I love you, Lord.

One of my various responsibilities is to write reports to organizations and individuals who have joined us in partnership to serve the least of the least here. The years have taught us how to quantify the work we do and the results and challenges we face.

Today I finished writing the fourth quarter narrative report for the Kardelen Ministries in Turkey. As I re-read what I’d written and looked at the photos we sent, my heart overflowed with a song of gratefulness. Our Father in the heavenlies is so good and His faithfulness to the heart which cries out is everlasting and secure.

Kardelen- “The Snowdrop”

Quarterly Report for Period: _Quarter 4

This quarter our three community outreach teams in the Ankara region have been able to:
a. Personally visit 33 families where the children or parent or both were affected by sickness and disabilities.
b. Phone 35 individuals living in institutions or villages more than 100 miles away from Ankara.
c. Rescue one abandoned mother of a severely disabled boy from death and arrange hospital care while she awaits surgery for cancer and failing kidneys. (see posting “Don’t give up Fatosh”)

d. Arrange doctor visits for one mother who started experiencing paralysis in hands and feet and after being taken to the hospital is now waiting for state-funded physical therapy sessions and an MRI.

e. Provide assistive care for one Snowdrop/Kardelen worker who was hospitalized due to a flare up of Hepatitis C.

f. Provide moral and physical support for one abandoned mother and daughter who were evicted from their affordable apartment to make space for the owner’s relative. Our Snowdrop/Kardelen co-worker N. has spent countless hours driving them around looking for another place for them to live to no avail at the moment. She brought them into her home for a few days then found another compassionate friend who has taken them in temporarily.

d. Provide supplemental stipends for seven individuals in order to buy special medicines which allow them to live a healthier life.
e. See 15 bona fide wheelchair recipients identified.
f. See five Snowdrop/Kardelen staff work twice a week with three mothers and their severely disabled children at Streams of Mercy where they were brought, fed, trained in sewing and in special education therapies.
g. Pray together weekly, worship at Streams of Mercy Center (average group of 10).
h. Host one volunteer team (6 people) from Webster Gardens Lutheran Church, St Louis Missouri who facilitated a birthday party complete with special games for the four children honored and two home visits with the Community Outreach Team.
i. See volunteers Dr. Richard Z. and Y. S. from the USA come and participate in our program at least once a week throughout the quarter.
j. See 22 children in the Oncology Hospital receive special attention from our Kardelen Hospital worker where she serves four days a week. She was able to have meaningful chats with both the children as well as with their family care-giver. The book “Heaven is for Real” is now available in bookstores in the major cities of this country and in the local language. We highly recommend it.

k. Personally see at least two desperate-for-love mothers receive and participate in life-affirming prayer times. There were many others who also “tasted” the goodness of God this past quarter through our visits and phone calls.

l. Help facilitate 6 radio programs on local radio which focused on issues dealing with disability and rejection and emotional, psychological health. “Hope has No limits” has now been airing on Radio Shema for more than a year.

m. Sponsor two full-rime care-givers at a long-term residential facility where nearly 25 young adults are housed and support good care for those who are often neglected in the institutions. I will be posting a new article when I hear the outcome of a critical “whistle-blowing” issue by one of our care givers. Food for major prayer at the moment. Please join us in asking for truth and justice to prevail in this place which I cannot name here for security reasons.

“Lord, we love and worship You who hold all creation together in the Messiah. You have held us together and continue to make a way for us when it seems impossible and too great a task. May your Will be done and Your love be known everywhere and in every place in this land.”