Slavery Exists in 2010?!

Yes, it's been far too long since my last Social Justice post on this blog, and although I am not too sure if anyone is actually reading this blog, I will send out what is burning on my heart today, if only just for me.

What if I lived in New York City? Atlanta? Macon?

What if I had an 8-year-old daughter?

What if she got separated from me at the grocery store?

What if I never saw her again?

What if she was kidnapped?

Taken to a brothel and sold 5 times a night?

My perfect baby girl sold for sex over and over and over?

What if she became a prostitute all because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time? A grocery store...

Unfortunately, this happens far too often, ALL OVER THE WORLD AND IN OUR OWN HOMELAND, EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! AND IT'S 2010!!!!

Here is one of the organizations doing something about it.
(Source: http://love146.org)

StoreNewsUrgent HelpMapAftercarePreventionResearch
About UsFAQStaffFinancialsRESOURCES\0020OUR NAME IS HER STORY









"The number pinned to her dress was 146..."







In 2002, the co-founders of Love 146 travelled to South East Asia on an exploratory trip to determine how they could serve in the fight against child sex trafficking. In one experience, a couple of our co-founders were taken undercover with investigators to a brothel, where they witnessed children being sold for sex. This was their experience. This is the story that changed our lives.



"We found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with predators in a small room, looking at little girls through a pane of glass. All of the girls wore red dresses with a number pinned to their dress for identification. They sat, blankly watching cartoons on TV. They were vacant, shells of what a child should be. There was no light in their eyes, no life left. Their light had been taken from them. These children...raped each night... seven, ten, fifteen times every night. They were so young. Thirteen, eleven… it was hard to tell. Sorrow covered their faces with nothingness. Except one girl. One girl who wouldn’t watch the cartoons. Her number was 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring out at us, with a piercing gaze. There was still fight left in her eyes. There was still life left in this girl...




\0020"...All of these emotions begin to wreck you. Break you. It is agony. It is aching. It is grief. It is sorrow. The reaction is intuitive, instinctive. It is visceral. It releases a wailing cry inside of you. It elicits gut-level indignation. It is unbearable. I remember wanting to break through the glass. To take her away from that place. To scoop up as many of them as I could into my arms. To take all of them away. I wanted to break through the glass to tell her to keep fighting. To not give up. To tell her that we were coming for her…"

“Because we went in as part of an ongoing, undercover investigation on this particular brothel, we were unable to immediately respond. Evidence had to be collected in order to bring about a raid, and eventually justice on those running the brothel. It is an immensely difficult problem when an immediate response cannot address an emergency. Some time later, there was a raid on this brothel and children were rescued. But the girl who wore #146 was no longer there. We do not know what happened to her, but we will never forget her. She changed the course of all of our lives." -Rob Morris, President and Co-founder




We have taken her number so that we remember why this all started. So that we must tell her story. It is a number that was pinned to one girl, but that represents the millions enslaved. We wear her number with honor, with sorrow, and with a growing hope. Her story can be a different one for so many more.







Love is in our name, because it is our motivating drive to end child sex slavery and exploitation. We believe love to be the foundation of real, sustainable change. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love." We hold that to be true. Love Protects. Love Defends. Love Restores. Love Empowers.

We are Love146.




Love146 History from LOVE146 on Vimeo.





\0020\0020\0020HomeContactBlogPrivacy PolicyResourcesSearchSite MapUrgent HelpLove146 ©2002-2010


LET'S JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST SLAVERY!!! Tell someone, Call someone, Do something!

Book 3: Zander is Dirty

Kids Encountering Social Injustice

BOOK 3:

Zander

Is Dirty

Zander enjoyed learning how things were made, even so much so that he considered himself a scientist.

And today Zander was feeling especially curious, for today was his birthday.

And Zander had an idea.

Zander wanted to meet someone new, and he knew just the way to do it.

He rushed to the Machine,

opened it,

and leaped inside.

Suddenly he found himself on a crowded city sidewalk in a hot, humid, extremely fragrant and extremely crowded place. Pungent odors wafted through the air over and over, and the traffic noise was deafening.

Since Zander was especially good at exploring and investigating, as is every scientist, he quickly spotted a group of kids headed toward a particularly smelly place outside of town.

After following the kids for some time, he arrived at what looked like the biggest trash heap in the world.

