Today, I had a great experience driving home from Bilene, a small lake-beach in Southern Mozambique where the sisters have an old dormitory that serves as “vacation getaway” for the various houses of orphans throughout the country.

I was sitting in the front of the sister’s truck, smushed in between two Portuguese volunteers who had come down in the car to pick us up, with little Alice on my lap. We were going to leave Alice (pronounced uh-lee-see) in the city of Xai Xai on our way back to Inharrime where she would meet an aunt to visit for Christmas.

Alice held tight to my hands clasped around her waist – it was her first time every riding in the front seat of a car. After a few miles, the other volunteers and I heard a squeaky little voice start singing an old Portuguese Christmas carol that we had all sang at our Christmas party the week before. As Alice moved from this into The Itsy Bitsy Spider, the other volunteers and I looked at each other and smiled.

When Alice and the other little girls in the back seat started to doze, we turned on the radio. The first song that came on was that old American 80’s hit that goes something like:

Anything you want, you got it.
Anything you need, you got it.
Anything at all! You got it. Ooooh…

I smiled to myself and Pedro and I looked at each other and at almost the same time said, “This could be about Alice.” Our little girls here are so precious, and in such precarious life-situations – they simply steal our hearts and we’d do anything for them.

As the little girl dozed off in my arms and the palm trees whizzed by outside the windows or the truck, I hummed to myself… “Anything at all!” Life is good.