A Christmas Surprise

Holla everyone, This is Craig Dukelow and I am the newest intern down here! I am from New Hampshire and this is my second time visiting here. The first was just a short term trip though but have wanted to come back ever since and now I'm finally here. I arrived mid November to a house full of girls! It has been great though and they are all awsome and I love them! The bummer is that they are all gone now!
It is Christmas week and we have been buying, wrapping, and delivering Christmas presents! Villa Israel is doing really well and all the kids are super pumped for Christmas. On monday we had a really cool opportunity to take both villa Israel and the Fruitar kids for airplain rides. A family from CIC (Timmer's church) that has a airplain jungle ministry and they gave us three free rides in their Cesna plains as a Christmas present to the kidos! It was a ton of fun and they all LOVED it! There was a couple that were a little nervous, but once in the air, they were all good. The next day we had them write thank you cards to Mano a Mano... and they all came out super precious!
Something very special happened today. Little Franz has been in the malnutrition center for about three weeks. Today though on our way back from dropping off some presents at the orphanage, Mike got a call saying that little Franz had the doctors ok to go home. We were all super excited and went straight over to pick him up. As soon as he saw us, He ran over beaming to Mike's outstreached arms! He has improved immensly and he now has a little pot belly rather than a skinny ribcage showing which is very encouraging to us all!

We took him straight over back to his Villa Israel Family. They greeted him with hugs,chears, and chanted his name! It was so cool to see the love they all have for eachother and the beautiful family they have become! Although all the Christmas presents will be much appreciated, I think that Having Franz home will be the best present of all. Thank you all for you love and prayers and have a wonderful Chritmas as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!
Merry Christmas, Craig