A big THANK YOU to all of you who generously donated items on our Nyandengoh! wish list! It was so much fun to receive all the packages! If you want to know how your gifts will be put to use – plus much more – click on one of the links below to follow us on Facebook or WhatsApp.

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For WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/CzNoVh8k2c6GIYKbeKgPiD

We are looking forward to connecting with you on a more regular basis. We are so blessed by what God is doing and for the team that is serving the children with so much joy and commitment, and would love to share with you the stories that touch our hearts.

No one can celebrate

a genuine Christmas

without being truly poor.

The self-sufficient, the proud,

those who, because they have

everything, look down on others,

those who have no need

even of God – for them there

will be no Christmas.

Only the poor, the hungry,

those who need someone

to come on their behalf,

will have that someone.

That someone is God.

Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Without poverty of spirit

there can be no abundance of God.

Oscar Romero

On recent visits to one of our children, our workers Abdulai and Paul came across a little girl who was tied to a pole in front of a simple home. Her legs were withered and she could not speak, but she giggled as Abdulai carefully assessed her. Her mother told her story, of how she was a healthy girl until she was four years old and a serious disease caused multiple seizures and severely damaged her brain. Her mother loves her, but cannot always be around to supervise her and prevent her from wandering off and running into problems in the community – hence the rope on her leg. We have learned to hold off our judgment – in a place without social services, daycare centers or a church that cares, mothers have few options as they care for their child with disabilities. But we are so grateful that God brought us to this precious girl and can’t wait to see the joy of this family as we share our annual Christmas gifts of rice and oil with them. May they also know the “abundance of God”, the love of the Giver of these gifts, who was born in poverty, in a stable that would not look far out of place in the village this girl was found.

Joseph learning to sew

Economic Empowerment

Completion of the Water Well

Training for Health Workers on Microcephaly

2023 has gone by fast! We are so grateful for all the things that have happened since our last blog. To name just a few:

• Our friends Rev. Elmer & Joann Reifel, who have been missionaries in Sierra Leone for many years, helped us dig a well on our new property. We now have high-quality water in abundance!
• More recently we completed a fence around our property. It will protect our building site and in the future our office, school, daycare and children.

A big thank you to everyone who helped make these two projects possible!

• In October, the Yoders were accompanied by high school graduate Kayden Sauder from Birmingham. Kayden had a great time interacting with the team and the children. On the picture you can see that Aminata was quite happy to receive a visit from him! Let us know if you want to join us on a trip! We are looking for physical and occupational therapists, teachers, nurses, handymen, anyone with experience working with children with disabilities, or just anyone who wants to come to serve!
• At the beginning of the new school year, our school-going children received a school bag or cash for a school uniform.
• One of our deaf children, Joseph, enrolled in a tailoring course at a local vocational training center.
• We were accepted as a Global Partner with Accessible Hope International and are excited about connecting with other Christians in the field of disability. Check out their website: https://accessiblehope.org/.
• As we are writing this blog, our nurse and health liaison Abdulai is visiting remote health clinics to teach them about microcephaly, a condition we unfortunately see all too often in our children. We provide the clinics with measuring tapes and head circumference charts and are hoping that we’ll find these children earlier, so we can provide them with therapeutic services.
• Eight women taking care of children with disabilities received a small grant to start small businesses that will allow them to take care of some of their family’s needs while staying closer to home.
• The staff has been learning many things through our new WhatsApp Training program. They watch videos on their phones, answer questions to test their knowledge, or display their newly gained skill in a video. The topics vary from cerebral palsy and epilepsy to English vocabulary and children’s action songs.

Thank you for your interest in our work! We value your support and prayers!

From Nyandengoh! we wish you a joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Nyandengoh! team stays busy! On Wednesday December 21 (2022), 100 children, joined by their caregivers, came from all corners in and around Mattru to celebrate Christmas. Some had quite a distance to travel! Through memory verses, pictures and skits, the children helped tell the Christmas story. Parents shared testimonies about the improvement they had seen in their children. With the generous support of Hope Universal (hopeuniversal.com), we were once again able to bless every family with a 25 kg bag of rice and a gallon of oil.

Now we are about 10 weeks into 2023 and Nyandengoh! has already welcomed several new children, including three who are less than a year old. We are grateful for these early referrals, since we can begin to offer care for these children right from the start, which usually leads to better outcomes.

In February we welcomed two interns into our new internship program. Young people who are without a job but who want to learn more about working with children living with disabilities are invited to join the team for a year of learning and working. Paul and Nasu started their experience with participating in the “Theology of Disability” training we hosted in February. In this training, which was co-facilitated by our sister organization “Women of Hope” in Makeni (accessiblehope.org/wohsl), we read and discussed many Old and New Testament passages about suffering and our response to it. In a context of two extremes – the unquestioned acceptance of suffering by Muslims and the fierce resistance of suffering by those who teach a prosperity gospel – this teaching leads to refreshing conversations!

