Mwayi and His Family

Snoden is introducing Mwayi to you. He’s seven years old and a member of our feeding program and Kindergarten. His father died two years ago, and now his mother is terminally ill. He’s one of eight children. Mwayi has a quickly developing skin condition that you can clearly see in this video. We want to address that immediately, and two hundred dollars, the amount of money Snoden is asking for, should cover a trip to the hospital and a visit to a doctor. It may even cover his medication or a small procedure. However, as you may have deduced from the situation, we’re going to need more.

Friends and neighbors are helping the family while their mother is sick, but when she dies, the children will be orphans. As much as we want to take in all eight of them when that happens, we can’t. Not only is it probably best that family take care of family, but the government encourages it. The closest relatives will be responsible for them, whether they want to or not, and we would like to help lighten that burden—especially since sometimes these “unwanted burdens” are targets for abuse. Eight more children without more income can be devastating, so we want to be sure that wherever they go, there is enough money to provide for them.

This family is under an unbelievable amount of stress with their father gone and their mother as sick as she is. We will get Mwayi to the doctor even before you help us pay for that. It’s obviously urgent and cannot wait. But we’ll need your help to provide for these kids during the most difficult time of their lives. We would like to try to keep them together, but nobody in the village will be able to afford them all, and it’s likely they’ll be separated and possibly shipped to relatives far away from each other. We pray Mwayi will stay close and continue his education with us. It’s not up to us who they’ll live with, but we can offer to help pay for their food, clothes, and medical care until we’re no longer needed for that. Snoden is asking for two hundred dollars, but after learning more about this family, we realize this is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is one of the situations we dread the most in our ministry. It’s out of our hands and seems hopeless, but we know it never is. God is fully capable of making something beautiful out of this tragic situation. Please pray for Mwayi and his family, and give whatever God puts on your heart. We’ll do our best to discreetly provide for them and keep them together while they lose their mother and make the transition so many village children make every year to orphan status. We’ll continue to be as involved as possible and to keep you informed about their lives as much as we’re permitted. Thank you for your love and generosity!

Send a tax-deductible donation here:

HUGS for Tomorrow

P.O. Box 1816 

Azle, Texas 76098

Or make a tax-deductible PayPal donation here.

Long Distance Connection

Snoden and Angela at her new boarding school

Snoden and Arthur (in the background) harvesting food for the kids

When I was an exchange student in Vienna, for an entire year I had to walk to the end of the street and use a calling card at a phone booth for my mother to hear my voice—and she could never call me back. In order to talk to my friends I sent aerogrammes and waited weeks for a return letter. The problems of a sixteen-year-old girl are many, and by the time my mom or my friends got back to me in writing with their well-thought-out responses, I had already moved on to the next crisis. Times sure have changed, and now I can sit with a cup of coffee on my comfy couch, touch a button on my phone, and talk to people in an African village, where they don’t even have running water or electricity. It’s amazing, really. 

We talk to Snoden and Susan that way quite often. They have the kids wave to us while they’re enjoying a meal or let us “sit in” on a class while they teach. They walk us around and show us the progress on a construction project or let us see how well the maize is growing on our land. We chat over a 9,000 mile distance like we’re standing next to each other on the same soil. That makes it easy for us to forget how difficult it is to live in the village and just how much those kids need this program. No water, no electricity, no health care, no security, and no education—for too many of the children there. But the kids in our program receive all these things, so we continue to work together over this long distance to improve and expand our ministry. Snoden just sent us the two beautiful pictures I’m sharing with you here. They’re not the highest quality images or even textbook examples of composition, but what they represent is of far greater value.

The first picture is a selfie that Snoden took of Angela and himself while he was dropping her off at her new school. It means she doesn’t have to walk four miles through dangerous neighborhoods anymore just to arrive at a school with hundreds of students to one teacher per class, no books, and no lunch. She’s a bright girl with untapped potential, and we want to see her thrive. Thanks to our generous friends and supporters, she will. We started out by applying for her to attend the international school where I taught and where the boys went when we lived in Malawi. After the initial enrollment process, we realized that may not be the best school for her after all. Among a few other issues, getting there and back each day was going to be a challenge. It took a bit of searching but we believe her parents’ legwork has paid off and that she’s been enrolled in the perfect school to suit her needs. It just so happens to be the girls’ boarding school Gret Glyer, the founder of DonorSee, started when he lived in Malawi. (I wrote about his recent passing in my last blog article). We love to see Angela’s bright smile in this photo, and we share her sentiment.

