Engaging with the Smallest in Botswana

During our time with Love Botswana Outreach Mission (LBOM), our team was able to assist with the Lorato House of Love - The Baby House. This is one of LBOM's community outreach programs.

Normally the house is run by two women during the day and two women during the night. Our team took over the house from Sunday evening until Tuesday evening. The house at capacity houses 10 babies and over the 10 days were onsite the 10th baby arrived. Our team rallied to the challenge and fed babies, loved on babies, bathed babies and played with babies. Whew. We had a tired group of folks - six babies and four toddlers is work for sure.

Lorato House is a rescue center and orphanage for abandoned babies and children in need. The Northwest and Okavango Districts of Botswana have among the highest levels of orphaned children and children affected by HIV/AIDS in the country. This is the first rescue center of its type in Botswana.

The goal of Lorato House of Love is to place these babies into loving families in Botswana that the children will grow up to be contributing members of society. Lorato House educates and empowers the extended families, guiding them to raise healthy, well-balanced children.

Our Missionary Adventure

Charles and I just returned yesterday after spending the last two weeks in Maun, Botswana with Love Botswana Outreach Mission. It had been 10 years since I last visited LBOM and I was so excited to share the experience with Charles.

We're both attracted to adventure so I knew it would be a relatively easy trip for us both. Having been there before I had some pretty easy expectations. Charles, in typical form, arrived well prepared and with lots and lots of tools and medicines in his two bags of luggage.

One of the things he may not have realized that would prove useful was his knowledge of working on 4x4s or his Texas State Guard medic training. Read more about 3/4 down on Sarah Witt's blog post Kev's Version Of the Moremi Adventure.

My Movember 2010 Story

Movember Austin Growing By Leaps and Bounds

Movember, movember the second movember . . . there's a quote that goes something like that.

This is my second year to participate in the Movember movement. See my post from last year here.

If you aren't familiar with Movember it's a movement that started down under in Australia in 2003 to both be a silly way to bring back the mustache (Mo) and in turn as a way to raise awareness and funds to fight cancers that affect men's lives.

'Cmon. When you see pink what do you think? Breast cancer awareness, right? When you think about what cause is talked about the most during October it's what? Cancers that affect women.

But did you know that in 2010 tragically more than 32,000 men will die as a direct result of prostate cancer?

My husband, Charles was diagnosed with prostate cancer and subsequently underwent a radical prostatectomy last October. I blogged about it as "Our Life After Three Words."

In the last week he's had a one of many followup appointments with his urologist and he's completely cancer free and has NO PSA level.

Men, it's so important to talk about PSA levels with your physician. Women, it's so important to encourage the men in your lives to get consistent checkups that can catch things like cancer.

Charles' doctor told him that his cancer probably grew over a period of about five years. Yikes. That's a long time. There were definitely symptoms that were disregarded and thank God that he decided to get a check up and be completely honest with his physician when he did.

If you'd like to get involved with Movember please visit www.movember.com. If you're in the Austin area we're hoping to have 250 members by the end of November and as of tonight we're at about 150. Join us - Team AUS!

If you aren't in the Austin area, see if you can find a team near you or consider making a donation.

And tell me about your stories either here on this post or on my Movember page. We'd love to have you share!