Kum Ba! Ya Ya!

Orant Charities is doing a benefit concert for African relief on Sunday, OCTOBER 23!

Time: 6pm-9pm
Place: Dan's Silverleaf
          103 Industrial St, Denton, TX

          (940) 320-2000 ‎ · danssilverleaf.com

 Tickets: $20  Limited Seating
To reserve your ticket, please email Orant.charities@gmail.com


We are proud to announce that we have three fantastic acts performing at our 1st annual Kum Ba! Ya Ya!

Karyna Cruz
Ashley Gatta
B-Luv and the Moneymakers

ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO SUPPORT OUR EFFORTS TO PROVIDE CLEAN WATER AND MEDICAL AID TO THE PEOPLE OF MALAWI.

If you would like to support us please go to our website: www.orantcharities.org to make an online donation.

Father Flynn is the pastor at Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Pilot Point, Texas and he went with Orant Charities to Malawi this summer and did an amazing job helping people and keeping spirits high on God and life! Check out this video he put together with pics from the trip and set to a killer song from Soweto Gospel Choir.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPT7u7S7PxI

Fair Trade

With as many road blocks that we have run into it's all worth it. Today the group started doing the medical clinics and we're able to treat over 150 people. Two of the noteworthy patients were a young girl with a temperature of 105 and another boy that had a temperature over 107. I really believe that if the medical team had not been there that he would have died through the night. The team was able to get his temperature down and monitor him for the next several hours until it was down to 99. What a great day to be able to make that much of a difference in someone's life. In Africa where sometimes things can be one step forward and two steps back, today was two steps forward and no steps back! Great job medical team!

What Do You Celebrate?

So Orant Charities, due to it's donors, was able to install 7 new water wells in Malawi this year. Today the Orant team attended a celebration with the villages who received the water wells. There were hundreds of people gathered to give thanks and dedicate the new water sources. The Orant team was only present for a couple of hours, but the celebration will last all day and into the night. There were many among the group of elders that had NEVER seen clean water in their lifetime; which makes it amazing that they were able to survive that long while drinking bacteria infested puddle water. In America we celebrate holidays, family events, freedom, our veterans, sporting events...all of which are great reasons to celebrate. Never once have I celebrated the fact that I have clean water to drink or the fact that I have had clean water my entire life. I can't help but think of who should be more thankful and celebrating the gift of water. Maybe it's time to celebrate one of the only things we can't live without for more than a couple of days! Cheers! Here's to having clean water to drink!

Perseverance

Things in life are never as easy as they should be, especially if you are in Africa. So this morning at the 6am Mass that starts our every day here in Malawi, the homily was about perseverance. Little did I know how quickly I would have to employ today's lesson. Today our water well repairs almost didn't happen. Currently there is a HUGE shortage of fuel in the country causing many of the gas stations to shut down. Along with some fights breaking out in the long lines at the gas stations many are turning to the black market where prices can be greater than 2x higher than normal. This means they are paying $8-15 per gallon! Yeah, that's per gallon! Today, our guide who did the well assessment was no where to be found so we left 2 hours late. Also, in Malawi, much is driven by strife between traditional tribal authorities and governmental political parties, so we were taken to the wrong wells to repair wells that were not broken. Compounded by the cultural differences which make communicating almost impossible at times, today was a reminder of how thankful we must be for what we do have and how complicated the answers can be. Africa is always about making progress were you can and persevere to fight another day. As a blessing we have repaired 4 wells so far serving about 3800 people. For this I will fight another day.