A Birthday Party!

     After a very stressful week, it was great to have a birthday celebration with the children this morning.  Everyone had a fantastic time!  We did face painting, playing in the pools, had fun with water balloons (and then eventually with buckets and then the hose!), took turns hitting a piñata, had fun with noisemakers, then had candy, popcorn and cupcakes.  We wanted to share some of the photos that I took during all the fun.
     Also want to thank the VIA's that are here, Shelley Anderson, Tabitha Gerardot, Stacia Gerardot, and also April Hershberger for all the work they did to help make today happen.  Hope you enjoy the photos.

Pool fun

The rush for the candy after the piñata broke

Lining up for cupcakes and singing Happy Birthday

Whacking the piñata

Pius being taken to get drenched with water

Pool fun

Shelley face painting

Tabitha face painting

Children getting sprayed by the hose

Manu joining in on the fun

Tabitha and the fish piñata that she made

Stacia trying to get some photos

     Thanks for reading!!

Blessings,

D&D

A Busy Couple of Weeks

Jesse Aaron

    We have been blessed with three new additions at the Baby Centre.  Two of the children were abandoned at a local hospital, the third child was at the police station.  All three of the children were about 7-8 days old when we received them.  And all three of them are doing very, very well, and have been getting much love and care from all our staff as well as the current VIA's we have with us.  We are up to 24 infants in Wing A!  That is a lot of diapers to change and mouths to feed!  Our caregivers have their hands full and are doing a wonderful job.

Sapphira Ruth

Simon Levi

     We have also had 6 adoptions just this week, and there are more coming up very soon.  These children and their parents were all so happy and we were so blessed to be able to celebrate this special occasion with them.

Angel Jerusha

April Jewel

Hadassah Rose

Joseph Daniel

Noah Jordan

Sanchez

     We have some great VIA's that we have the pleasure of having here.  They have been a great help to us already in so many different areas.  Shelley Anderson is here until the end of April.  She comes from Northern Ireland.  Pam Gerardot and her daughters, Tabitha and Stacia, are from close to our hometown.  They live in Ft. Wayne, IN.  Pam and Tabitha have been with us for about a month, and Stacia just arrived at the same time Shelley did.  Pam heads home next week, Tabitha and Stacia stay with us until the first part of April.

Shelley Anderson

Tabitha, Pam & Stacia Gerardot

     We also have done some re-arranging of our office staff.  Many of you know that Catherine Habib left the Baby Centre in January to work at AGC Central Church office in Nairobi.  Taking Cate's place is Betty Rop as Outreach Ministries Manager, and Gideon Kerich as Financial/Business Manager.  Everlyn Korir has been with us for some time and is now fully into her role at Baby Centre as Early Childhood Development Coordinator.  She has some wonderful ideas and works with our children to make sure that they are developing as they should and will also work diligently with our special needs children.

Betty Rop -- Outreach Ministries Manager

Everlyn Korir -- Early Childhood Development Coordinator

Gideon Kerich -- Finance/Business Manager

     We also wanted to show everyone a picture of Joshua with his new prosthetic.  He was leery of it at first, but once he became use to it and understood what it was all about he quickly started practicing walking with it.  He is doing very well and progressing very nicely.

Joshua & Dan when he arrived back at Baby Centre from getting his prosthetic.

Joshua practicing walking.

     We are sorry for the long time frame between updates, we seem to get very little time to set and collect our thoughts. We have flown by the 300th baby mark, we now set at 304 and we are now at 140 adoptions, the Lord has opened the flood gates. The word continues to spread about the need for adoptive parents. We praise God for His provision of wonderful parents for our kids.

    Please continue to remember our special needs children and the new laws that are hampering efforts to find loving families for the special children.

    As always we thank you for your love and support to us, the staff and the babies at the Baby Centre.