Soon Zander realized this was where his new friends lived.

Certainly he had met more than just someone new.

So Zander asked his new friends, “Where do you sleep and eat and bathe and play?” And the kids told him that they slept and ate and bathed and played on the rubbish, amid the stench.

And Zander thought,

“No one should have to live in trash! All kids should at least have a house!”

Instantly, Zander found himself back at home,

the Machine lifeless beside him.

But the thought had not left him.

“No one should have to live without a house!”

So Zander decided, “Someone should build a house for all kids.”

And then he realized,

“I can be that someone!”

Fact Sheet about slum life in India:

Two million slum children die every year as India booms

Save the Children says state-run health system is failing to give skilled care to poor

• Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi
• The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009
• Article history

Child mortality rates have doubled in India's slums. In Rajasthan, Surma lost her son Parmesh to easily preventable diarrhoea at only four years old. Source: Save the Children Link to this video

India's growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people.

Nearly two million children under five die every year in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world. More than half die in the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 hours.

A devastating report by Save the Children, due out on Monday, reveals that the poor are disproportionately affected and the charity accuses the country of failing to provide adequate healthcare for the impoverished majority of its one billion people. While the World Bank predicts that India's economy will be the fastest-growing by next year and the country is an influential force within the G20, World Health Organisation figures show it ranks 171st out of 175 countries for public health spending.

Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the major causes of death. Poor rural states are particularly affected by a dearth of health resources. But even in the capital, Delhi, where an estimated 20% of people live in slums, the infant mortality rate is reported to have doubled in a year, though city authorities dispute this.

In the Bhagwanpura slum on the north-west fringes of the capital, numerous mothers have lost one or more infants in their first years of life through want of basic medical attention.

Akila Anees's son, Mohammed Armann, who was almost three, died in her arms three weeks ago. A torrential downpour had flooded the slum, rainwater mixing with the raw sewage which fills the ink-black drains bisecting the narrow lanes. It rose to a depth of 2ft. Within days, Armann had fallen ill and died soon afterwards.

Save the Children says millions of mothers and their babies are simply not getting the skilled medical care they need, and the poor, in particular, have been left behind. "For many poor parents and their children, seeking medical help is a luxury and health services are often too far away," said Shireen Miller, its head of policy and advocacy in India.

"The difference between rich and poor is huge. In a city like Delhi it is more stark because we have got state-of-the-art hospitals and women giving birth under flyovers. The health service has failed to deliver. They are supposed to reach the poorest, but they have not."

India's state healthcare system is supposed to be open to all, offering access to government-run hospitals. The reality is that, while government hospitals often offer high standards of care, they can be overcrowded, and if they are short of the required medicines patients are asked to pay for them themselves. In the meantime, private health care has surged and now accounts for the majority of India's medical provision, giving access to world-class facilities for those who can pay or who can afford private insurance premiums.

According to the UK India Business Council, about 50 million middle-class Indians can afford private healthcare – a growing number but still a tiny fraction of the overall population – while the country still lags behind other developed countries, with only 0.7 hospital beds per 1,000 people compared with a global average of 4.

Many slum-dwellers are too far from hospitals to make use of their facilities, because they cannot afford to use private auto-rickshaws to reach them and there is no public transport. Instead they turn to quack doctors – a slightly cheaper option, but because they are unregulated and notoriously unreliable, one fraught with dangers.

According to the report, the national mortality rate for under-fives in the poorest fifth of the population is 92 in 1,000 compared with 33 for the highest fifth. The national average is 72.

A couple of hundred yards from Anees's shack in Bhagwanpura, Gudiya, 22, sat holding her surviving daughter, Priya, two, amid scenes of abject squalor. Almost every square inch of the slum is covered in a layer of rubbish and human and animal waste. She has lost three children in four years.

Her most recent child, a boy, died two days after she gave birth at home, she said. "He cried, but it was feeble and he gradually turned cold. We wrapped him in blankets and took him to the hospital but I could feel he was getting weaker, and then I could see he was not breathing and there was no heartbeat and then the doctor said he was dead." Three years ago her three-month-old son, Ahmit, died from pneumonia. A year earlier her five-month-old daughter, Kumkum, died after developing a fever.