The second picture is of Snoden at our new farm, showing off some of the beautiful produce already ready for harvest. He was on his way home from leaving Angela at school and stopped by to grab some food for the kids in our feeding program.You can see Arthur, Angela’s brother, playing farmer in the background. We know God is blessing this endeavor because it’s not the growing season in Malawi; there is no rain. This new land is low enough that it stays wet and allows plants to grow even when the land around it is bone dry. This means that even with the price of food on the rise, our kids will not go hungry and we should be able to feed others outside our program. It also gives the kids exposure to foods they have never eaten and increases their health and the likelihood that they will eat a well-balanced diet in the future. I cannot express to you how excited we are to see the abundance of nutrition represented in those green leafy vegetables! 

We hope to eventually eradicate poverty from the lives of every household in Malawi. Our latest two projects—the land purchase and enrolling Angela in school—have been especially fruitful to that end. We received the images that inspired this article just minutes after Snoden captured them on his phone, thanks to the miracle of modern technology. Now I’m sharing them with you just hours later. Isn’t it amazing that we can all be a part of what’s happening in Tambalale village right now? We don’t have to read about it in a book a year from now or a letter a month from now or even hear about it over the phone without actually seeing it. You and I can interact with real people living in real poverty today, and we can do something about it—today! It truly is an awesome blessing to be included in such a vital Kingdom work. We hope you feel the connection and the difference you’re making to put an end to the cycle of poverty in so many precious lives. 

Send a tax-deductible donation here:

HUGS for Tomorrow

P.O. Box 1816 

Azle, Texas 76098

Or make a tax-deductible PayPal donation here.

The Shadow of Death

When I was in college I would sometimes wake in the middle of the night to a panicky feeling, only to realize it was because I’d forgotten to deliver someone’s drink at my waitress job or to turn in a paper at school. Not exactly life threatening, so it didn’t take me long to go back to sleep. Later when I became a wife and mother, I woke to thoughts a bit more important like kids’ schedules and overdue bills. Again, nothing critical. But now I feel like I’m constantly aware of the ticking clock hours before I want to be. My mind races with weighty issues that are completely out of my control, like the overabundance of drugs, pornography, and violence that my boys will have to navigate as they grow up and go off on their own. I haven’t been a news watcher for a long time, and I’ve recently adopted the habit of reciting as much Scripture in my head as it takes to doze off again. I recommend both to anyone who deals with nighttime anxiety. It does help, but in a world where evil seems to be intensifying at breakneck speed, it’s getting harder and harder to get a full night’s sleep.

A few nights ago when that familiar 3:00 am anxiety tapped me on the shoulder, I pushed it away with the opening words to the twenty-third Psalm. If I recite it slowly, that one usually has me asleep by the end. This time I stopped in the valley of the shadow of death—not on the words exactly but on the image. I imagined myself there like I never had before—in a deep valley with a black shadow, paralyzing my sense of direction—and it felt scary. It was as if God was saying, “This is what wakes you up, right? The darkness is what bothers you, but there’s no reason to be anxious. It can’t touch you; it’s just a shadow.” I must have recited this Psalm a thousand times through, but I’ve never before realized that the darkness I associate with that valley—the evil of this world—is only the shadow of death, not death itself. Just like an eclipse is impossible without the sun, the shadow of death only exists because of the brightness of God. And just like that eclipse will be gone before you know it, the darkness over this world will disappear when the Light behind it is revealed.

I was shocked the next morning to hear the tragic news that the founder of DonorSee, our main fundraising platform for the ministry in Malawi, was shot and killed in his home. He was only thirty-two years old and left behind a young wife and two babies. Even though I never met Gret in person, I’ve had many phone conversations with him. We’ve been with DonorSee since 2017, shortly after its launch, and I feel a strong sense of connection to the program. During the initial development of his website, I was vocal about what I wanted to see, and Gret was very responsive, making several changes I requested. DonorSee has been instrumental in feeding hundreds of children in our program, and we pray that Gret’s legacy will continue. It’s hard to make sense of such an abrupt and untimely death. I’m sure many people are seeking God’s peace today as we all wait for answers.

I lost my brother to a tragedy when I was in grade school. It took me many years to sleep through the night after that. I know there are no words to comfort a soul in that state of grief. I would not presume to speak any. But I do know that God can and will heal a broken heart, so I ask Him to do that for Gret’s family and for his friends. I pray that they will feel His presence as they walk through this valley and that they will feel the warmth of the Son that shines all around the shadow of death. What a sweet day of fellowship it will be when we’re reunited with those who have been swallowed up by death, when we discover that it was indeed just a shadow and that what is real is Jesus and His life and resurrection. May God bless this dear family and grant them peace and comfort until they can once again sleep through the night.