Blessings,

D&D

Thursday Staff Devotions

Tabitha

Pam

     We had staff devotions in Wing A this last Thursday.  We go into each Wing usually once a month on Thursday and hold and pray for the babies by name.  We pray for the Holy Spirits presence in their lives and
that each child is released from any hold their past may have on them.
     We currently have two new VIA's with us, Pam & Tabitha Gerardot, serving at the Baby Centre.  They are a joy to work with and are so very helpful to us. We are very blessed to have them here with us these next few weeks.

     As we said, this month was our turn in wing A.  It is really special to be able to go into the Wing, hold a baby, and pray for that child specifically. As the staff is their temporary parents, we know that along with feeding, bathing and clothing the babies, we need to show them through prayer how much their heavenly Father loves them.

Dan with Liam and Victoria

Dana with Victoria

     We have also received our 300th baby this month!  Three hundred little souls rescued!
     Keep our 300th baby, Joel, in your prayers as he is at Tenwek Hospital.  It was discovered that Joel has sickle cell anemia. He is a very special boy (as they all are :) ). We pray that he will return to us soon, and we can shower him with love.

Blessings,
D&D

7th Feb. 2015

     Greetings!  Well, we are beginning to get into our very busy time here at the Baby Centre with VIA's arriving and teams coming.

     We just had a team come and visit that was from Nebraska.  They were a great group and we had wished they could have stayed longer than just one night.  But they had many places to go in the short time that they were here in Kenya.  This team donated enough money to the Baby Centre for a whole month of formula!

Nebraska Team

     We also have had our second fish round-up.  The boys ended up catching about 17 good sized tilapia.  There are more bigs ones down there, they are just very good at escaping the net.

     We've also had a farewell party for one of our employees, Cate Habib.  Cate and her family have moved to Nairobi, to Central Church Office.  She has taken the job as Financial Manager there.  They are hoping that since that is where Rev. Meshack is working out of that they will be able to spend more time together as a family.  It was a bittersweet day for sure.

Rev. Meshack, Cate and Shekaniah

     Two years ago on the 4th of February our little Hope had her open heart surgery to repair the hole in her heart (PDA).  We had a celebration for this two-year anniversary as Hope is doing wonderful.  We told her about what had taken place two years ago and tried to explain it to her.  Then we told her we were going to celebrate!  Dana asked her what kind of cake she wanted for the celebration and she told her, "yellow pink".  So that's what she got.  We had a good time celebrating and thanking God for Hope.

4th Feb. 2015--2 years post op

4th Feb. 2013--minutes before surgery

Hope and her yellow pink cake

Hope enjoying her cake

     We also want to say "thank you so much" to those who have stepped up and began supporting us and those of you who have increased your support due to knowing our increased need in order to stay on the field until the end of 2015.
     Please keep our family in your prayers as we have many big life events happening this year.  We have Talia graduating from college, two of our children are getting married this summer, Carson is planning on spending the summer in Indiana.  Thank you for your on-going prayers and on-going financial support.  It continues to be a blessing to us.
     If you do not currently support us financially and would like to, please see our page on the WGM website (www.WGM.org) under missionaries, or send your support to our home church, Nappanee Missionary Church in Nappanee, IN.  Be sure to mark it for Dan & Dana Jacobs' ministry.

Blessings,

D&D

A New Year Begins...

     Wow!  We can't believe that 2014 is over and we are almost a whole month into 2015!

     We have so many things to be thankful for during this past year!  God has once again proven himself faithful over and over.

     The Baby Centre is continuing God's plan of rescuing babies.  We now have 62 babies!  A lot of these babies are in Wing A, the Wing for the youngest and smallest children.  Needless to say all our staff are keeping pretty busy.

     With all those babies comes the need for more formula and diapers.  These are the most expensive things that Baby Centre has to buy.  At this point we are beginning to fall short in finances making it difficult to keep up our supply of these items.  We have also been having difficulty having enough in order to pay the Baby Centre staff.  We are asking for prayer specifically for this.  If you'd like to make a donation please see our website to find out how:  www.agcbabycenter.org.

