Seven-year-old Grace Nachivula is blessed. She can walk, run, go to school, play with her friends, and get through the day without severe pain.

What’s so amazing about that, you ask?

After surgery for her bowed legs, Grace is now able to walk with little effort

Until recently, she could not do any of those things – at least not without extreme difficulty. Like many other children in Zambia and throughout the developing world, Grace suffered from bowed legs, a condition often caused by hunger and virtually permanent – not because it can’t be treated, but because the poor can’t afford surgery.

Bowed legs are normal at birth, and naturally correct themselves during early childhood. But dietary deficiencies of vitamin D and other nutrients can hijack the process, leaving the child deformed.

At home, Grace survives on a diet almost exclusively of maize meal. The average Zambian family consumes two $110 lb. bags of the starch-heavy food per month, but Grace’s family is so poor that they had only two bags for all of last year. Her father earns pennies doing odd jobs as a day laborer, while her mother stays at home raising Grace and her four siblings.

Most likely, Grace would have lived her whole life with bowed legs, if not for the intervention of Sr. Margaret and the compassionate sisters at Kabulonga Cheshire Home. Through this wonderful program, Grace has been provided with three surgeries and ongoing follow-up care, so she can go to school with her friends and live a normal, happy life. The kindness of the Cheshire Home staff has made such an impression on little Grace that she now says her dream is to become a nun and serve others.

Cross International Catholic Outreach provides critical operational support for Kabulonga Cheshire Home, so that physically disabled children like Grace can receive the medical care, nutritious food, and loving pastoral support they desperately need. Click here to learn more about this great ministry!

Sr. Irene Clare Duval

Sr. Irene Clare Duval knew she wanted to be a nun since she was 8 years old, but it wasn’t until she was 48 that she joined the Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor (formerly the Missionaries of the Poor – Sisters). During the four decades in between she served in the U.S. military, went to college, and worked for the New York City police department as a drug chemist.

Once she had finally paid off her college loans, Sr. Irene joined an order and two years later was sent to Haiti — her birthplace — to minister to a desperately poor community in the mountains of southern Haiti. The people of Viloux quite literally had nothing until she came.

Sr. Irene started a school feeding program that provides meals to 121 children, most of whom were going days without food before she arrived. She opened up the local government school to more children by hiring additional teachers and launched a dispensary, doling out medicine and care to families who had nowhere to turn when they got sick. With our help and support from generous Catholics, she has been able to keep these vital programs running.

“People are always coming to me with some need. I’m able to help because of the varied experiences I’ve had,” Sr. Irene said. “I think that was God’s plan, why he had me wait so long to become a nun.”

One thing Sr. Irene has learned over her life is the importance of prayer. She says it is especially helpful when she makes the trip from her home to Viloux each week to minister to the people. She takes the tap-tap — an overcrowded public bus — then walks the last hour-and-a-half through rocky roads winding up the mountains.

“Prayer is my lifeline,” she explained. “Over and over, I’ve seen how powerful prayer is.” Through her strong faith in God and rich life experiences Sr. Irene works diligently to help Haiti’s poor, despite the challenges.

Click here to read more about Sr. Irene and her life-saving work in Viloux, Haiti.

This week, Cross Catholic was visited by Fr. Marc Boisvert from the Espwa orphanage in Haiti. One of his staff members, Nathalie Amyotte, shared a personal story that painted a vivid picture of Haitian poverty and the importance of Fr. Marc’s work.

Jamesley (center) and two of his brothers getting a physical at the Espwa orphanage.

One night, as Nathalie was getting something to eat, she saw children on the street begging for food. They were calling to her by name, because she often would help them. But this time, something was different.

“There was one child who was apart from them and he wasn’t begging and he wasn’t asking for anything,” Nathalie said. The boy was holding a plate of old chicken bones, and she realized he had collected them because he had nothing else to eat. Suddenly, another child bumped into the plate and knocked it over, scattering the bones across the ground. The boy raised his voice and cried as if grief-stricken.

“His cry will stay with me my whole lifetime. It haunts me. Because his little chicken bones had been thrown to the ground and that is the only meal he was going to have that day,” Nathalie said. “I went to see him because I heard this cry. He was trying to wipe the dirt off his little chicken bones. And I said, ‘No, no – let’s go eat.’”

After feeding the boy, whose name was Jamesley, Nathalie visited his home. She learned that his mother was pregnant with her eighth child and about to get kicked out of her home. Nathalie rushed to Fr. Marc and told him there was a family that needed help. Without a second thought, he responded, “Let’s go.”