HUGS for Tomorrow

The day is finally here! Five years after we moved to Africa, we now have an official 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. We’ve been working for months with a banker, a lawyer, and an accountant to file all the paperwork necessary to allow us to register with the government and receive tax-free donations on behalf of the children of Malawi. I can’t say it was a fun process, but we are happy to announce that it’s done and we can get on with the business of raising those kids. This brings a few very positive changes for you, our friends and supporters. 

First of all, when you give money to help the kids in the program, it goes straight to them with nothing and no one in between. There’s no more waiting to see if we got your donation, and there’s no chance it’s going to get lost among the other ministries sharing the same account—even if you forget to write it on the memo line of your check. Over the past twenty-five years we have enjoyed the oversight of some excellent churches all over the country, but managing an overseas ministry is a big job even when it’s one dimensional like this started out, feeding kids. But when that one dimension turns into the many facets involved in developing a PreK-12th grade school, that big job becomes a full time job. It’s not fair to expect any church to juggle that caliber of ministry alongside all the others they support. That’s why we’ve made it an autonomous entity with its own board of directors. Though it’s a bittersweet transition for us as we become more independent, we hope to be a source of pride and accomplishment for the many people who have helped us get to where we are today. It’s nice to be able to accept funds from a church without obliging them to manage the distribution of those funds. It’s simpler this way.

Another good change is our new name. Instead of referring to us as that family who has that ministry in Africa that feeds those kids, you can call us “HUGS for Tomorrow”. You’ve probably heard us talk about the dangers of hand outs, so it may help to think of the HUGS part as a Hand Up for Growth and Success. We like to think of each meal, each trip to the clinic, each set of clothes, and each lesson we teach these kids as a hug that will carry them into a bright future—HUGS for Tomorrow. Besides, Hand Outs for tomorrow would be HOGS and that doesn’t really work, does it? 

The most practical change you need to know about is our new address, which I’ll share at the bottom of this article. Even though we live in Nebraska now, we’re keeping the nonprofit registered in Texas. We loved working with the secretary from our last church so much that we hired her to work for HUGS. John, along with his new job at York College, will remain the director of HUGS and I’ll keep writing and posting pictures and videos to keep you informed. We want you to know that without your overwhelming support we would have no reason to go this route. Because of you, HUGS for Tomorrow exists and will serve some of the most precious, most forgotten children in the world for years to come. God bless you for your generosity and for your prayers. 

Now, we need some mail so go ahead and try out our new contact information:

HUGS for Tomorrow

P.O. Box 1816 

Azle, Texas 76098

Or make a tax-deductible PayPal donation here.

Advocating

Lately, Andy’s been in trouble for being “lazy”. He’s graduating a year early to start college in the fall and he really needs to be doing extra school work, not sleeping in. I have literally shaken his slumbering body and yelled in his ear to wake him only to watch him flop around, unresponsive. “What in the world is wrong with you? Your brother never even did this, and he pulled some doozies!” That’s what it was like in our house—for weeks. Then we discovered that he has mononucleosis. Wow, did I feel guilty! Not only did he feel terrible, but we were harassing him on top of it. Our family doctor thought his throat was too bad to be classified as just mono, so she sent out a culture and told us to go home and wait for the results, which could take a couple of days. Within twenty-four hours, though, we were in the hospital emergency room because his tonsils had swollen so much he was having trouble breathing. The kid was sick. 

He was admitted for observation and kept for five days until the swelling finally went down. During that time we had to advocate aggressively on a couple of occasions. Since the hospital doesn’t allow children to visit, John and I were constantly trading out to be with Ben at home. I happened to be with Andy when most of the doctors came to his room. The first was the hospitalist, who I will call the doc. He reiterated what both our family doctor and the ER doctor said, that Andy appeared to have a secondary infection. The throat culture hadn’t come back yet and, because he couldn’t eat or even drink, he was started on IV fluids, including a steroid and a strong antibiotic. (You may remember that Jonah was diagnosed with malaria seven months after being home from Malawi. Not knowing what was wrong with him, the doctors were bracing us for the worst and at the same time refusing to test for endemic African diseases. After a cry of malpractice, they agreed and found that he indeed had malaria. Treatment immediately reversed his symptoms and saved his life.) Andy’s situation felt eerily similar, so we wanted those same tests. Even after I relayed Jonah’s story to the doc, he scoffed and patronized, “This is not Burger King. You can’t just order what you want.” God gave me the strength to maintain my composure but my determination was only increased, and our intense debate continued until John joined the conversation through speaker phone. I introduced the doc as the man who refused to test for malaria. Needless to say, John started in with a discourse that parroted mine, when I suddenly had an idea. “Okay, how about we all agree to check for one thing at a time and as long as it comes back negative and he’s still not better, we go to the next thing on the list?” That sounded reasonable to the doc, and we just wanted some answers, so the first blood draw was ordered. Negative. True to his word, the doc ordered the second test, which would take overnight, so we waited.

