Day 6

-January 13, 2009
Today we had training with Chimuka about the Community Orphan Trust Assessment we’ll be conducting. Basically, we’ll go into the villages where WHIZ works and evaluate how the programs are running. WHIZ wants us to do this so that there is no bias in the assessment.

After that, we had a session on poverty with Jeff Johnson and then came one of the best, but hardest things thus far… playing soccer with the kids. It was great and really fun, but I feel a strong connection with them now. After the game was over, a few of them walked me home: Hastin, Shepherd, Kushoma, & Ernest. They’re very poor kids who live in Mwapona compound which is supported by the Mochipapa Community Orphan Trust. Jeff told me a Trust only reduces the need of a village by 30%, but that’s definitely better than nothing and is many times the difference between life and death for a lot of people.

Honestly, I couldn’t help, but cry before I went to sleep. When we asked Jeff what we could do about all the issues in Africa, He said pray and tell The Church to finish the work they started concerning AIDS. We believe that this coming generation of African children will be the defining point in dealing with this pandemic. They will either gain control over AIDS or it will slowly wipe out most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Only The Church can decide whether it will be our greatest triumph in loving people or our most dismal failure.