A warm hello from Madagascar!
We would first like to say Tratry ny Krismasy sy Tratry ny Taona Vaovao (Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year) from our family at Iris Madagascar to yours!
It has been an exciting and eventful several months here at Iris Madagascar, and after this holiday season, we are overflowing in so many ways! Our center is overflowing with amazing children. Our visitors’ house has been full of an incredible team of Harvest School students from HS21, and is now full of new missionaries. Our children are full of joy after an extra special Christmas season. And we are overflowing with thankfulness as God continues to pour out His steadfast love and faithfulness!
This past October, our base director, Caroline Thomas, traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa to visit the students at the most recent Harvest School, where she was able to share her story and the story of Iris Madagascar. As the students prayed over her afterwards, they prayed that God would bring all of the abandoned and unwanted children of Madagascar to Iris. Two days later, after returning to Madagascar, she received a call from the court asking if our center at Iris would be willing to take in a large group of girls all at once. We said yes, and Iris Madagascar happily welcomed 19 new girls the next day! As more and more are added to our big, crazy, happy family, we know that we can continue to say “yes,” and we can trust God to be faithful to provide everything we need.
Shortly after we received these new treasures, God sent us an incredible extended outreach team from Harvest School. They were such a blessing and helped us celebrate Christmas with not only our growing family of children, some of whom celebrated their first Christmas and received their first gifts this year, but also with our many friends in our community, including those at the rubbish dump, in our kids lunch program, and the families in our kids community program. It was such a special time!
Since then we have received two more precious babies into our family - a little girl who came to us at just five days old at Christmas, and a two year old who came to us from our milk program! We are so honored that God would expand our family and allow us to love and care for His beautiful children. We now have 106 amazing children and God is faithfully adding to our family of long-term staff here at the same time. We are leading truly rich lives indeed! We are currently praying and looking for another house to rent, in order to make more room for these new additions to our center. We know God will bring us the right one!
Blessings and love,
Iris Madagascar