A couple of weeks back our team was able to take Shilla to her grandparents for a visit. What they found broke their hearts, just strengthening the importance of Shilla being a part of the WellSpring family.
As a reminder, Shilla is a single orphan, her mother passed a few years back and she had been staying with her father in an abandoned house (unfinished property – just dirt floors, block walls, and a portion of sheet metal for a roof). Her father suffers from tuberculosis and is unable to work. Shilla was providing for them by selling small vegetables.
We found that Shilla has a sister that stays close by at the grandparents home. Her grandmother is 84 and the grandfather is 88. Her grandfather is unable to walk at this point, he just crawls around due to his legs being paralyzed. He has no wheelchair or access to a wheelchair. He has had to learn to survive by moving around on his back – just dragging his legs.
The grandmother is lame in one foot and is barely able to walk with the help of some primitive crutches. Due to this no one in the family or extended family is able to work. They only survive by the generosity of others around them.
Shilla’s father is 58. He is able-bodied, but his skill was making clay air vents for houses. As the Chinese have swept in they have flooded the market with cheap metal and plastic vents which in turn put him out of work.
If all of this was not difficult enough to learn, they then met Shilla’s sister Astidah. The grandmother told them, Astridah is so excited to greet you and thank you for what you are doing for her sister, she is coming now to greet you. A few minutes later here came this little girl crawling on the floor. Astridah is also crippled with no wheelchair.
Astridah, much like Shilla has the sweetest personality. She is genuinely a loving child. She did have a wheelchair sometime back, but it was just used as a campaign stunt – a political party brought it to her for a photo opportunity and then when they failed in the re-election bid – they came back and removed the wheelchair from the home.
Our team was deeply touched by the entire story. They learned of the older sisters who are now in Lusaka trying to survive.
All together this extended family living at the grandparents place is a total of 9. They have been surving on very little – as they will tell you – they survive on what the Lord provides.
Our team has visited with our partners Campus Crusade For Christ and they have agreed to provide wheelchairs to help assist. A quality wheelchair in Zambia is very expensive – with the current conversion, about $1,200. So we are truly humbled and blessed by this partnership.
Shilla’s dad will be taking part in a carpentry workshop Ward will be holding in early August. We have discovered we are able to build quality shelfs and house hold furniture that there is a demand for. So we are going to share our knowledge and tools to a small group of people to see if we can have our first training center that goes beyond our rescue home.
Please keep the team, the children, and the ministry of WellSpring in your prayers. We are blessed to see how the Lord is expanding and growing the areas of impact.
