This is Cecilia - or Ceci (pronounced Se-see) for short. This is a photo I took last year, but it is so apt! I spent yesterday morning, with the Mission Direct team at Nazareth House, a home for children with a wide array of varied disabilities. Ceci has down syndrome and yesterday, I spent a good while sitting on the sofa next to Ceci as we all sang some songs together. Ceci was dancing and laughing her head off as we sang, and inbetween every song, she'd nudge me and make a short 'hmm' sort of sound and wait... and I'd repeat it, to complete hilarity of course! And when she could finally stop herself from laughing, she'd go again, and we'd repeat - the laughter never fading - until we sang another song! It was beautiful. I absolutely loved being at Nazareth House again. Seeing all the kids - talking to them - playing with them. Seeing Sister Mercedes - hearing her story - loving her. But it was also difficult. Seeing them still in that house, and no building work started on a new place yet. One of the things that brought this need home to me more than anything else was one of the boys, José. José is one of the older boys there, and he has to be separated from the other children all the time because he tends to be quite violent. So whenever we are there, using the back room, he has to be outside. He always comes and talks to us through the windows, and it's not that he's unhappy being out there at all - but Sister Mercedes would just love to have a padded room with things he can do in it, where he can do what he likes, and live and learn and so on. A new, purpose-built house would just make such a difference. This is life for them still. Still without enough bedrooms; still without big enough doorways; still without the right bathroom facilities. Just making do. The reason we're not already building a new place, as we had hoped to be this summer, is because we couldn't find the right land in time. We now have until December to find and purchase the land, so that we can definitely start building next summer. Amazingly, over the last year, enough money has been raised to buy the land - though we'll still be raising money to build the house this year - and so we literally just need to find some! It needs to be near enough to the school that some of the kids are able to go to, and to the people who currently bring food, to the children's hospital and the homes of the staff, and so on and so on. So PLEASE PRAY. Pray with us that land would be found. Land that meets all the necessary requirements and is affordable. We trust in God's timing and God's plan - it is in him that money has been raised this year, and it is in him that it will be spent! This is a video I made last year telling the story of Nazareth House, and what we hope to be able to do with it: You can see more about our project to build Sister Mercedes
and her children a new home over on the PROJECTS page!
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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