Delhi's health minister, Kiran Walia, has blamed migration into the city for its problems, but many poorer families simply feel that they are shut out by the system. Selma Shakil's son, Muzzamil, died in July after she was turned away from a government hospital. He was a year old. She sat on the hard wooden bed in the tiny room in Bhagwanpura that is home to her two surviving children and her crippled husband and dabbed at her eyes with her headscarf.

"It was shattering for us. We were so happy when he was born, he was so happy and playful. I would give everything to get him back, but we can't," said Shakil, 27.

Muzzamil had been ill for months. Shakil had taken him to a government hospital three times; the first time they gave him medicine and sent her home, the second time he was admitted for a few days and then discharged, and the third time they turned her away. "They said they would not take him; they said, 'You can't keep coming here, the child will be fine'."

The day he died the doctors told her he was sleepy because of the medicines he was taking. She went home, but then he started groaning. "His breath was shallow, and that was when I realised it was too late. I took him in my arms. He opened his eyes once and said 'Ammi' [mummy] and that was it. He died in my arms." They buried him the same evening.

The Save the Children report says nearly nine million children die worldwide every year before the age of five. India has the highest number of deaths, with China fifth. Afghanistan has the dubious distinction of featuring in the top 10 of total child deaths and of child deaths per head of population, a list topped by Sierra Leone.

The charity accuses the world's leaders of a scandalous failure to meet the Millennium Development Goals, agreed in 2000, to cut child mortality by two- thirds between 1990 and 2015 and calls for a sharp increase in health spending.

Valentine's Day Gift: Invisible Children rescued!

Valentine's Day is only 13 days away!

So, what do you want from your sweetheart?

Can I tell you what I want?

About 4 years ago I first watched the Invisible Children video and found myself challenged and changed. Since then, the thousands of children abducted by Joseph Kony and his Rebel army, terrorizing northern Uganda, have haunted me. I find it hard to process that young boys the age of my oldest son (4) are being kidnapped and forced to shoot other children with AK47s, bite them to death, maim them, burn families, etc. so that the Rebel army can maintain power over the Ugandan government.

Within the past few months I found an update video at http://nightof.therescue.invisiblechildren.com/ and began following the Invisible Children blog at www.invisiblechildren.com.

So, for Valentine's Day this year I want sticky glitter cards from my kids, a ring from my hubby, and 3,000+ Ugandan children set free from the Rebel Army.
(Ok, and maybe another Ugandan necklace made by Ugandan women http://store.lightgivesheat.org/suubi/2009-collection.html, or a handbag made by Ugandan mothers http://store.invisiblechildren.com/mendbags.)

How can we free the Child Soldiers?
Read below:

Dr. No, please say yes

The LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, if passed, requires that President Obama form a plan for apprehending Joseph Kony and neutralizing the Lord’s Resistance Army. It also assigns funds to help rebuild the northern region of Uganda where Joseph Kony has been taking lives, abducting children, and forcing thousands of people out of their villages into displacement camps for over 20 years.

This bill has made history by being the most widely-supported bill in 35 years that is concerned with sub-Saharan Africa. The bill currently has 56 co-sponsors in the Senate, with supporters from both parties proving that this is truly a bi-partisan priority.

One man stands in the way of this bill’s passage: Senator Coburn (R-OK), or as he is known around these parts, “Dr. No.”

Senator Coburn opposes the bill because of the $40 million that it allocates to rebuilding Northern Uganda where the LRA has left a trail of displaced people and broken infrastructure. He argues that America is already enough in debt without sending aid to Northern Uganda. We are all about principles, but we must protest that this bill is asking for relatively little money and we have confidence that the money will prevent higher costs in the future.

In truth, $40 million is a drop in the ocean of U.S. foreign aid. To put $40 million in perspective, Senator Coburn recently voted to increase the HIV/AIDS spending by $35 billion. That is nearly 1,000 times the budget that we are asking for.

This past year, Joseph Kony killed about 2,000 people and abducted 3,000. Hundreds of those were children. By apprehending Kony we will be ending the war and our rebuilding efforts will be long lasting. It will remove the cause of the instability in Northern Uganda as well southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. The money will immediately start saving lives but will also save money in the long run by decreasing the need for future American humanitarian aid in Uganda.

