Day "What Day is it?" -- Oh yeah, 16! Crazy Healing!

I went to the original house where we found Cecil (which by the way, is not his real name -- his real name is Sbiso, sounds like Cecil and they just corrected us today). One of my team members, Bryan brought tiny IPod speakers and was letting all of the neighborhood kids dance to "Love Shack". I turned the corner and saw Maureen and Cecil at home -- in their shack. I may never hear the B52s the same way again. Today I saw "gontse" (that is Sutu for "enough, finished, complete" -- it just happens to be my South African name -- but I saw it today) in the healing of Cecil. He's at home and he's not the same kid I met a week ago. He can stand and I watched him smile for the first time today. Witness said that she saw him dancing yesterday.

Maureen is also a new creation. This woman who I thought may hit me when I first met her a week ago, today bought me a scarf. A beautiful one. It was her gift to me. I have to admit it did make me feel warm all over.

Today I saw Cecil eat two sandwiches, a bag of chips, a banana, two yogurts, a granola bar, a frozen fruit bar, and a bag of peanuts. Really, I saw him eat all of that.

Today I learned that as our shepherd, the Lord can literally keep us from fear. After spending a day with several people (including Maureen and Cecil) that are HIV positive I realized that I never once feared getting close to them, loving them, or holding them. I was able to see them as people with hopes and dance moves and humor. I saw them as friends. The nasty nature of the disease is that it defines people and in this case most of a continent. It promotes fear and isolation. No thanks. I'll take love and community.

Maureen is so full of joy that she grabbed a piece of chalk and enlisted the neighborhood kids in a few games.

This afternoon Maureen, Witness and Cecil all came to Charity and Faith to see the kids program. We did a video interview of the whole story and had had a lot of time to just sit and laugh with them. AP met them for the first time, and Maureen told him what a wonderful person I am. It is clear that she loves me. And I love her. She even told everyone that she wishes that I would adopt her and she could move into my house in the US.

My favorite photo taken by a child today:

AP and Timmy's visit to the adoption agency was good and bad. They scored the most informed person in the country to talk to this morning. However, US adoption from South Africa is not a possibility at this time, not maybe in the next 5 years. That didn't make me lose hope for all of those kids. God's heart breaks for them 100 times more than mine. He's on it, I'm sure.

We did hear from CSM. Camp is a BLAST! It's cold, but PO said they are having a great time.