April 5, 2016

Saw the PVA (Polio Victims Association) and the orphanage today. The PVA is comprised of polio victims and amputees mostly members of the church with a few non-members that join them on Sunday. They are not a branch but a "home unit". They have no church support. They are authorized to do sacrament and then they have Sunday School and do not have Priesthood, R.S., or primary. The work we want to do for them is wheelchair repair. They received a number of wheelchairs from the church before the Ebola and the chairs are well-used and are in need of help. We have another meeting on Wednesday, April 13th, to revisit the facility with the District President, President Sesay. The orphanage is a very sad situation. There is a woman by the name of Melrose who is a polio victim herself and in a wheelchair. She has taken in 18 abandoned children that are mentally and physically handicapped. Some severe. The children are very thin and enough food is an issue. They knew we were coming and had the children cleaned and all sitting in the living room posed. We toured the house and found that there are 2 bedrooms for the children. They have 5 boys sleeping in a twin size bed and 6 girls sleeping in the same size bed. They had a pile of mattress on top of one broken down bed. They put them on the floor for additional children to sleep. The boys room had one twin size bed and the girls' room had two bunk beds. 3 of the beds are broken and unusable. There was no mosquito netting. There were at least 6 wheelchairs in storage all broken and not usable. Melrose told us she has one adult helper. She showed up before we left and she is also a polio victim. Melrose said she does the cooking. They have recently had two children die from malaria due to no medication. We are working with President Sesay on maybe organizing an elders quorum service project to help with the repairs of the beds and also to give some fast-offering recipients an opportunity to work for what they have received. We will look into possibly having the humanitarian department provide some new mattresses and repair materials for the beds. We will also look into finding an NGO that deals with situations like this. Perhaps they can get some help with food , etc. April 24 - A man came into the office today and asked to speak to Elder Carley. We met with him and he was wanting a wheelchair for his father who has had a stroke. While speaking with him, we learned he has and NGO (non-government Organization or what we call a non-profit organization) called "Peanut Butter Project". He deals with malnutrition children thru bringing them back to health thru eating peanut butter. I asked him if he would check on the above mentioned orphanage and he was very interested in doing that. Don also proposed to him working for us on a project that is very very big and one that we cannot manage alone. He was very interested. This man is a tender mercy. April 5, 2016 - Tuesday S