Please Stop Giving!

It's been overwhelming this week.

Not the amount of homes destroyed, but the giving, the giving has been overwhelming.

In a matter of days the total given reached over $10,000.

That may not seem like a lot when you consider how much it costs to replace American things (not even enough for one family, right?), but this is not America, and people here can carry all they own on their backs.

And so tomorrow Kenneth leaves for a neighboring town. He'll find a lorry (big truck), load bags and bags of food, piles of blankets, jerry cans, basins and cooking pots, and he'll bring them all back to give out to the families in need.

If only every problem were so easy.

We visited the home of the now-motherless children this week. The grandparents piled them in front of us, dirty and half-clothed, the baby snotty-nosed and sick with an eye infection, the others covered with ringworm. They've been motherless for only a few weeks, but they sit in the little shade they can find, listless and uninterested in us. Maybe they are sad or maybe they are only hungry, sometimes they look the same. And I wish, so much, that I could give them more than food and blankets and cooking pots. I wish I could bathe them, one by one, put cream on their ringworm and clean clothes on their bodies. I wish I could snuggle the baby and make him smile. I wish I could give them back the mother they lost.

But this, this help we're offering, this is the best we've got. It's not enough, it will never be enough for these children, but it will have to do for now. I am still grateful we can help, grateful we can, in some small way, show them how much the Father loves them.

And I pray that someday they will know Him and His love for themselves. That He will be enough to meet those needs we can never meet.

For those who have prayed or given or written us encouraging notes, Thank You! You have blessed not only them but us with your faithfulness. We are so humbled by your responses and so overwhelmed by your generosity!

Now, please stop giving!

But don't stop praying.

We will post pictures later this week!