Every month, Corenne and I accompany the month’s birthday boys or girls on a special birthday outing – the park, mall, video arcade, movie, and then the highlight of the evening: McDonalds!!

A new routine has been added: I take pictures of each child, and my friend who owns a photo shop in the mall donates 3 prints for every kid, right on the spot. This is a big, big deal for the kids.

Attached are the pictures I took of  4 of the 18 girls we went with last night (two months combined because of my travel). I thought I’d send these pictures to you, and I encourage you to take a couple moments to flip through them – I know you probably wish you could be here with the girls in person but this is the next best thing. As you look at the pictures, imagine where each girl would be without us, without Hope. Certainly not celebrating their birthdays, I would wager.  

The first is a picture of a new girl named Janaina (pronounced Ja - na – ee’ - na).  Her mother recently abandoned her and her 3-year old sister in front of a church, and took off.  A family wants to adopt the little sister, but Janaina was sent to us, all alone in this world.

Since she arrived on April 15, she has neither talked nor smiled.  

Before I left the office for the evening, after the girls had stopped by on their way to the park for me to take their pictures (I catch up with them later and trade places with Corenne), I pulled up Janaina’s picture on the computer screen, and together with the office staff we prayed that she would smile and talk that evening.

During the course of the evening, at the video arcade, we passed a gumball machine with little colored rubber balls in it. Janaina he could not take her eyes off that machine. She had no interest whatsoever in the games, she was just fascinated by those balls. A few minutes after we left, she tugged on my arm. “Uncle Philip, can you buy me one of those rubber balls?”  All the girls looked her in amazement and shouted “she talked!”  

I took Janaina by the hand, and we walked back toward the red vending machine. Usually I try to treat all our children equally. But I felt like buying the whole gumball machine for her (or rubber ball machine).  I stuck in a coin, and the ball spun around and around inside the machine and finally popped out the bottom.

I wondered how long Janaina had dreamed about getting one of those tiny little rubber balls.  I guess she had just been waiting to talk until she really needed to communicate something urgently enough. This, for her, was pretty urgent.

When Janaina finally had that ball in her hand, her face lit up with a smile from ear to ear, that did not go away.   

Everything was going to be all right.