I was a bit surprised when I went into the workshop the other day and found Leroy sleeping in one of our boxes! Leroy is our newest baby and we are very happy to have him as part of our Gogo Olive family.
Leroy’s Mum, Patience, lost a baby girl over 2 years ago when she was only 3 months old. Patience struggled a lot with losing her daughter and although she was still coming in to work, she always seemed quite absent and was missing her spark. I loved seeing how the other ladies stood alongside Patience and supported her during this time. This is one of the things that encourages me most about Gogo Olive, we are genuinely like a family who are journeying through the highs and lows of life together.
When Leroy was born, Patience sent me a message to say she had had a baby girl and asked if I would like to name her. I was honoured and picked the name ‘Hope’ as this was the child we had hoped and prayed for. I also felt that Hope is something all of us need in Zimbabwe at the moment. A few days later Patience messaged me again to say she was playing a joke on the other ladies at Gogo Olive and she had actually had a boy and not a girl!!! This amused me quite a lot although I’m still not quite sure if I got the joke!! She has kept ‘Hope’ as his middle and he is known as ‘Brother Hope’ in the Gogo Olive workshop!
Hope is something we all need in our lives and there are times when it is harder to hold on to it than others. It took over 2 years for our prayers that Patience would have another child to be answered but I hope that when you look at these photos and see Patience’s big smile and Leroy’s chubby cheeks this will give you the encouragement to keep believing for whatever it is you are hoping for in your life. Things often don’t happen in the timing we want them to, but that doesn’t that there isn’t a greater plan at work behind the scenes…
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