Day 7

Today we returned to a village we have been going to for the past two days. The children there live in such poverty – many of their homes are infested with scabies, they live in wooden shacks without running water, some are without shoes. Yet they have so much joy. Our clinic is a mosque and dozens of young children stand on ledges looking into the clinic through the open windows. They smile, and ask us in English they have just learned, “What’s your name?” We tell them, and then they laugh and say our names over and over again. Their joyfulness and innocence brings us such happiness.

In our clinic half of the patients we see are children. Many have basic pediatric illnesses – asthma, skin infections, and colds. But because they lack basic medical care many of the illnesses we see here are far advanced. Ear infections have not been treated for months or years lead to perforation of their eardrums and hearing loss. We had a sick child who we sent urgently to the hospital. The local hospital is very basic and only has an X-ray machine. We pray for the child that God will give the physicians there the wisdom to discern his underlying illness and to help him recover fully. We also have two other children we are trying to arrange surgeries for, as well as child with a heart murmur that needs evaluation. If you could please pray that we can find a way to help these children. If you could also pray that God will continue to watch over and protect all the beautiful and innocent children that we have seen. Finally, we pray that the government will devote more resources to the hospitals and clinics here so that these children can receive the medical care that they so much need and deserve.