At the end of February the Rehab team from World Hope International / Enable the Children visited again from Freetown (worldhope.org/project/enable-the-children). After a full day of assessing children, they spent a morning teaching Nyandengoh! staff the exercises they frequently prescribe for our children. In this way the staff can provide better follow-up services in between visits of the team.

Many discussions are underway on the design of the new Nyandengoh! facilities. The team visited the site and dreamt about the facilities they would like to see in place to serve the children and families better. We are hoping to have an official design ready in the next few months and are planning to start the building after the rains.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support! We could not do this work without you!

PS Just as we were about to send off this blog, we received a picture of the feet of one of our girls, Martha, who was born with bilateral clubfeet. In October last year, she was operated on by Dr. Fritjof from Germany  (africasurgery.org/programs/orthopedic-surgery/). Her one foot is now fully corrected to the regular position. We are celebrating with her and looking forward to having her other foot done next year!

It’s morning at the Nyandengoh! Daycare and Preschool…. “Mommy K” jumps up and down, shrieking with delight – we are not sure about what! Umu quietly observes the rest of the group with a big smile on her face. Her body is still frail, but the treatment she is receiving, seems to do its work and she definitely has an appetite as she eats her breakfast of bread and tea. Fatmata rocks back and forth; it is still impossible to have her make eye contact, but she seems happy and content in the Day Care Center. In his special chair, Swaray is able to sit down and focus. “Huh, huh, huh…” he says, as we count from one to five. We are so happy to see how he is beginning to try to communicate. Emmanuel surprises all of us by perfectly sorting blocks by color. Massah frequently bursts into tears. Adapting to routines can still be challenging for her.

Every day comes with joy and surprises at the Nyandengoh! Day Care and School for Special Education, but also with significant challenges as we work with children who are not only living with disabilities, but often are also traumatized by discrimination, abuse, and neglect. God has blessed us with some extraordinary people who have the love, patience and courage to work with these children on a daily base. However, the constant confrontation with suffering, plus the loss of several of our children to what probably were preventable diseases, does at times weigh them down.

In October, the Yoders were able to visit Mattru for almost three weeks. We had a special time together, encouraging the team, reviewing our growing list of children, planning their care, and welcoming another 10 children into the program. At the end of our visit we traveled to Bo where we spent time together at a retreat center. It was such a blessing to see the team sink into the soft couches, for a few days free from responsibilities. We rested, prayed, studied Scripture, sang, ate delicious food, played games, enjoyed lively discussions and listened to each other’s stories. We are so grateful for the sponsors who made this retreat possible for our staff!

Now everyone is back to work, and the Yoders are supporting the team from the US. The coming months will be filled with lots of planning: our activities and budget for 2023, new programs, and of course our building project! Please pray for us as we discern priorities and explore partnerships that will support and improve our services to the children and their families. Also pray for God to make it possible to hire more staff and for qualified people to join our team.

It has been quiet for the past few months, but that does not mean the Nyandengoh! team has been sitting still. The Yoders had to deal with a medical crisis in their family and it has been a challenge to combine family support with the oversight of the work in Sierra Leone. Writing a blog did not make it to the top of the To-Do list, and we apologize for the long delay. However, we are so grateful how God has continued to prove Himself faithful as we started receiving donations even before we could complete the budget for 2022 and start applying for funds. Also, in March we finally could call ourselves land owners, as we purchased a plot of land to build an educational center alongside office facilities. We are excited about this development and hope to share more about this in the near future. Currently we are looking for an architect who would be willing to help us with an initial plan – if you know of someone, please let us know!

Kadi is a young girl attending a Muslim school in the community of the Nyandengoh! office. When she came to our office in August last year, we discovered that she consistently wrote her letters backward/mirrored from the right to the left side of the page. She spelled her name in a similar manner. We realized that Kadi might have dyslexia, a learning disorder which is widely acknowledged in our part of the world, but a condition that will severely affect students in Sierra Leone, who are often accused of being lazy or unwilling to learn. So we sent a WhatsApp message to Kaylynn Swartzendruber, a young lady in the Yoders’ home church, who recently had been studying ways to help students with dyslexia. She immediately made and sent some instruction videos, which were then used to train the Nyandengoh! teachers different methods to help Kadi. For the past few months, Kadi headed every afternoon after school to the Nyandengoh! office to do exercises with our teacher Elizabeth. Also, our team negotiated with the school that Kadi could temporarily skip the Arabic lessons in school, since they seemed to add to the confusion about the direction of her handwriting. You can imagine how excited we were when recently Elizabeth sent us some pictures of Kadi’s school note books: all her lett

ers are now accurately formed and written from the left to the right! How amazing to see connections across the world being formed to bring help to a little girl!