Fr. Marc gave Jamesley’s family money for food, paid for a year’s rent so they wouldn’t be kicked out, and welcomed Jamesley and his brother into the orphanage.

Nathalie told us, “They’re going to school. They eat three times a day and he is thriving. I said to Fr. Marc, ‘I love that you didn’t even question it. You just said, let’s go.’ And he said, ‘But that’s why we’re here.’”

That’s also why Cross Catholic is there – to reach out to children like Jamesley and save them from despair. Click here to help us make a difference in the lives of impoverished Haitian children at the Espwa orphanage.

With the help of Cross Catholic, Christine has turned her life around after losing everything she had.

Last year, we met a Zambian woman named Christine who had gone from riches to rags because of AIDS. Once the owner of three houses, she sold all her properties in desperation and used the money to pay a medicine man to cure her. In the end, she was left with no money, no friends or family to support her, and a worsening illness.

At the time of our meeting, Cross Catholic was providing nutritional support and counseling for Christine through a local home-based care program. The support, in combination with antiretroviral (ARV) medication, had effected a dramatic change in her life and restored her declining health to where she was able to function.

Just last month, we met Christine again – this time at her brand new home that we provided through the help of the same local ministry. We were delighted to find that Christine was raising chickens on her new property and that she was utilizing all the available space outside to grow her own food. The chickens will provide a steady income that will enable her to support herself and her one child who is now living with her.

Christine’s new house.

Christine’s work ethic is setting a good example for her neighbors, all of whom have also received their homes from Cross Catholic. The temptation for these families to give in to despair is great, but Christine wasted no time in making the most of her situation. She is no longer a victim, but an overcomer. Instead of weeping over her past, she is looking toward the future with new hope, as she plans for her family’s welfare.

Christine represents exactly the kind of success the home-based care program aims to achieve in the lives of poor Zambian families traumatized by the AIDS pandemic.

While traveling through Haiti, Cross Catholic Projects Officers Mike Wilson and Claudio Merisio visited the camps where our mission partners are continuing to provide medical care for earthquake victims. They got to see firsthand the incredible work that so many doctors, nurses, and volunteers are providing on a daily basis in tent facilities or even outside.

Cross Catholic Projects Officer Claudio Merisio visits a Project Medishare health clinic in Haiti.

Now that more than three weeks have passed since the quake, our partners are beginning to transition from trauma to general health care for the many displaced men, women, and children who are trying to rebuild their lives in the aftermath; and Cross Catholic is working alongside them to ensure success.

For instance, our Cross Catholic partner Arc en Ciel is providing care for about 4,000 people, including 1,600 children, in five refugee camps. They plan to send health workers to fifty additional camps to train their peers on general health issues such as hydration, nutrition, vaccination, and psycho-social support.

Another Cross Catholic partner, Project Medishare, is increasing the number of women and children receiving care, and plans to double the number of mobile clinics from one to two per week.

Gladys Thomas, who runs Hopital Espoir and Village Espoir, is shifting her focus to rehabilitative care for people needing physical and occupational therapy and post-traumatic support.

To help our mission partners provided the best possible health care under the strained conditions of disaster-stricken Haiti, Cross Catholic has given food, medicine, medical supplies, and in one case even a container to be converted into a clinic. To learn more about what Cross Catholic is doing in Haiti, check out our latest updates at www.crosscatholic.org/relief.

We’re grateful to all our supporters who have responded to our Disaster Relief campaign for the flood-ravaged Philippines. The crisis may no longer be a front-page headline, now that weeks have passed since typhoons Ketsana and Parma swept through the country, but much work remains to be done.

A new danger now threatens the area of Manila, where a lot of land is still underwater. Health officials are reporting a deadly outbreak of a bacterial disease called leptospirosis.

The initial impact of the storms – the deaths of more than 850 people and displacement of hundreds of thousands – can’t be minimized. But a new danger now threatens the area of Manila, where a lot of land is still underwater.

Health officials are reporting a deadly outbreak of a bacterial disease called leptospirosis, which is caused by exposure to animal urine. The outbreak has already killed more than 130 people, and the latest report was that nearly 2,000 sick patients remained in government hospitals. The situation is so bad that one health official is calling this outbreak of leptospirosis one of the worst in the world.

