Tabitha Foundation Cambodia
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Newsletters

With our regular newsletters, we aim to keep you posted on all the interesting and important news and updates of our programs and various activities. Enjoy reading! 

September, 2006

            	

Dear friends and partners, Last Friday, when our managers were in from the provinces, they came to me with some pictures that were very sad. Heng was most disturbed as he showed me a picture of a 2 week old baby born with severe abnormalities. Why, he asked, why would the parents keep such a child? The others all talked at once – why does this happen, how very sad, why is life so hard? These are questions all of ask at one time or another during our life times.

We began to talk about the sadness of life – and the main issue out of all the pain became – who will hear them when they cry? So many of our parents work very hard to feed, clothe and shelter their families. When evening comes and they all return home from their fields, their children ask for food. For so very many who are so poor, there is not enough food. Evenings become a time of sadness, when fathers become angry with their inability to feed their children – they slap them and send them to sleep with empty bellies – night after night. Who will hear them when they cry? When the rains begin, very many go out in the fields and plant their rice – its not easy work – bending over day after day to place the seedlings in straight rows – but they are elated for the rains have come and the shoots take hold. The countryside is diffuse with beauty – evenings are easier because food is growing – and the rains continue unabated – and the joy turns to worry and the worry to despair as the water creeps inexorably higher and the crops fail. And the parents come home and they despair – Who will hear them when they cry? Some children have lost their parents – they are orphans – for when the crops fail, the fathers go to the city to work for many months – in their loneliness so far from home – in their despair – they sleep with unknown women and take home a disease – within a few years both parents have died from AIDS – leaving behind children – too young to be alone – to young to bear the burden of being adult – when evening comes – there is no food and no one to lay them down to sleep – Who will hear them when they cry? In late afternoon, when the day is done and the shadows grow long and people hunger for rest – the rains begin again. There is no sleep – for the roof is just thatch and the rains tumble into the small shacks – everyone is shivering and they huddle together – often for hours throughout the night – they are so cold and so very tired. Who will hear them when they cry? As children toil out in the fields – they watch as others go off to school – they wonder: how does grass grow; where does rain come from; what does my name look like and why can I not go to school. In the evening they ask their moms – why can we not go to school – and the moms reply with anger tinged with despair – go to sleep – there’s work tomorrow. Who will hear them when they cry? Moms sit buy their little ones who are wracked with fever that will not stop. There is no money for a doctor nor any way to get to one – there is no water to cool them off – the night is wracked with pain unimaginable as moms watch their little ones slip away from their life on earth. Who will hear them when they cry? We will hear them when they cry – this past month the staff have visions of reaching out to more than 35,000 families with over 260,000 people in our coming year beginning in October – they have visions of helping 3,300 families get access to water – they have dreams of having teams come and build more than 500 houses – they can see all 35,000 families change through savings. I thank my God that He has heard our cry – I thank my God for each of you – for you have heard their cry. May it be that none of us ever become tired of hearing their cry. Janne Ritskes