Hi, This is Josh here and I am the first one back from Zimbabwe. Zach returns soon at the end of the month and Caleb will be there for many more months holding down the fort. God has really worked in mighty ways in starting this FOZ orphanage. One thing that we have all learned is patience, for things in Africa move slowly. However during times of difficulty, by God’s grace we were able to press on and persevere. We hold our relationships with the people we met with such high regard and without them or you as supporters, we would have never been able to start this project. So we sincerely thank you!

I as the photographer of the trip have tons of photos that I am currently sorting through. I will be posting them on this website and various other photos hopefully soon on my personal blog at joshsheldonphotography.wordpress.com. However, since there are so many photos, I am going to periodically release updates and stories with photos starting from the beginning of the trip until now. Thanks for your patience with waiting to see some photos and hear in more detail about our experience so far.

Okay, update number 1. When we first arrived we had to do a lot of legalities. Things are not very fluid in Zimbabwe so most of our time was spent walking to various offices to find out information and filling out paper work. Some of this included getting approval to be a PVO (Private Volunteer Organization), working with the Social Welfare Department to get kids, applying for land, or finding and purchasing property for the orphanage. Since we were in many government offices I was not able to legally take photos in all of the offices. Yet below are some photos of Phillip helping us with all of the paperwork. Phillip was amazing in helping us out. We can’t think of anyone better to empower and be head of the orphanage when we are not there. Believe it or not, the first few photos are actually some of the meetings we had as we filled out legal documents. There are also quite a bit of photos of us walking since we did this everyday! Just to get to town was at least a 5km walk. We then walked all over town and many times if we didn’t take a taxi because it was too dark, we walked back home too. For the first few weeks we stayed with the Shumbas who are an amazing loving family. We were in a “suburb” called South View. The pictures of this particular house are below as well.

The next updates will consist of details about the orphanage house, some of the relationships we have created and are building, the feeding program, the education empowerment program we started, and more!

God Bless