It was a Monday evening in September 2002, and I was making dinner at our Edisto Beach, South Carolina, home. Trisha and I had finished our first day of work since returning from a mission trip to Haiti.<\/p>\n
Trisha sat on the stool at the kitchen island across from me and asked, “So, what about Haiti?” I said, “I want to go.” She said, “I do, too!”<\/p>\n
It is now 2007, and we have run an orphanage for children born with HIV\/AIDS for a year.<\/p>\n
We stutter-stepped for nearly 2 \u00c2\u00bd years searching for our calling. We sought three different ministries, thinking we would work for someone else, but it was not to be.<\/p>\n
During that time, we had taken in a 10-year-old street kid, afflicted with advance-stage AIDS, TB, pneumonia, scabies, a scalp of sores, malnutrition and a neurological disorder affecting balance and coordination. Roodline (Wood-lin) has been with us now for two years, going from near death to becoming a strong adolescent. Roodline was the inspiration of Kay (pronounced “ki”) Konfo — Comfort House.<\/p>\n
In June 2005, we started to resurrect a filthy three-bedroom house, and on Dec. 9 of that year, took in our first two children. At that time, we drove more than three hours on mountain roads to get to an AIDS clinic. Today, we are only six miles from Hospital Albert Schweitzer, which started its children’s AIDS program because of our orphanage. We now offer high-quality care, with an ever-improving nutritional diet and a regimented drug program for 12 children.<\/p>\n