Two new jennas

One day.  Two tiny babies.  Nine pounds.  Twenty fragile fingers.  Twenty delicate toes.  Two beating hearts.  Four new lungs.

This week we are rejoicing over new life and I am in awe over perfect, intricate, four-pound bodies.

Two new babies, or jennas in Juba Arabic, were brought to Harvesters on Monday.  These little babies are unrelated but orphaned by the same tragedy.  Their mothers died after delivering them into this world and their fathers were left with new babies and heavy choices.  Keep their jenna and hope for enough money to buy baby formula and pray for a way to care for a delicate new life?  Or give up their child, their own child, for the guarantee of a future and a better life?  

This week the fragility and preciousness of life look me in the face with big, seeking eyes and tiny fingers squeeze my thumb imploring me to protect and care and nurture.  And while my heart is heavy that they will never know their mothers and their fathers will never see them take their first steps or mutter their first words I am grateful, so grateful, that Harvesters exists, that there is a place in this land that will protect and care and nurture those for whom there is no other place, not even the tukkul of their own fathers. 

We rejoice over Angeer Santino Matiopp (Deborah Colette) and Vito Adam Quinn Loputu and 

we know that there is purpose in every tragedy and in every new life.

Angeer Santino Matiopp aka Little Debbie

Birthdate: May 31, 2011

3.9 pounds

a sleepy yawn

tiny feet

Baby Sue getting a look at Little Debbie.

Vito Adam Quinn

Birthday: May 31, 2011

5 pounds

Three big sisters admiring their new baby brother. 

There is an appointed time for everything.  

And there is a time for every event under heaven - a time to give birth and a time to die.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2