Large areas of floodwater are not expected to recede until December, and it was feared that a third typhoon, Lupit, would cause even more problems. Thankfully, Lupit changed direction late last week and was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Thank you for keeping our Filipino friends and ministry partners in your prayers. It’s not too late to send a gift to our Cross Catholic Disaster Relief Fund to help us deliver food, medicine, and other emergency items to displaced families.

Sister Margaret from Kabulonga Cheshire Home took some time to thank Cross Catholic for our ongoing support of critical operating costs at the Zambian rehabilitation center. Cheshire Home provides excellent medical, nutritional, and pastoral care for disabled children too poor to afford treatment. Here’s a video of Sr. Margaret talking about how we’re helping to meet the needs of these precious children:

Check out this video interview with Fikansa Chanda, the program manager of the Itimpi Community Health Care program in Zambia. He is so thankful for the Cross Catholic donors who are helping to provide food, medicine, and health care for HIV/AIDS patients and other victims of chronic illness.

More video footage from Zambia to come later this week!

One thing we’ve learned from doing AIDS relief in developing nations is that you can’t just build a clinic or send medicine and then wait for the problem to go away. Medical treatment is vital, but it’s not the whole solution. There are deeply-ingrained attitudes and perspectives that need to change – attitudes toward AIDS victims, their families, and even chronically ill people in general.

Mike Henry, a Cross Catholic project officer, recently returned from Haiti, where he met with our ministry partners to talk about how they can better serve the needs of HIV/AIDS victims. One of those ministries is Rainbow House, a shelter for children infected with HIV or orphaned by AIDS. We are helping them relocate to a new, larger facility on an eight-acre tract of land.

Rainbow House in Haiti provides shelter and care for HIV/AIDS infected and affected children

Mike described to us the stigma that AIDS carries in Haitian culture. The disease is often blamed on black magic, and those who catch it are looked down upon and isolated from society, to suffer and die alone. Ignorance about the disease leads to fears that you can catch it by breathing the same air or touching the belongings of someone who has it, or by being bitten by a mosquito. AIDS orphans are abandoned in hospitals or left to fend for themselves on the streets.

The stigma brings other complications, too. AIDS patients trying to keep their problem secret don’t want health workers visiting their home. At-risk men, women, and children should be made to feel as comfortable as possible with getting tested and seeking help, but this can’t happen without a change of attitude in their neighbors. That’s why we stress the importance of education.

At Rainbow House, this is done through peer-to-peer workshops and youth events that dispel myths about AIDS, so that communities will learn to accept infected children with love and compassion. Similarly, our Riara Health Project in Kenya invites patients to one-on-one and group teaching sessions on health and nutrition; and our Itimpi Home-Based Care project in Zambia organizes community support groups to curb risky behaviors that lead to the spread of the disease.

The Cross Catholic approach to the AIDS crisis is more than damage control. We aim to change hearts and minds, to bring about a better, healthier future.

Claudio, one of our project officers, just got back from Peru last week, and apparently it was an unusual trip — unusual because transportation workers went on strike shortly after he arrived in Lima. Public transportation came to a halt, and protesters were hurling rocks at cars, which made it quite nerve-wracking for Claudio to drive from project to project. He was able to do it without incident, but most people were not willing to take the risk. Instead, people stayed home from work and school, and things pretty much shut down. So when Claudio ventured to visit a Cross Catholic-funded feeding program, for example, hardly anyone else was there!

Claudio snapped the camera just as this bewildered cutie was getting weighed during her well-child checkup

This happened consistently when he arrived at various project sites around Lima, except for one: Solidarity in Action Clinic, where the strike seemed to have the opposite effect. This is a neighborhood clinic located in a very poor community. Since it’s largely subsidized by Cross Catholic, it can charge very affordable rates. Anyway, when people want to go to this clinic, they just walk a short ways down a dusty road. No need to battle city traffic (or protesters). So that day, since people couldn’t travel to work, and couldn’t send their kids to school, they took advantage of the time off to take their children for a check-up!

Solidarity in Action Clinic is a great Catholic ministry to the poor there. Before it opened, mothers rarely got prenatal care, so childbirth complications were common; and no one saw a doctor unless they were really, really sick — and even then they had to beg for treatment because they couldn’t afford it. Now, mothers get prenatal care, babies are born healthy, child development is closely monitored, and sick people get treatment for illnesses before they’re too far-gone. The clinic has truly improved life for people in this neighborhood. Click here to learn more about Solidarity in Action Clinic.