Uganda

I received a newsletter a few weeks ago from my adoption agency, Americans for African Adoption, with pictures of children who they are having difficulty placing with a family. The image of two of the boys has never left my mind. They are 5 and 9 and have that look in their eyes that some impoverished children have, that look of desperation and hunger. They are hungry for so much more than food. Theirs, I believe, is a deep hunger of the soul. I am praying for these children and ask that you do the same. How does it feel to have no parents? They must live in a state of fear. I pray that they know the security of a home someday. I emailed and asked about the boys and was told they are some of the rock quarry children. Here is an article:
International
Uganda's Children Work on Dangerous Rock Pile
Uganda's children: At age 4, working the dangerous rock pile for meager earnings
By KATY POWNALL Associated Press WriterKAMPALA, Uganda June 1, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
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Stephen Batte works in a quarry under the blazing sun, chipping rocks into gravel with a homemade hammer. It's tiring, boring and dangerous.

Stephen Bati, 10 years old, who lost his mother in the quarry in January when she was buried by a mud slide, breaks rocks in the Acholi Quarters, a slum located in Kireka, Kampala Uganda Friday, Feb. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/ Vanessa Vick)(AP)
Stephen is 9 years old, and has been on the rock pile since he was 4.
"Life has always been hard here," he whispers, carefully positioning a sharp rock before striking it with well-practiced accuracy. "But since my mother died, things have been much harder."
His mother, the woman who taught him to smash rocks when he was a toddler, was killed here in a landslide in August.
His T-shirt torn and his feet bare, Stephen is one of hundreds of people who work in the quarry on the outskirts of Uganda's capital, Kampala. Their shabby figures sit hunched over their heaps of gravel. The chink of metal against stone bounces off the rock faces.

Some things to think about:
Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required... — Luke 12:48b

History will judge us on how we respond to the AIDS emergency in Africa....whether we stood around with watering cans and watched while a whole continent burst into flames....or not. -- Bono