The Little Luxuries We Take for Granted

During our trip, we also visited another Children's HopeChest CarePoint called Kechene.  This CarePoint is managed by my good friend (from college), Greta, and since she was not able to join us this year, our team delivered care-packages to the children from their sponsor families.

At the time, there were nearly 70 new children at Kechene that had just enrolled and did not have a sponsor family.  So Greta made sure to create a care-package for each new child as well.  Each package contained one t-shirt along with a few essentials like pencils, pens, toothbrush and underwear.  We also had a hand-tied fleece blanket for each child (we were still at Kechene as the sun was starting to go down.  It was getting COLD and I know the kids are putting those blankets to good use! 

As we explained to the kids what was in each package, suddenly a cheer went up and the kids were clapping, fists and hand were pumping the air and they were looking at each other with excitement.  I looked around in suprise and turned to one of our translators to ask what had provoked the cheer.  He smiled and told me "they are so happy about the underwear."

The kids considered underwear to be a luxury item and as I became more aware of this, I could see little bare bottoms through the holes in their clothes.  Sure enough, as soon as the packages were handed out, the underwear were the first item to be examined and admired.

This is something I will definitely ask sponsors to include in their care-packages next year!

Here are a few photos of Hana, a little girl at Kind Hearts CarePoint when she discovered underpants in her care-package.  She immediately jumped down from Becky's lap and wanted help putting those underpants on right then and there.  Then she climbed back into Becky's lap to hear the letter read to her and to look at the pictures from her sponsor.