Phoebe

They keep coming. Yesterday afternoon Vicki and I were cycling home from B. and came up behind a family walking down the road. A young man carried a very thin child on his back and a young woman swathed in colorful cloth walked beside him. We greeted them and Vicki stopped because she noticed the child. It turned out that the man and woman were husband and wife and the child was the woman's 4 year old sister. They had been asked to bring her to the clinic in B. because she had been sick for 3 months. They had been to the clinic that afternoon and been told to return the next morning when we would be there to see her. When we met them they were walking to D., our village, to look for a place to stay. The little girl's name is Phoebe and she is yet another child with marusmus, severe malnutrition with muscle wasting. We asked them to come to our compound so we could sit down with them and assess Phoebe. The brother-in-law spoke some English so that was really helpful.

They had walked from G., a village maybe an hour and a half to two hours' journey. The picture of Phoebe's weak, fragile body carried gently on her brother-in-law's back sticks in my mind. They were desperate for help for her and I knew the Lord had sent them.

It was nice to be able to sit down with them and have the time to talk and find out what had been going on to bring her to this point and to assess her as thoroughly as we could. We suspect TB for this girl also. We were able to give feeding advice and cover her with some good medicines to treat likely infections, as well as give her a mosquito net to help protect her from malaria. We also prayed for her healing and I would ask you to remember her in your prayers along with the other children I've told you about.

I will keep updating you on their progress. Tomorrow several of them are due to come into the clinic so we can weigh them and see how they're doing. Please pray that the scales at the clinic would work well so we could get an accurate idea of their weight. The scales aren't great.

It's heartbreaking to see these children in such a state. The saddest thing is that they just sit there lifelessly, showing no interest in what's going on around them, a dull look in their eyes or else they are just plain miserable and cry all the time. Please pray for their bodies, minds, and spirits to be restored: their names are Stephen (a boy with marasmus we've been following since before we started at the clinic), Martina, Issa, Omo, and Phoebe.