In December, all Nyandengoh! children and parents celebrated Christmas together. We are grateful to Hope Universal, an organization which made it again possible to bless every family with a 25 kg bag of rice and a half-gallon of cooking oil, a big blessing in a country where prices are rising on an almost daily basis…

In February, members of a short-term team that was visiting the UBC Mattru Hospital volunteered several days with the Nyandengoh! daycare, school, and outreach program: Dr. Ron Baker, Dr. & Mrs. Dan Metzger, Rev. & Mrs. Brent Birdsall, and Noah Jarvis. Each one of them blessed the children in their own way with encouragement, medical care, practical tasks, etc. A big thank you to each one of them!

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Amber McCammon and Dr. Ruth Rivera, who in the seven months they spent in Mattru Jong have been a big blessing to Nyandengoh! Amber helped out with the daycare and school, while Dr. Ruth has blessed several of our children with dental care. When her family is settled, Amber is looking forward to helping out with some of our needs State-side, and the team in Mattru continues some of Dr. Ruth’s work by instructing children and parents in oral health – many of them are not aware of the detrimental effects of sugary drinks and biscuits and the need for dental hygiene.

As our work grows (we are planning on welcoming the 100^th child into our ministry this year!), our financial needs grow, and so does the need to keep our accounts in good order. Ms. Sarah Martin, an accountant and friend from Atmore, AL, has graciously offered to help us set up systems that will assist with our planning and reporting needs. Sarah, welcome to the Nyandengoh! team!

Thank you everyone for your interest in our ministry. Please keep us in your prayers, and for other opportunities to support our work (financially or practically), please keep an eye on our website. We will be posting opportunities here: https://www.nyandengoh.org/support-us/

And for more pictures of the precious children we minister to, click here https://www.nyandengoh.org/photos/

The past few months have been very busy for the Nyandengoh! team. There are about 80 children now who need regular visits. We can’t wait to welcome one or two more workers over the next few months, and would continue to appreciate your prayers towards this. It is not easy to find qualified, enthusiastic people who are willing to work with our target group. Sadly, there is still a lot of fear and stigma attached to working with children with disabilities.

In March, we had our regular visit of the Enable the Children team from Freetown. In the morning they assessed 8 new children, and in the afternoon 19 children came back for follow-up visits. A group of six adolescent girls with intellectual disabilities was invited for a group meeting with the counsellors, to talk about issues related to growing up as a girl. Every one of them received a care package with a nice “lappa” (cloth wrapped around the waist as a skirt), comb, toothbrush, toothpaste and soap.

About two weeks later it was Easter and over 60 children and their parents came together to celebrate. They watched the children’s version of the Jesus movie, colored pictures, and enjoyed a good meal of Jolof rice. Some of the children had fun in demonstrating to the parents some of the games they play in their weekly classes.

Before they left, everyone received a brand-new mosquito net, donated by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Kudos to the team for the initiative they showed in requesting these from the Government! So many children still come down frequently with malaria, and sleeping under a mosquito net (without holes!) makes a big difference for them.

We want to use this opportunity to say Thank You to Dr. Richard & Cathy Toupin for their support of Nyandengoh! during their stay with the UBC Mattru Hospital over the past couple of months. It was so helpful to have them around to see some of our children and give advice on some of the medical issues and epilepsy care…

The Yoders are looking forward to their upcoming trip to Sierra Leone (August 17-September 22). Please pray with us that all the logistics will work out, and that Sierra Leone will be protected from the Covid-19 pandemic that is threatening to get worse in the African region.

Thank you for your support!

Hannah* is a sweet 10-year-old girl who at the age of 18 months got severe malaria which resulted in brain damage. She can walk and speak a few words and she likes going to the local village school, even though she has difficulty concentrating and has not been making much progress. Every two weeks our team member Esther takes a long ride on a motor cycle to Hannah’s village. She plays with Hannah and encourages her parents to keep stimulating her development.

A few weeks ago, the Nyandengoh! team got a concerning message from the village. A local pastor had said some offensive things about Hannah, creating tension in the community and deeply hurting Hannah’s family. It was a Thursday afternoon, and Sylvanus had planned to travel to Bo the next morning, to get the team’s salaries from the bank. In a culture where people often live hand-to-mouth, it is not easy to have a delay in salary payment. But the team decided to forego their salaries till the next week, so they all would be able to travel to the village.

