Caridade 

Well I'm still alive here in Mozambique!  I am loving every second here.  The people here are so amazing and although their living conditions break your heart they are so happy and never cease to bring a smile to my face.
I have been very busy the past few days.  I have been walking with the staff of Care for Life in the communities this week and meeting with the leadership in the different associations.  Each association has anywhere from 15-25 families.  There is a leadership (president, vice president, secretary) picked from the families being worked with.  Care for Life helps each family being worked with establish goals that will help them improve their lives.  Goals range from starting a small business to starting to treat your water and only drinking clean water to saving a certain amount each week( normally one or two dollars a week) that you can use later on in starting a business or building a latrine.  The Care for Life staff and community leadership accompanies these families with their goals every few weeks to see how their doing and helps them brainstorm ideas on how they can achieve their goals.  Also families can use the money they have saved to to team up with other families in the association to start a small business.  With capital people can make a lot of money in this country but the problem is no one has capital.  However if they bring their money together and 15 to 25 families save tother then they will have enough capital to start a real business that they can all take part in.  I am working with these community businesses right now.  We are trying to make business plans for things that an association can do to double the income of the members of the association.  In a community business the members will take turns working the business (weather it be a small farm, or a chicken coup or another business) and they will split the income that it brings.  The community leadership will oversee the business and schedule people to work and split the profit of the business.  If a family is making $50 a month for example from the parents jobs it is very hard to put their kids through school and feed their family.  The goal of the community business is to make it so on the side of their salary they can make another $50 from their part in the community business which will help them be able to build better houses, latrines, keep their kids in school and help them slowly start pulling themselves out of poverty.  I am currently researching businesses that could potentially be profitable on a larger community scale.  So anyways that hopefully gives you an idea of what I am doing right now.
So I have a quick charity story for you guys about one of my families.  With some money that was raised I am helping Amudi and Fatima (parents of Felipe) build a latrine.  I have attached some pictures of what their bathroom currently looks like.  I have bought the cement and sand and everything is ready to go.  It will take a couple days to makes the blocos that we will use to build the bathroom.  Isacc( the kid I talked about in the last post) has a lot of experience in makes blocos so I have hired  him to help Amudi make the blocks.  I told Amudi and Fatima his story and about what he has been through the day before I brought him over.  I brought him over to their house on Monday night to get to know Amudi so that they could make some plans for the project.  Amudi and Fatima are one of the poorest families I know.  When I was teaching them as a missionary they would go several days without food at a time.  Their conditions have not improved much since then.  They knew that I had plans to eat with my mission president Monday night but when we got their they had a plate of rice and fish prepared for Isacc.  They knew all that he had been through and what he was currently going through and they figured it was what they could do to help.  I attached a picture of the meal and although it does not look like much it was a BIG sacrifice for them.  Isacc was very thankful for the food.  He had eaten about half of the food when Amudis little girl came in and told her dad how hungry she was.  It was then that I realized that Amudis family had sacrificed their dinner that night in order to help out Isacc who they knew was struggling.  Here the struggle is so real and heartbreaking yet the acts of charity that I see day in and day out are absolutely amazing.  As soon as Isacc heard Ines say that she was hungry he immedialty said he was full and gave her and the little kids the rest of the food.  Words cannot even describe how amazing the people are that I work with on a daily basis.  They blow my mind with how kind they are to their bothers and sisters who are suffering as well.  This is the reason I love Mozambique.  The country is beautiful and very unique in many ways but the reason I love Mozambique is because of the special people that are here.    I hope you all have a great day!  Below are the pictures of Amudi and Fatimas bathroom and the meal that they prepared for Isacc and of course a picture of Felipe their son who is the cutest kid in the world.