The Village

I am a small town girl at heart.  It is partially because of this that I jumped at the chance to escape the city for a day and breathe some clean air (seriously, I have heard that people estimate that breathing in our city is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day).  So off I went with a multi-national group from our international church here.  Our church works with a local organization to transform children and villages through child sponsorship.  Similar to and mentored by another large international child sponsorship organization, this local organization works with children, families and communities to provide education, food, sanitation and hope through holistic care to villages in the area.
We were able to visit several homes of sponsored children, visited with them and their families and distributed bags of food.  We were accompanied by several of the workers of the program who are also from and currently live in the same village.
It was such an encouraging day for me....stories of transformation, faces of joy, clean air, great people  and Arabic practice too!

Goat house

GREEN OPEN SPACE!!!  Such a beautiful contrast to our concrete desert.

Visiting one of the homes of the sponsored children.  This little girl is struggling with liver problems.  She was so happy telling us about how she is in school and doing well.

Plastics vendor.

A girl holding a bag of food for the food distribution.

One of the contaminated water sources for the village.  They are currently working on getting water filters installed in all of the villages.

This home housed this family along with about six goats and some chickens.

Excited to have their picture taken.  I was excited to be able to talk to them  (we actually understood each other!).  My Arabic is probably at about this age level!

We heard a lot of donkeys 'singing'.