My time in the villages

Last week I traveled for 3 days out in the villages visiting our "Hope for AIDS" orphan daycare centers. During my time I made lots of new friends and visited some that I had met previously on other trips...but this little guy is different. Meet my new friend, Zhawu. Zhawu is a 12-year-old boy who lives near the village of Chilumba where we have another orphan daycare center. Not only do the volunteers of these centers work with the children under 5 years that attend the center each day, but they also have the responsibility to visit and minister to the orphans and vulnerably, needy children in the surrounding areas. Zhawu was one of those children. His mother remarried either by divorce or death of his biological father. His new step-father didn’t give him time of day. Not just that, but Zhawu was also born crippled with clubfeet and suffered with this handicap until recently. Last year because of the funds from our program, Zhawu was helped! Our Hope for AIDS program assisted him in being transported the 4 hours to Blantyre to the CURE International hospital, a non-profit hospital that does free orthopedic surgeries that bring healing to so many children. So over the course of the last 2 years Zhawu has had two successful surgeries on his feet! He now has a new-found freedom on life—walking on his own, even starting to run, and wearing shoes! Can you imagine being a 12-year-old boy and not being able to run the soccer field with your friends? Can you imagine never being able to wear shoes because your feet were so twisted? I didn’t meet Zhawu before, but I can say that having met him last week, his smile says it all. We are so thankful that there was a program in his village that could see that he needed help and healing…and so thankful that Malawi has a CURE International hospital that specializes in this kind of thing. We know God has big things in store for Zhawu! Picture: Zhawu last week, 2 months after his last surgery, sporting some Crocs and a big smile on his face.
(The above excerpt comes from our McCollumsInMalawi blog. Visit our photo gallery on our site to see other pictures.)