When they arrived the next day, people started gathering on benches under the trees to discuss what had happened. The pastor was there too, but he denied saying anything negative about Hannah. In the context of a shame culture, it is very difficult for people to confess to any wrongdoing, and the fact that this man was a pastor made it even more unlikely for him to own up to the matter. This did not stop Sylvanus and the rest of the team from taking the opportunity to teach what they had learned from God’s word about the value and importance of children with disabilities. After a good time of sharing, Sylvanus decided to invite the pastor to pray for the group before they would all return home. To everyone’s surprise, the pastor said he first wanted to share something with the group.  It was then that he confessed that he had said all these bad things about Hannah. During Sylvanus’ teaching the Holy Spirit had convicted him of his wrongdoing…. His confession brought tears to the eyes of many. Afterwards, Sylvanus reminded us all of a Scripture he had read in Isaiah 58:9b & 10:

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

We are so grateful for the commitment of the team as they faithfully address the injustices against children with disabilities in Bonthe district.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who blessed Nyandengoh! with donations from our Amazon wish list. It was fun to receive the packages and see what people had bought. The Yoders’ trip to Sierra Leone has been rescheduled to August due to Covid travel restrictions and an unexpected mission to Peru, but some of the items will be sent ahead with missionary friends who are hoping to travel soon. In the meantime, Heleen stays in touch with the team through Skype. This week we’ll start the first of a series of weekly training sessions.

The last time we promised you some pictures of our Christmas celebration but sadly we were not able to get quality pictures of the gathering. However, we can show you some of the families who received the donation of rice, oil and spices, made possible by Hope Universal www.hopeuniversal.com). We can assure you there were big smiles hiding behind those face masks!

Please join us in prayer as we recruit a new outreach worker/teacher. It is not easy to find qualified people who are happy to live and work in a remote area of the country.

Blessings to all of you!

* To protect the identity of the people around Hannah we have used a pseudonym.

 While Nyandengoh! was founded on Easter Monday 2019, it was conceived at Christmas 2017, when children with disabilities in Mattru Jong gathered for their first Christmas celebration. This year they are planning to meet on the 23^rd of December and we are hoping to send you some pictures soon after that. 

Before we go, here are a few pictures of one of the most recent activities in Mattru Jong: on December 17, about 30 children and their parents came to the big hall at the Mattru School of Nursing, where they had medical and physical therapy evaluations and education on raising a child with disabilities. We are grateful to the team of Enable the Children from Freetown and missionaries Dr. Richard and Cathy Toupin and Dr Ruth Rivera Mejia for their help! The parents came with many questions and we hope that they felt encouraged as they met other parents who face similar challenges, and learned new ways to care for their child.

May your Advent season be filled with joy!

Dear Friends of Nyandengoh!

Over the past few months Nyandengoh! has continued to come alongside families of children with disabilities to encourage them during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has not always been easy to reach the children, as the rainy season makes the roads to some of the villages less accessible. August and September are the months that our staff gets to take some time off to rest. Sylvanus was the first one to go on leave and in his absence the other team members made sure “his” children continued to receive visits. Currently Abdulai is enjoying his leave.

In July we were saddened by the loss of one of our children, four-year-old Mariama Wahab. Mariama was one of the girls who received orthopedic surgery in November 2019, but the road to recovery was slow, and in the process we began to suspect there were other severe health conditions that were beginning to affect her body. Diagnostically there wasn’t much available for her in Sierra Leone, let alone the sophisticated treatments she most likely needed. The team has been with the family throughout her last hospital admission and in the days after her passing. The men on the team were able to attend the small Muslim funeral ceremony while Esther and Miatta supported the mother at home. We will always remember Mariama as one of the first children we got to serve through Nyandengoh!. Her older stepbrother Abu Bakarr, who has mild cerebral palsy, is still in our program.

From a young age, children in Sierra Leone help their parents around the house. For children with disabilities, this often is not possible due to physical limitations, or because people around them do not believe they are able to work. Over the past few months we have therefore been delighted to see an increasing number of children beginning to take part in daily chores. We want to introduce a few of them to you.

Mukeh is a boy with Down Syndrome. When we first met him, he was often wandering about and begging people for food. With help from Nyandengoh!, Mukeh started school last year and really has matured in his behavior. Sylvanus recently met him on the road as he was fetching water for his bath!

Christiana is a sweet girl who has learning difficulties and a speech impairment. She loves other children – she quickly learns their names and shows interest in them. The Nyandengoh! team encouraged her family to let her help with simple chores, so they were very glad when on a recent visit they met her washing dishes for her mother.

Mariama has cerebral palsy and is probably the most determined little girl in our program. She set her mind on walking, and in less than a year she has gone from sitting in a wheelchair to walking without assistance! Until recently, bending over was hard for her as she would lose her balance. But now that she has mastered that skill, she can be found sweeping the grounds around the house with a big smile on her face!

We are so grateful that these children are developing skills that will get them more and moreaccepted into their families and communities.

With Covid-19 travel regulations, the Yoders will most likely not be able to return to Sierra Leone before the end of this year. They are looking instead at the beginning of next year, and are hoping some others can come along as they are planning to start the pilot Nyandengoh! special education classroom. Contact us if you are interested in joining them!

Thank you for your continued prayers and support!