The next morning brought another negative result, but Andy had still not improved. The doc came early and admitted that he had expected Andy to be doing much better. He seemed to have had a change of heart and apologized for being condescending, agreeing to test for whatever we wanted. His seemed genuinely concerned, which made me a bit nervous. Was there something gravely wrong with my son? He called an ear, nose, and throat specialist for a second opinion. Hours later, the ENT still hadn’t shown up but it was discovered that he had added notes to Andy’s file as if he had. When paged a second time, he soon entered the room like gangbusters, spoke quickly and turned to leave, when I stopped him asking, “Did you say you came to see my son when you didn’t?” He stopped in his tracks and turned around, offering matter of factly, “If I came up here to actually visit every patient they call me to see, that’s all I would ever do. I looked at his chart. He’s fine. He just has mono and I can’t even imagine he’s in that much pain. He should just go home. He doesn’t need to be here.” I started to remind him that Andy was having trouble breathing and that three doctors believed he had more than mono, when I realized I was wasting my breath and that the conversation was over. Maybe it was divine providence that John wasn’t in the room for his lecture, but I relayed it to him later and he promptly reported the incident, asking for a new ENT. Instead, an infectious disease team was called in. They were extremely thorough but found nothing. Thankfully, over the following long hours Andy’s swelling began to subside and he was able to drink and to eat, and his breathing became much less labored.

In the end, nothing new was detected in any of the tests, so the doctors were obliged to call it a severe case of mono and to send us home with orders for follow up bloodwork and a month of low impact activities. As we waited for discharge instructions from the hospital, John and I went to the cafeteria to decompress. I took one sip of my coffee and broke down in tears. John tried to console me, saying that our son would be fine, but that’s not what was bothering me. I knew Andy would be okay because we were there to advocate for him just like we advocated for Jonah and insisted on the malaria test that saved his life. I knew Andy would be alright because we were there to expose fraud by a specialist who might have sent Andy home without the steroids that ultimately reduced his swelling and allowed him to breathe freely. He’s okay because we were there for him, but what about all the kids in Malawi. I hadn’t thought about them in days, but that’s who I was thinking about at that moment. 

Since we started our program four years ago, we’ve personally known children in the village who have died from treatable illnesses like malaria, asthma, and HIV. They weren’t a part of our program and nobody was protecting them. My heart was heavy with the realization that as much good as our program has done for so many children, there are hundreds if not thousands more that need support. These kids are undernourished and undereducated, but they’re not underintelligent or underimportant. They just need a chance. Andy’s health scare encouraged me to use my education and resources to work a little harder on behalf of those children who don’t have mothers or fathers to do what we do for our own kids. God puts it in us to advocate for the helpless because it’s what He has done for us. It’s at the very heart of the Gospel. There is power in numbers and we’re asking you to get a little more involved by praying daily or giving monthly. Any one of these children that we’re feeding and educating could grow up to cure malaria, asthma, or even HIV. Given the right opportunities, they will work side by side with our kids to make the world a better place. Thank you for partnering with us to advocate for them so they can become the men and women God is calling them to be.

Make a tax deductible donation here. 

Food Shortage

(UPDATE to this article: I am happy to report that I shared this to Facebook at noon, and by 2:00 the land purchase of $4,000 had been fully funded.)

Did you ever see the movie "Elf"? Remember the part where the dad proclaims, “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do and I’m way behind”? I’ve been over quoting that. It’s not even funny any more, just true. Our house has looked like the Chiquita banana packing plant for weeks because banana boxes are strong and stackable and we’re putting everything we own into them. We had columns of them everywhere until last week when we took a truckload containing half of our possessions up to Nebraska to clear out the house for prospective buyers. Packing up, listing the house, and finishing the homeschool year in time for Andy’s early graduation was more than enough to make us all crazy, in spite of the fact that we had a team of people from the church help us prepare the house. We’ve been hyper focused on our own stuff, and I was pretty sure I had reached my limit and couldn’t do one more thing when Snoden called. 

We were ready to tell him we would have to get back to him when he said that, since the president declared a state of emergency earlier in the year, the price of grain has gone up so high in Malawi that people are coming to him asking for food. They’re starving. We knew the rainy season brought unexpected flooding and drought, which did not produce the crops needed to replace last year’s reserve, but we didn’t know how serious the problem was until now. The grain supply is running out. All of a sudden our critical tasks weren’t so critical. We had to stop everything and address the real emergency. 

