Why Post My Family Picture First?

Some may wonder why I put a family picture at the beginning of this blog. I may replace it with an African-themed one once I am in Africa and in the picture-taking process. But for now, I thought it a fitting thing to display what is most dear to my heart. People have asked what motivated me to become involved with Care For Life. As I stated in my profile on this blog, my family is the center of my universe both in this world and will be in the next. I hope to inspire them and to urge myself to reach a little higher outside my own world to help others. We have so much to be thankful for. The people I am soon to meet have so little. I feel very privileged to make a small difference in their lives. I hope by my experiences I will encourage other family members and friends to stretch themselves a little, to give a little more, to be willing to help make someone else's life better in a very profound way.

I have been greatly moved by the mission of Care For Life. As some of you already know, Care for Life is a non-profit charitable organization started by a married couple over ten years ago to help the poor of Mozambique. While I am there, the group I will be working with will have opportunity to help in some orphanages, villages, and I hope to find time to visit a local hospital to see if there is anything I can contribute from an occupational therapy aspect during future visits. Care for Life has had amazing results with their model and method of preserving the family in Mozambique. Using the welfare wheel as a basis of their model of rehabilitating African villages, many have become clean, self-supporting and self-sustaining communities. To help preserve families and to teach them how to become self-sufficient is a great work. Please visit their website at careforlife.org to learn more about what they are doing in greater detail.

The Journey Begins

These are pictures sent to me last spring by a Care for Life volunteer. It shows some children being taught how to sew in one of the villages located outside Beira, Mozambique. Since I don't leave for Africa until next week, this is one of the few pictures I currently have from there. Once there, I hope to blog at least once a week, giving my family and friends an opportunity to enjoy this experience with me. Ladies from my church in Columbus, Georgia from three different wards (congregations) were kind enough to donate supplies and put together sewing kits much like the ones pictured here so that when I am there we will be able to teach more children from other villages how to make bookbags and develop basic sewing and mending skills. 500 kits have been completed and will be transported in our suitcases next week. Thank you, dear sisters, for your compassionate service and willingness to give!

Making Benches for a newly built Community Center

Here's a Care for Life volunteer helping children build benches for their community center. In future posts I will be interviewing school-age children about what a day in the life of an African child is like.