Baby Home Visit

Every Sunday at church there are always a bunch of little toddlers and children who are wondering around and visiting with the people of the congregation. I’ve always wondered about who these kids belong to, or where they come from because there are so many of them. After a couple Sundays of wondering about these kids, I finally found out that within our church there is an American woman who runs a “baby home” (or as we would call it, an orphanage) within the local area that we live in. After finding this out, Kristen and I became very interested in visiting this place and seeing all these kids that come and visit us every Sunday at church in a more personal setting.

So we finally got the opportunity earlier this week to go to the baby home to visit all the little ones that we had seen throughout the weeks at church. When we pulled up, and there were just a few kids playing in the outside yard of the home, but as soon as we began to get out of the car all these little kids starting running at us and giving us hugs to welcome us there. They went around making sure that each one of us got a hug from each of them. There are sixteen children at the home right now, ranging in age from a pair of twins who are two months old to a ten year old girl. After all the kids had greeted us, we headed inside to get to know them and give them the gifts that had been sent over for them. A ladies’ church group back in Canada had made a bunch of blankets for us to hand out to the children at the home. There was enough for each child to have their own, and it was a lot of fun watching each of them picking out their blanket. They were so excited to have them and just kept on staring at the different colours and patterns on the blanket. It was good to see how appreciated the blankets had been. The kids were even more excited when we pulled out some snacks for them to have while we were visiting.

After the blankets were handed out, we took the kids outside to play in the yard. Sue also had brought some toys over from Canada for the kids at the home to have, so they were playing with their new toys and teaching us some new Lugandan words. What I thought was the coolest part about this experience is the fact that most of these children spoke little or no English (mostly because many of them were very small) but we were still able to connect with them in a positive way. Even though they couldn’t understand most things that we were saying, they still could sense the love that we were showing them. It was awesome to see them connecting with all of us in a certain way. It was funny how some of the kids even got possessive of the attention that they were getting from us. The best part of all of the communication was the fact that they were all able to receive and to return the love that we were showing them. They knew that we were there for them, and they all received this attention positively.

The hardest part of the afternoon was leaving the kids. The kids weren’t at all thrilled when we began to pack up our things because they knew that we had to leave. BUT we will be back. It was such a positive experience just to be in such an awesome place like this where these kids are getting a second chance. The stories of how most of the kids ended up here are pretty sad, but it’s amazing how they still have the capability to be kids once they have been put into places like this where there are people who can have a positive impact on their lives and take care of them.

I applaud those who are willing to devote their lives to causes such as this. These kids are lucky to have been placed in the baby home because it has given them a second chance at life. There is a chance that not all of them will be adopted, but they are still in a loving and caring environment that was created so these children could understand and experience love like they hadn’t before. It’s amazing what a little love can do for a person after experience hard times in life.