Red and Yellow, Black and White All are Precious in his Sight

I've been at Amani Baby Cottage for a week now! I've copied a small section of their website which sums up what it's all about.

"Amani Baby Cottage was established in 2003 and has been the home to 316 children. It is a baby’s home that provides care for orphaned, abandoned and needy children, from newborn to 5 years. Our goal and mission is to find a permanent home for all of our children through reuniting with their families or adoption. ABC is located in Jinja, Uganda on Lake Victoria near the source of the River Nile." http://amanibabycottage.org/

The children are divided into cottages A, B and C where children aged 1-5 are housed with "mama's". A and C are the boys cottages and B is the girls cottage. So I began my time there in the girls cottage. There are 17 of them and they are all adorable! Their day is very structured and although little instructions were given it was easy enough to get into the swing of things. If a mama does something for one child...you know that there's another 16 waiting in line! So you can soon pick it up.

For those of you with young children, imagine 17 of them and there's only you and one other person...exhaustion soon sets in! If you hold one, withing about 20 seconds you are guaranteed another 7 pulling and tugging and just belly-flopping on to your lap. It's so hard not to pick them all up and chat to them but as volunteers we must remember that we can't create habits for the children so that when we leave and a mama is left with all of them she can still survive the day!

Playground built in memorial for Sandyhook school

Lunch time for the older girls

Nap time

So every day after lunch the girls are meant to go for a nap for a couple of hours. If the mama puts them down they are all in bed quietly withing seconds. If it's left to the volunteers...chaos erupts. It's quite fun for the first 10minutes...and then it becomes a challenge of pinning down as many children as you can reach before they jump around the room. Well, not quite...about the pinning down, the jumping around the room definitely happens!! But it's all a good test of patience.

And then there is the nursery which is a separate room for the newborn- 1 year olds. And there are 11 of them and they too could win awards for being cute. They too have a strict routine and all eat at certain times and bounce outside at certain times. They are all happy babies so it's obviously doing them no harm...makes me wonder if we dote on the little British babies a little too much for their own good!

Take Sarah for an example. of cuteness..

Snack time in girls cottage

So practically what does my day look like. We arrive at 9am and are warmly greeted by the kids. Then we help with snack, washing and dressing. Then outside for play time. Lunch time and then nap time followed by snack again and playtime until we leave. This all sounds relatively simple...but remember there's just two of us volunteers as the mama in my cottage often as chores to do on weekdays. And in between all the actual things that have to happen there's books to be reading, songs to be singing, toys to be collecting in from where they throw them, cuddling the little ones, preventing fights, intervening in toddler dramas, toileting the older ones, changing the younger ones, pushing swings, chasing children round the garden, blowing bubbles and having fun!

So it's busy but I'm enjoying it. I also got switched to Boys Cottage on Friday as one of the volunteers who arrived on Thursday had been in girls last year and wanted to return. No photos of them yet as they've kept me running in circles! But a wonderful week.

Please pray for health as many volunteers are unwell. And energy too as it can be tiring! My main request though is that we can show love love to these kids that reflects something of the love that Christ has for us, even the kids that spend the entire day trying to find something that annoys you! As Jesus loves them just the same :)

Sarah