Nede

Nede is a ball of energy, mischief, and outright trouble.  She also tries to get herself out of all punishment with a smile, contagious laugh, and a big kiss and hug.  She know right the right buttons to soften you.  Her mother died only about 2 years ago and so she has memories of her.  She remembers what family is like.

The search for her family was a long one that only the Lord could orchestrate.  It started with a couple failed meeting attempts with a one armed man (appropriate literal translation for the name he went by) at a market about 70 km away. 

Then one of the aunties at the clinic I work at overheard conversation and said that she knew where Nede's family lived.  So on one very hot afternoon she took us to where she thought we needed to go.  It turned out to be a distant relative, very distant.  But there was relation and they knew who we were looking for.  The day in total was a 40 min ride on paved road, 70 min on bush road (which in only meant for foot traffic not car) and then 4 hours of walking through the bush with a very spry elderly Mozambican women who was tiring us all out.  My confidence waned a little each time we got close to a house.  Close enough for them to hear her yelling at them asking if the people we were looking for lived there, still lived where she thought they lived and if anyone had seen them lately.  But this was bush, bush.  Kind of what I would imagine the prairie to be like back in wagon days.  The families stuck together and did not venture out too much.  The reports received from each call out were very vague but enough to keep our guide going so we all kept going. 

This is the second visit to the family we eventually found.  Nede is sitting on her grandmothers lap.  He father is first on left.  Middle is a faithful servant and translator and the right is Nede's grandfather.

Nede lived with her grandparents for a while but now lives with her father and his first wife.  Nede adjust very well in the beginning but I've been told that she has become very quiet and withdrawn as of late.  Please keep her in prayer too.  That she is safe and protected, healthy, that whatever is causing her sadness would be lifted/revealed, and that she would be free to be her normal joyous, mischievous self.