just pretending- looking deep in thought about what I'm listening to! In the group photo I am with a woman who is sick- probably with tuberculosis. The two men in the picture are Santos in the blue shirt, and Fransisco- two of our favorite volunteers. They had alot of fun being on camera as well.
I'm really excited about the shows, as now everyone back home will be able to see where I work, who I work with, and what I do!
The picture of the little girl was taken by Jayme Chotowitz on one of the filming days. We've had Jayme and Lynn stay with us for the past week, and have had a really great time catching up with them.
Lynn, Carlos, and George (head of Hands at Work) have all just returned from Zimbabwe this afternoon. They are planning on expanding Hands at Work into Zimbabwe and Carlos will be a huge part of it. Talk about a challenge! I am excited to hear about their experience as Dara and I will probably be playing a small part in it as well. Lynn just showed me a Zimbabwean money bill that was for 50 BILLION Zim dollars (their dollar used to be stonger than ours). When they went to Zimbabwe on the 21st a bottle of coke cost 100 Billion dollars- now, three days later a bottle of coke costs 400 billion dollars. Zimbabwe needs our prayers!