Never a dull moment

This is Lincoln writing. We have had a very eventful holiday season. There is never a dull moment around here. This is a picture of Kyler on Christmas Eve. We went to Derek and Rebecca's house for Christmas Eve and had fondue. It was a lot of fun. As you can see, Kyler really liked the chocolate fondue. As we were preparing to come home at about 11pm we got a call from Ashley who is an American helping us at the shelter for a few months. She said that there were a couple of men at the shelter gate that were threatening to tear down the gate if she didn't open it so that they could bring the kids Christmas presents. Obviously she was a very scared and nervous. We talked for a short while and then she let me go so that she could talk to Adrian, the only man on the property at the time. A few minutes later she calls me back and says, "They're in the gate, call the police and come back right away." So Derek and I race back to the shelter not sure what we are going to find. When we arrive, Adrian is holding hands with the two guys in a circle and praying with them. We come up to the group and find out that they were just a couple of drunk idiots that didn't have the common sense to realize the time and come to the conclusion that 11pm on christmas eve is not a good time to spread good will and cheer. Apparently the story was that Adrian had let the two men in the gate with the intention of meeting them in the office to see what they needed, because he didn't realize how aggressive and beligerent they had been with Ashley on the other intercom. But as he watched for them by the office, Anna and Ashley rang his doorbell from the front of his house. So he went to go talk to them, missed the guys coming around the other side of his house, and the guys went straight into the shelter scaring the poor caregivers half to death as they came in to wake the kids up to bring them presents. Later that night I went over to talk to the caregivers and they looked like death warmed over. The next day I installed a lock on the shelter door so that they ladies can have a little more protection. Everyones adrenaline was pumping from the adventure. The guys left us very expensive bottle of j&b whiskey as a present for being so nice to them. So we all knocked a few back before bed. (I'm kidding.) The security company (whose name is fatal force, you gotta love the name) arrived about 2 minutes after the ladies pushed the panic button on the alarm. The police arrived about 3 hours later. So, I guess we know who to call when we need help.
On New Year's Eve we had another adventure. One of our little girls was returned to her Granny's shack in Freedom Park for the holidays. This was the social worker's decision, not ours. She was supposed to return to the shelter on December 30th. Well, she wasn't returned and on December 31st we became very concerned when we realized that the little girl did not have enough of her HIV medicine. With this treatment it is very detrimental to miss a dosage. The medicine must be taken like clockwork or the patient can become violently ill. So, we were scrambling trying to figure out what to do to get her back. None of us knew where the granny lives and the social worker wasn't answering her phone, go figure. So we finally found someone who knew where she lived, we went to the police station and picked up an officer to accompany us to pick her up. We expected trouble because it was New Years Eve, a lot of people are drunk, and whites don't go to Freedom Park often, especially at night, and the Granny has been very beligerent with us in the past. Thankfully it ended up being pretty uneventful. The granny argued with us, but there was no resistance. We were able to bring the child back to the shelter. We couldn't give her the medicine right away, because she hadn't eaten all day and it can't be given on an empty stomache. We are hoping that this will help the social worker realize that granny is not fit to have the child, when she can't return the child on time and can't give her medicine at the appropriate time with the appropriate food.
So we had a very exciting Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. I'm starting to feel a little like an emergency worker, like a fireman or paramedic. We are always on call. Sometimes it is for something trivial like getting toilet paper out of the store room, sometimes it is to receive a new child into the shelter, sometimes it is to handle drunks that don't know what time it is. But there's never a dull moment.