Today we went to Happy Home,  a small grass roots home for about 20 children who either have HIV or who’ve lost their parents to HIV. Like the lepers, people with HIV are outcasts, no one wants them around so the children have nowhere to go. We heard their stories from the Indian married couple who run the home, so heartbreaking, again I was fighting the lump in my throat and holding back tears.

While they sat on the floor singing songs for us, one little 12 yr old girl who is HIV positive (though she looked no more than 5) started having tears run down her cheeks as she sang. When the song was over i asked the leader why she was crying and he said because she was feeling loved and that was a new emotion for her. Both her parents had died of AIDS years before and none of her relatives wanted her. She had been kicked out of 3 schools when they found out she had AIDS.

Another smaller girl next to her wasn’t singing , she is 6 but hasn’t spoken in the 5 months shes lived at the Home –she was taken in after she witnessed her father who is HIV positive beat her mother to death with an ax. No wonder she doesn’t talk. DJ, don’t tell our boys yet… i want it to be a surprise… but I am talking with John Mark about how to sponsor 2 of these children who are new to the Home, a brother and sister (9 and 6 yrs old) who’s father is an HIV alcoholic and mother is mentally retarded so there’s no one to care for them. For less than the price of my daily Dunkin Donuts cup of coffee, we can provide 3 meals a day and school for a year to each of them!!

OK, back to the OR. Oh yeah…almost forgot, I scrubbed in with Dad yesterday again and wasn’t grossed out at all! I held the clamps and even cut the sutures!!   Tomorrow we head back to Hyderabad to visit with a school for orphans before flying home Tuesday evening.   Amazing I’ve been here only 8 days…feels like months.

See you soon!!
xoxoxo Liz