We express our gratitude to the 800 Oklahomans that spent the night outside of Senator Coburns office last April during the Rescue. We thank the 16 Oklahomans who flew to Washington, D.C., to hand-deliver letters from participants of the Rescue to Senator Coburn. And, finally, we appreciate the 20 Oklahomans who marched in Oklahoma City last November before meeting with Senator Coburn’s office and asking for his support yet again.

With the help of many of you, we have put the pressure on Senator Coburn to support this bill. Yet his mind remains unchanged.

We say it’s time to turn up the heat and wear down his defenses. And we have a plan. Go to www.coburnsayyes.com and read about how you can take action. You’ll see that some ways include writing letters, signing a petition, calling Senator Coburn’s office, and showing up at the Oklahoma State Capitol Building at the end of February. We’ve got to change this man’s mind, and we need your help.

The Invisible Children Organization has already made such a difference, and now we can be a part of that! Surely if this was happening in America, the terrorist would not have gone unpunished for 20+ years. So, why is it allowed in Uganda??

Let's show our strong government how important the children of the world are to Americans!

Are our kids safe at school?

A few weeks ago I received an email in my professional capacity, inviting me to attend a Safe Schools Community Forum, and today I attended.

Never did I intend to learn so much, nor did I intend to cry, but that is exactly what happened.

Please read the article below, and find out what we can do to help the Georgia Department of Education pass a rule that all districts must regulate the restraint and seclusion of OUR KIDS. (Can you believe that our schools DO NOT REGULATE or keep records when our kids are handcuffed, tied down, bound up, etc. nor when they are locked in a room alone for hours upon hours?? And, can you believe that the schools don't even have to notify parents before OR after it happens???)

Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms

By Ashley Fantz
CNN

MURRAYVILLE, Georgia (CNN) -- A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in "time-out."

The room where Jonathan King hanged himself is shown after his death. It is no longer used, a school official said.

"We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes," Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called "our baby ... a good kid."

But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.

Called a seclusion room, it's where in November 2004, Jonathan hanged himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants. Watch Jonathan's parents on their son's death »

An attorney representing the school has denied any wrongdoing.

Seclusion rooms, sometimes called time-out rooms, are used across the nation, generally for special needs children. Critics say that along with the death of Jonathan, many mentally disabled and autistic children have been injured or traumatized.

Few states have laws on using seclusion rooms, though 24 states have written guidelines, according to a 2007 study conducted by a Clemson University researcher.

Texas, which was included in that study, has stopped using seclusion and restraint. Georgia has just begun to draft guidelines, four years after Jonathan's death.

Based on conversations with officials in 22 states with written guidelines, seclusion is intended as a last resort when other attempts to calm a child have failed or when a student is hurting himself or others.

Michigan requires that a child held in seclusion have constant supervision from an instructor trained specifically in special education, and that confinement not exceed 15 minutes.

Connecticut education spokesman Tom Murphy said "time-out rooms" were used sparingly and were "usually small rooms with padding on the walls."

Only Vermont tracks how many children are kept in seclusion from year to year, though two other states, Minnesota and New Mexico, say they have been using the rooms less frequently in recent years.

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Dr. Veronica Garcia, New Mexico's education secretary, said her state had found more sophisticated and better ways to solve behavior problems. Garcia, whose brother is autistic, said, "The idea of confining a child in a room repeatedly and as punishment, that's an ethics violation I would never tolerate."

But researchers say that the rooms, in some cases, are being misused and that children are suffering.

Public schools in the United States are now educating more than half a million more students with disabilities than they did a decade ago, according to the National Education Association.

"Teachers aren't trained to handle that," said Dr. Roger Pierangelo, executive director of the National Association of Special Education Teachers.

"When you have an out-of-control student threatening your class -- it's not right and it can be very damaging -- but seclusion is used as a 'quick fix' in many cases."

Former Rhode Island special education superintendent Leslie Ryan told CNN that she thought she was helping a disabled fifth-grader by keeping him in a "chill room" in the basement of a public elementary school that was later deemed a fire hazard.

"All I know is I tried to help this boy, and I had very few options," Ryan said. After the public learned of the room, she resigned from her post with the department but remains with the school.

School records do not indicate why Jonathan King was repeatedly confined to the concrete room or what, if any, positive outcome was expected.

