Another long time since I have written sorry.

Probably the biggest change here at Kedesh is the addition of Heather Pritchard from England.  She originally came on a team in 99 and has visited a couple of times since then.  Heather decided to come back long term and has now been with us about 4 months.  She was an occupational therapist in England and has worked in Zimbabwe most recently.  Here at Kedesh one of the first things she is doing is learning Portuguese several days a week.  And to the same end she is giving English classes for the boys.  One thing that we were missing after Jo left were all the goodies.  Heather has stepped right in and we are back in our cakes and cookies!  The boys, mostly the littler guys, love helping out mixing and learning how to make things, (and cleaning the bowls!!).

Speaking of the little guys Heather does have her hands full.  Kedesh is up to 32 boys now.  We have had several boys come in whose mothers have AIDS and are in extremely poor health.   We are involved trying to help out the ladies with meds and food supplements but also their boys come over and eat with us and really spend the most of the day here.  Taking care of the family has just become too much for the mothers and we have stepped in.  We have received 3 sets of 3 brothers in that situation.  Most all are in poor health only having one meal maybe… a day.  It is always nice watching a boy come in who barely had the energy to stay alive, sleeping the most of the time, to start laughing playing and finding out things are going to be OK.  One of the mothers has a very small boy who still stays at home most of the time though he does come over for some meals.  But he is a very small guy only about 4 years old.  It is hard to guess their ages because most have not been eating well most of their life, and so tend to be very small for their ages.  But for you who have been to Kedesh in years past would be surprised to see several very little guys running around.  The most of our boys are now under 12 years old.  Heather keeps them busy with arts and crafts play doe cookie doe cake mix and just general fun stuff.

We have received basically no rain since last may or so.  We had one storm in Aug.  We have dug the wells out I would say nearly 2 meters deeper so pushing 5 meters now, and still only have water enough to drink and food prep.  We are using the lake to water all our plants but even that is going down very quickly.  It was about 6 feet deep about 2 months ago and now I would say just 3.  Everything is very brown and the grass has pretty much turned to chaff, it is beyond dry grass now.  Even some of our trees are dieing.  We had bought seeds so that we could plant field crops but really just waiting for the rain.  We have a team coming in about a week and a half... 14 people Joao Simao and a group of Ywamers from where he is working. I really hope it rains seriously before they get here.  It seems to be raining really good everywhere else.  It is about a 70 miles up the road it is green.  We watch storms low dark clouds pass over us about 2 or 3 times a week.  Really frustrating.  You think ‘Oh this is going to rain beyond a doubt…’  by noon it has blown by.  None the less we are clearing the land each day.  Waking up about 4 or 5 and working while it is cool.  It is 9 am now and too hot to work.  I sit sweating on the computer fan blowing on me.  I guess a good thing is there are no mozies. 

  We finally got the papers for the land. Just have to pay for it now, 6000 USD to the city.  That is for about 8 acres.  They are not really worried about how quickly you pay for the land so that is not pressing.  After all it took 6 months for them to process the papers.  I am figuring if we are planting and growing our own veggies it will pay for itself in less then 6 months.  We are going to ask the governor to give us a break on that.  We have beans planted to a large extent and some have started giving fruit.  We have planted tomatoes and leaf veggies as well.  We have eaten the first leaf meal from the garden last week.  The boys thought that was pretty cool.  There is an old press that was sitting at Ywam since I was there in the mid 90's, I asked them if we could have it and they said sure, so we are planting sunflower and sesame seed.  We will be able to supplement our oil usage.  It is good feed for the animals as well.  The pineapples have come up but because of the lack of rain they are all very small.  A bit bigger then a fist.  But still tasty.  Cashews are coming out as well some trees are producing very well some more then others.  But we are having daily cashew roasts which is nice.

  The widows house that we were hoping to have done by the end of this year came to a screeching halt.  The architect/inspector disappeared and we can't build with out his permission signature and the like.  His name is on all our documents so to get a new inspector means starting the whole process over.  So not too keen on doing that.  We have bought the vast majority of the steal and wired it all up so we have the steel frame footing foundation pillars and beams sitting in our store room.  We bought cement but decided to pass it on to another project since cement does not store for long periods.  With no water- only bathing every few days trying to keep your crops growing- is not when you want to start mixing cement.  So we need to wait for the rains to come and replenish the water supply before we can get going on that.  The amount of water you would use to mix cement and clean tools in one day would probably be about a weeks drinking water.

We are concerned with the Cholera epidemic that is happening right now.  It has started in Zimbabwe and is very grim there.  Not only do they have the epidemic, the hospitals don’t have the meds needed, and the water system is contaminated and they don’t have the money to treat the municipal water.  I’m sure you have been hearing that situation in the news.  How that effects us is people, logically, flee there to try and get help, water, meds… here, but they are bringing the cholera with them.  The epidemic has now hit the next big city up the road from us, Chimoio, and I guess it is just a matter of time before it is here in Beira.  I lived through the epidemic that hit Beira in the 90’s.  It  was like being in a real life Steven King movie.  I was working with Ywam at that time and we did see innumerable people die.  We knew several of the boys that died.  That was back in the days of working with kids on the streets, so we were dealing with the hundreds of boys on the streets rather then a home as I have now.  The boys I have now were not even born yet so know nothing of it, or were too young to remember.  We obviously are preparing for it to hit us getting the boys in the habit of dipping hands and our dishes in bleach water and the like.  We have stocked up on the meds necessary and bleach.  Now just wait.  I know what the people in Zim are going through and can’t relate to how horrifying it all is they really need our prayers.  You wake up each day wondering who died.  Fear grips you to touch anyone anything drink anything.  People collapse in front of you around you. This would happen while just walking down the street.  Not only in the privacy of home.  If you don’t help they very well may die, if you do you may get it.  It is easily treatable but you still don’t want to get sick.  I found in the time we had it here, that when a person had a diarrhea attack or vomited most people would just flee them.  Helping a person that has uncontrollable vomiting or diarrhea is grim, even when death is not tied to it.

Well on that note…

Keep us in your prayers