David and Sarah Adjei

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The Adjei Bimonthly(ish)

October 2002

This is our first newsletter after arriving back from the UK on September the 9th. Our original flight was cancelled so we left a day late. However, being moved up to business class, having a spare seat for Jasmine and having about 6 hours less journey time just about made up for it!!

Thank you to everyone who showed us their support while we were in England - those who opened their homes to us, fed us, prayed for us, gave us donations, invited us to speak at their churches and were just generally very nice to us. We really enjoyed the time that we were back and our only regrets are about the friends that we weren’t able to see this time.

All change

Arriving back in Bolivia we were gently reminded why England isn’t generally considered to be a hot country and why everyone here spends a lot of time complaining about the dust. We also found out that things at the boy’s home, “El Camino” have been going very well and there are now 11 boys there... 6 of whom have now been off the streets for about 6 months! Also a significant portion of the money needed for the next phase of the building has now been raised and we are hoping that work will soon start on the kitchen/ dining area so that the rest of the dormitory can be freed up to receive more boys.

You may remember malnourished baby Moses from our previous newsletters and from our talks in England. The latest news about him is that he seems to have recovered completely whilst in the nutrition centre. His mother, Doris however, lost her rights over him because she didn’t go to visit him and so he has been taken into care by social services.

Towards a new girls home...

After being cancelled for a few weeks for various reasons we are hoping to restart the drop-in project for girls in Casa Alfa next week. The girl who seems most keen is Gladys, whose son Omar died from malnutrition earlier this year. You may remember from our last letter that Gladys was 7 months pregnant with another child when Omar died. The good news is that Gladys is not living on the streets anymore. Her boyfriend is working and together they are renting a room so their daughter, Jasmin (don’t know where they got that name from!) is being looked after a bit better than Omar was. Please pray for them, even though Gladys may have learned a harsh lesson when Omar died it doesn’t mean that she has suddenly acquired all the parenting skills that Jasmin needs. Part of the aim of the project is to teach and encourage the girls to look after their children properly.

The project’s aim is to prepare girls for going into a full time residential home which we hope to be able to open in the next few months. We would like to have a couple or a family who could live in and do the day to day administration of the home: organizing shopping, cleaning, schooling, maintenance, etc. This would free us to concentrate more on the actual rehabilitation process in the home: working with the girls on a rehab. programme, counselling, discipleship, etc.

Staff

On the staff front, the good news is that Sharon has come back to work with us for at least one more year (there was some doubt that she would return from England when we last wrote), however, we are still looking for the right people to be able to live in and see to the daily running of the new girls home which we hope to see set up within the next few months.

The Challenges

To give an idea about the economic reality in Bolivia at the moment I’d like to tell you about Yany and Salustio. Yany is the lady from our church who was teaching the girls handicrafts in the project and Salustio is her husband. After being unemployed for 7 months (with no such thing as unemployment benefit), Salustio managed to find work just after we left to go to England. Sadly, this meant that he had to stop helping out at El Camino (the boy’s home) as he had been doing for some weeks. Now, on arriving back here, we have just found out that Yany won’t be able to help at the girls project because she has had to find work - the reason being that Salustio left his job because for the 3 months he was there he simply wasn’t paid at all. He is now 3 months worth of bus fares worse off than if he hadn’t worked at all. They haven’t been able to pay their bills and now their water and electricity have been cut off. And this is not an isolated case, we often hear about workers going unpaid and people having to scrape together in any way they can enough food to put on the table. Please pray for Yany, Salustio and their daughter Kenia - they seem to have the vision and ability to work with the street kids, but not the means to do so.

Family News

Jasmine had her 2nd birthday shortly after arriving back here which we celebrated with a party in our back garden. She was very excited and enjoyed playing with her friends and presents.

Whilst Jasmine’s English improved dramatically whilst in England, her Spanish vocabulary was cut by a dramatic 75% and she came back with only the use of the word “agua”. As versatile and necessary as the word “water” is, we were relieved when within 2 weeks of being back she had recovered a further 25% of her leaving vocabulary and is once again able to take her leave of friends with a culturally sensitive “chau”.

Please pray for:

  • Us - missing family & friends and getting used to being back here again.
  • Staff for the girl’s work.
  • Gladys and Jasmin.
  • The setting up of a new girl’s home.
  • Yany, Salustio & Kenia
 

Thank you for your friendship and support.

With our love,

David, Sarah & Jasmine. xxx

Please contact us at:-  contactus@casaalfa.org

 

P.S. If anyone knows a Mrs S. Eden-Jones please could she get in touch with us. Thanks.

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