His parents say they don't recognize the boy described in records as one who liked to kick and punch his classmates. They have launched a wrongful death lawsuit against the school -- the Alpine Program in Gainesville -- which has denied any wrongdoing. A Georgia judge is expected to rule soon on whether the case can be brought before a jury.

Jonathan's parents say the boy had been diagnosed since kindergarten with severe depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But his father remembers him as a boy who was happy when he sang in the church choir.

"He was a hugger, liked to go fishing with me and run after me saying, 'Daddy, when are we going to the lake?' " Don King said.

King said that he wanted to know if there were similar situations in other schools and that critics of seclusion rooms fear there could be.

"Jonathan's case is the worst of the worst, but it should be a warning. It's reasonable to think that it could happen in all the other schools that use seclusion on disabled children -- largely because the use of seclusion goes so unchecked," said Jane Hudson, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network.

"This is one of those most unregulated, unresearched areas I've come across," said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University special education researcher who has worked in schools for disabled kids and co-authored a study on the use of seclusion.

"You have very little oversight in schools of these rooms -- first because the general public doesn't really even know they exist," he said.

There is no national database tracking seclusion incidents in schools, though many have been described in media reports, lawsuits, disability advocacy groups' investigations and on blogs catering to parents who say their child had been held in seclusion.

Disability Rights California, a federally funded watchdog group, found that teachers dragged children into seclusion rooms they could not leave. In one case, they found a retarded 8-year-old had been locked alone in a seclusion room in a northeast California elementary school for at least 31 days in a year.

"What we found outrageous was that we went to the schools and asked to see the rooms and were denied," said Leslie Morrison, a psychiatric nurse and attorney who led the 2007 investigation that substantiated at least six cases of abuse involving seclusion in public schools.

"It took a lot of fighting to eventually get in to see where these children were held."

CNN asked every school official interviewed if a reporter could visit a seclusion room and was denied every time.

In other instances of alleged abuse:

• A Tennessee mother alleged in a federal suit against the Learn Center in Clinton that her 51-pound 9-year-old autistic son was bruised when school instructors used their body weight on his legs and torso to hold him down before putting him in a "quiet room" for four hours. Principal Gary Houck of the Learn Center, which serves disabled children, said lawyers have advised him not to discuss the case.

• Eight-year-old Isabel Loeffler, who has autism, was held down by her teachers and confined in a storage closet where she pulled out her hair and wet her pants at her Dallas County, Iowa, elementary school. Last year, a judge found that the school had violated the girl's rights. "What we're talking about is trauma," said her father, Doug Loeffler. "She spent hours in wet clothes, crying to be let out." Waukee school district attorney Matt Novak told CNN that the school has denied any wrongdoing.

• A mentally retarded 14-year-old in Killeen, Texas, died from his teachers pressing on his chest in an effort to restrain him in 2001. Texas passed a law to limit both restraint and seclusion in schools because the two methods are often used together.

Federal law requires that schools develop behavioral plans for students with disabilities. These plans are supposed to explicitly explain behavior problems and methods the teacher is allowed to use to stop it, including using music to calm a child or allowing a student to take a break from schoolwork.

A behavioral plan for Jonathan King, provided to CNN by the Kings' attorney, shows that Jonathan was confined in the seclusion room on 15 separate days for infractions ranging from cursing and threatening other students to physically striking classmates.

Howard "Sandy" Addis, the director of the Pioneer education agency which oversees Alpine, said that the room where Jonathan died is no longer in use. Citing the ongoing litigation, he declined to answer questions about the King case but defended the use of seclusion for "an emergency safety situation."

The Alpine Program's attorney, Phil Hartley, said Jonathan's actions leading up to his suicide did not suggest the boy was "serious" about killing himself. Jonathan's actions were an "effort to get attention," Hartley said.

"This is a program designed for students with severe emotional disabilities and problems," he said. "It is a program which frequently deals with students who use various methods of getting attention, avoiding work."

A substitute employee placed in charge of watching the room on the day Jonathan died said in an affidavit that he had no training in the use of seclusion, and didn't know Jonathan had threatened suicide weeks earlier.

The Kings say they would have removed their son from the school if they knew he was being held in seclusion, or that he had expressed a desire to hurt himself.

