That was Then and This is Now

Today I didn’t work in the hospital, and decided to take the day off since I wasn’t feeling well. I definitely don’t want to pass anything along to anybody in Maternity or the premie who just came in a few days ago. Instead I stayed home and cleaned up the house a bit. 

About mid-morning three children came to my door. Two boys and a girl. I didn’t recognize them at first, but then I suddenly realized who they were. 

These were the kids I had practically lived with for weeks on end, carefully changing dressings and giving NG tube feedings in the post-op ward where we all felt like family. Bouan was the kid who I held in my arms and cried when the doctors said he probably wouldn't survive. 

He spent a long time at the hospital when I was here in 2013. He had serious intestinal problems, severe malnutrition and almost died. I took care of him for several months and watched as God slowly healed him.

Today, three and half years later, I had the blessed opportunity to see him again. 

Look at the difference from before and now...

He's the one in the middle

http://valleygrace.blogspot.be/2013/10/not-looking_5774.html

An Open Door

Our door is almost always open. Well, the wooden door is. We try to keep the screen door shut to keep the bugs out. We often have children in our house playing or coloring. People stop by all the time. 

Twice a week I have a group of teenage girls over to do crafts, Bible reading and prayer. This week I had two girls come over for an informal counseling/mentoring session on Monday, and then two more on Friday. 

Today I am meeting with all the girls (about 20) and doing group activities. I love these girls so much and I’m enjoying my time with them.

Recipe for Milk

Lately we have been working on trying to get the malnutrition milk from one of the local humanitarian aid organizations. We have actually tried before, and it has been a frustrating situation over the past five years. We have so many kids come through that need this special mixture, but instead of being able to access the resources that are there, we have to spend large amounts of money buying the supplies in the market and then making the mixture ourselves. When one of the ladies went on vacation, I took over this responsibility, and recently I passed it on to Esther. She is doing a great job with this.

Anyway, one of the doctors here, who is from the Central African Republic, works a lot with refugee related issues, and he is composing a letter to the organizations to try to get this milk. We are helping him with this project by collecting photos of the malnourished children we have right now in the hospital. He is going to submit the photos along with the letters to prove that we really do need help!!! Please pray that the corruption in some of these organizations will stop and that we will get the aid we need, as soon as possible.

I have included a few photos of some of our children here right now who are suffering from malnutrition. Please pray for them!

Busy Hands

While Grace was here she taught some of the girls to crochet. 

Here is one of the girls with a scarf she made.

River

We managed to get down to the river again this morning early...we left the house before 6am and took the boat down to the bridge.





















We hiked through the jungle and collected some cocoa pods. There were some very interesting plants to be seen and ants to be avoided. After exploring the jungle we walked back to the boat and then went down the river to where we'd started. It was a beautiful and fun morning.

I very much enjoyed getting out and spending some time away from the hospital and all the people. The river is the only quiet, peaceful and semi-private place around.

Beautiful Esther

New Arrivals

Andrew and Grace have arrived! They brought lots of fun stuff from home…It was kind of like a Birthday or Christmas all at once. One of the best parts was a letter from Bekah White (thank you Bekah, if you’re reading this; I love you and miss you!)

We are so happy to have Andrew and Grace here. Andrew jumped right in helping with administrative, financial and employee issues. I think he’ll be able to do a lot in these next two weeks. 

The rest of us are busy as usual - always lots going on. Well, I’ve got some kids at my house and some dishes to wash, so I better go. More later.

Snapshots

Cooking in our outside kitchen shed

 Esther with some of her kiddos

A quiet afternoon at the house

Washing dishes

African Hair

Esther got her hair braided!!!

It took two evenings and part of a morning to get it all done. We had a great time, complete with hot chocolate, peanuts and movies. 

Charnelle, who is one of the midwives, did a beautiful job on Esther’s hair. On the night shift while there were no babies being born, we worked on Esther’s hair and hung out. I helped some, but Charnelle was the real expert. It was quite the project. 

And yes, it took hours… but Esther was very happy with the end result, and has gotten lots of great feedback on her new hairstyle. 

It was one of those days when nothing goes as planned…

Yeah, pretty much every day is like that. But today the girls were extra loud and disorganized, the baby had an accident on the floor. Again. 

The kerosine stove had some issues, I left my towels out in the rain and the clothesline was a total fail. I'll fix it later.

The chickens refused to stay in their pen, the men working on the roof dropped dust and tar onto all my clean dishes.

The ceiling leaked; flooding a corner of the house, AND it was a bad radio day. I’ll explain about bad radio days later. 

That’s it for now. Gotta go clean up the mess.