Snoden had the idea to travel out to where the elevation is a bit lower and the ground a bit damper to buy a piece of land we can use to grow more food. He believes we can raise crops year round there, not just during the rainy season. He has two cousins we know personally who can come work the land and protect it from squatters. We talked about hiring them to do the job, and Snoden went to search for a good piece of land at a fair price. He found two acres and we were in the middle of that negotiation when our son Andy got sick and was admitted to the hospital. Now we had a new priority, so we told Snoden to go ahead and buy the land and hire his cousins and plant the crops, using some of the money we sent last month for the feeding program. We assured him we would do our best to replace that money as soon as possible so nobody goes without.  

We are not being modest when we say we can’t do this without you. We need your support to continue caring for the 125 kids we feed each day and now for the land we will use to grow food to provide for people when the famine hits. This is not outside the scope of our ministry, which is to care for the children in our program and their families. Many of the people we will feed from this land are family members of these kids. When our money runs out, there will be other people with money to buy what’s left of the food in the country. But when the food runs out, there will be nothing more anyone can do. It will be too late. It’s happened before. If you haven’t read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, it’s helpful to understanding the situation. That’s why we are planning for that day by developing new farmland. We expect to save lives through this purchase. 

We just spent $4,000 to buy the land and we need to replace that immediately to be sure none of the children in our program skips a meal this month. They really cannot afford to. We understand that everyone is struggling financially right now, but any amount will help. Whatever we have left to raise after next week will be posted as a video on DonorSee, but we have high hopes that our supporters here are going to take care of this. I know we’re all super busy and way behind in something, but please take a moment now to pitch in because food for young children is not something that can wait. There is so much need and we want to be able to help as many people as possible during this time of crisis. Thank you and God bless you for your generosity and care for these precious kids and the people of Malawi!

Make a tax deductible donation here. 

A New Chapter

John and I with Sam Smith (the president of York)
and his wife Lisa during our visit

Recently John saw his college friend, Sam Smith, on Facebook announce that he is now the president of York College in Nebraska. He was coming to Dallas to host a fundraising dinner, so we took the opportunity to go and say hello. I’ve been getting to know his wife through social media and was excited to finally see her in person; we seem to have so much in common. It was a brief visit but quite energizing. We were pleased to hear that Sam is passionate about maintaining Christian principles as he prayerfully directs the future of the student body he now leads. Sam said he has been watching the progress of our ministry in Malawi and would like to hear more about it and even how we might partner on some level with York. We made tentative plans to come visit the campus sometime in the near future and promised to keep in touch. 

Just days after that evening we got an email from Sam asking John to apply for the position of Vice President of Student Life at York College. Considering neither of us knew exactly what that was, it didn’t seem likely that he would get the job even if he did throw his hat in the ring. Besides, he wasn’t looking for a job. He’s been preaching for the Westworth Church of Christ for the past two years, and we’ve been working to further develop the school in Malawi—two fulfilling endeavors that have enhanced each other. However, after a phone call with Sam, John was convinced we needed to at least pray about the possibility. Sam was fully aware of John’s lack of experience in the institutional world but also optimistic about what his specific experiences would contribute to the school. He said John could learn the mechanics of the job as he went but that his consistent pursuit of the Gospel was something that could not be taught and exactly what was needed to propel more students into Kingdom work. Sam feels that our family would complement the plans he has for the spiritual growth of the students he has come to love so much. He admitted that it’s a team effort, and he wanted John to join that team. 

The whole idea seemed to be out of the blue, but we agreed to really pray about it over the next month, at which time we already had a trip planned to Colorado to take John’s mom home. We decided to go through Nebraska to give God every opportunity to answer those prayers. We toured the campus and spoke with faculty, staff, and students. I was in every meeting with John and we included the kids in our conversations after each one. After the following weeks of questions and answers and back and forth about the details of how the college and the Malawi mission might benefit equally from such an unlikely partnership, we feel confirmed that this is indeed a good idea. John accepted the position and our family is planning a move to Nebraska this summer. 

For those of you who know us, this may not come as a surprise. When we committed our lives to each other, we also committed them to Jesus. We promised to follow Him wherever He leads and to trust Him to provide our needs. This is no exception and we fully expect great spiritual blessings for our family, for the kids in Malawi, for the students at York College, and for you, our supporters and friends! We’ll keep you posted as this transition develops. In the meantime, we’re working diligently to finalize the paperwork required to make the Malawi ministry an official non-profit entity before we leave for Nebraska. As always, thank you so much for walking with us on this journey. May God richly bless you for your support and for your prayers!