     While we were in the states for the 3 weeks we received 6 new babies at the Baby Centre!  All in Wing A!

     Dana was due to have her medical tests done this January so we made a trip back to Indiana as a family.  You can imagine what a difficult trip it was with a 2-½ year old!  It was great though to reconnect with our children and the rest of our families.

     We also had opportunity to do some speaking engagements.  We were home 3 weeks and spoke 7 different times.  We were so pleased to be able to speak in small churches at our home church, Nappanee Missionary Church, and also at a new church we had never spoken at before, South Milford Church of Christ.  We want to thank everyone that allowed us to come and share about this ministry.  It was wonderful seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

South Milford group

     Dana received wonderful news regarding her tests.  The PET scans was very, very good.  And there is no disease activity at all!!  Praise the Lord!!  She will still stay on her same regiment of medication/supplements everyday, and injection every 3 months. Dana will now get a PET scan once a year and a bone scan at the six month interval.  We will still travel to the US in 6 months in order for her to have a bone scan (which was prescribed by her Doctor).  Our God is definitely a miracle working God!

     As we mentioned in a previous post, our oldest son Nathan is engaged to be married May 9, 2015!  We are very, very happy for him and his fiancé Tiffany Lilly.  Here is an "official" engagement photo:

     Also, our middle daughter Talia will graduate from Bethel College on May 2, 2015.  She will have a degree in International Medicine with a minor in Biology.  When we were home we began wedding shopping for another wedding that will take place August 22, 2015.  Talia and her fiancé Bryson Bauer will be wed.  Here is one of their "official" engagement photos:

     As you can see we have a very big year this year in our family with lots of wonderful, important life events happening.  We had such a wonderful time with our children and grandchildren while we were home.  That is one thing that never gets easier, leaving your children and family members.  As a matter-of-fact, it seems as though it gets more difficult each time we have to do it.

Our kids:  Nathan, Tiffany, Bryson, Talia, Carson, Andrea

Our daughter Hope, and granddaughters Audrey and Elisabeth

     We also had the opportunity to spend some time with Dan's brother Steve.  Steve is scheduled for major surgery on January 23rd.  We would love it if you could please add him to your prayer list for the surgery, the doctors, and his recovery process.

Steve & Dan

     As we have mentioned previously, our time on field has been extended till the end of 2015.  We don't know what the Lord has planned for us this year or the the next.  Because of the extension of a whole year we need to raise more support for our ministry.  Please be in prayer about this and the part the Lord may be asking you to play.

     Thank you so much for reading and keeping up with what is going on in the Jacobs' family and the ministry here at the AGC Baby Centre.

Blessings,

D&D

Greetings from very warm Kenya!!
   It is very hard for us to imagine it is only a few days until Christmas. This season we have been looking at the miracle of the virgin birth, and along with that  the meaning of the family make-up of Jesus. What a man Joseph was to "adopt" Jesus for his own son. What a picture that is for us. When I look at Hope, I see our third daughter. I do not see and abandoned or orphaned child. I love her as I love all of our children, no difference.
   I have to think that this is the way God looks at each one of us, there is no difference, He just loves us and wants us in His family. I pray that this Christmas season would be special in the fact that each of us realize that we have a Savior that loved us so much, He came to be with us. He came to live with an adoptive father. We have a Father in heaven that looks at each one of us as precious, unique and worthy of loving and fighting for.
   We are looking forward to getting back to the States for a few weeks and connecting with family and friends. We will be speaking at several venues, we hope to see many of you there. We will be at NMC on the 28th of December. We have many things to share, it has been a very busy year, and next year looks to be even better.
   Before we leave for the States at the end of the week, we will have 4 adoptions take place. What a wonderful end to the year to have four of our kids get forever families. Who could ask for a greater Christmas gift?
   We will be posting those events in the coming days
Be blessed, have a blessed Christmas!!

Dan, Dana, Carson, and Hope