Snapshots: Mission of Love

Mission of Love is one of the organizations that I got to serve with while in Zambia. It's mission statement is "serving to equip the local church and village community to better care for the needs of widows and orphans in the love and power of Christ. Psalm 68:5-6a".





It's run by an amazing couple, Jako and Amber. Jako is from South Africa and Amber is from America; the story of how they met is pretty sweet. They also have a sweet little boy, Jakob, who's 6 months old. Secretly, I'm fairly certain that I'm at least part South African. Of all the adults that I worked with in Zambia, I was most comfortable around Jako. He even managed to tickle me! Haha. I don't remember the last time someone legitamently tickled me. It's kind of a big deal. ;-) He made it extremely clear that I was a blessing, not a burden.

They intentionally keep their orphanage small to give it more of that family feel. Right now there are nine kids living in it. All of these children are from the community and all, well, except Genesis (more on her just now) are double orphans (meaning both parents have died) and have no living relative to take care of them. They are cared for by four aunties from the community, two who work full time and two who work part time.



Then there's baby Genesis. She came the second week that I was at Mission of Love. When we got her, she was 4 days old and barely weighed 4 pounds. She was born 1..5- 2 months premature. Her mother is severely schizophrenic, has syphilis, and is HIV positive. Her father is unknown. Genesis is truly a miracle baby. I can't tell you the excitement that I felt once she started to eat, started to whimper. Signs of life. :-) This little one will always hold a piece of my heart.






Two other people need to be mentioned in this post: Nate and Melanie. They are both college students from the States serving at Mission of Love for the summer. Nate served her last year as well.






While at Mission of Love, I helped with a lot of daily responsibilities: helping make food (not my forte), washing dishes, helping organize and label books for the community library that they're creating, looking after Jakob and Genesis, sorting donations, cleaning, and the like. Every night, I got to accompany Melanie down to the orphanage to help with the Bible story and English lesson that we had planned that afternoon. I also got to help her plan for the Sunday school lesson at church. It was good to be teaching again. :-)