"We would have home schooled him or taken him to another psychologist," said Don King. "If we would have known, our boy would have never been in that room. He would still be alive."
(source: www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html?eref=rss_us)


THEY NEED OUR INPUT!!!
THEY ARE BEGGING FOR US TO HAVE OUR SAY SO THAT THE RULE CAN BE PASSED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
Please go to http://www.thegao.org/SafeSchools.htm for more information and to GET A SAMPLE LETTER TO FILL IN AND SEND TO THE OFFICIALS!!

Our kids deserve it.... let's fight for them!!

Sending Hope Cards to Haiti

Have you spent the last two weeks pining to do something for Haiti?

Have you wondered how to help with limited funds?

Please see this newsletter below from the Volunteer USA Foundation:
(Our kids can send cards to Haitian kids in hospitals and shelters!!!)


And, they are also offering a free lesson plan for teaching elementary school students about the crisis and how to help!
(I will DEFINITELY be adding this to my homeschool lesson plans for tomorrow!!)



HOPE FOR HAITI... TEACHABLE MOMENTS FOR PARENTS & CHILDREN

We’ve launched a project so your kids can show their compassion for affected families. Simply send handmade cards and letters to Volunteer USA Foundation…pictures inspired by the heart “are worth a thousand words.” We'll make sure we get your thoughtful messages get to the people of Haiti through outreach at hospitals, shelters, children and family organizations, schools and non-profit groups.

We’ll also be offering elementary schools a free lesson plan to help teach students that while disasters do occur, families and communities can do their best to prepare and recover. The example in Haiti is a reminder that we must educate our children about the value of disaster planning, so our families are as safe and secure as possible. You can find more information about our disaster recovery efforts at National Disaster Recovery Fund.

Please send cards of hope and compassion to: Volunteer USA Foundation – Cards of Care for Haiti, 5970 SW 1st Lane, Ocala, FL 34474

Happy helping everyone!!!

TOMS shoes

Do you need a new pair of kicks?

Do your kids need new slip-on shoes?

Well, for those of you who may have missed the super cool television advertisements in the States a couple of months back, you can buy new shoes and send a new pair of shoes to a child in need IN HAITI today!!

The website is www.tomsshoes.com. Please read the post below from their website today:

1/19/2010
TOMS customers have made it possible for TOMS to make a donation to Partners In Health in support of immediate response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. In addition to this support, we are committed to having a positive impact on the people of Haiti by doing what we do best - by February, TOMS will have given 30,000 pairs of shoes to children in Haiti and more are on the way!
Follow @PIH_org on Twitter for the most recent updates on their progress and how to help.

(Yes, we have 4 pair in our house (and 2 t's and 1 hoodie)... so comfy... so stylish... so for a good cause... Hint: They always send a new pair of shoes "one for one" to a kid in need when you buy a pair of shoes or a t-shirt or a hoodie, etc.)

Haiti 2010

It's been 7 days since Haiti was rocked, and so many people were devastated.

Every day I worry.
Every day I pray.
And, I watch the news.

Shocking.
Unbelievable.
Sickeningly tragic.

And I can't help but think: "What can I do?"
I feel so helpless.

Praying doesn't seem like enough when we are His hands and feet.
Worrying helps nothing.
Watching the news only makes my worry grow.

Through Compassion, I have sponsored Sofia Jean for the past 12 years. She lives in Haiti, and she goes to school near Port-au-Prince. We have written to each other for the past 12 years, and she has pictures of me, my husband and our two beautiful boys. We pray for her everyday. But where is she tonight? Is she safe? Is she well-fed? Does she know she is loved?

This Christmas we added Lowentz to our Compassion family, but did he get the message? We sent him a letter welcoming him into our lives with a picture, but did he receive it? Is he safe tonight? Is he hungry? Is he safe with his parents like my little boy, snug in his bed?

We have sent money, of course, through Compassion, which we trust to get help to the children and their families, but it seems like it's not enough.

What can we do?
How can we help?
What can we say to our own children to help them understand how we are lending a helping hand?

My crazy heart tells me to somehow get those babies out of there...to bring them home with me... how many extra bedrooms do we have???
But, wisdom tells me that those children need heaps more than I can give them by bringing them to a strange land away from their familiar surroundings. (And, how could I do that anyway?)

So, pray and give money, yes. But what else can we do?

What would we want others to do for us if we were in Haiti right now???????