Little ones

They continue to come to our gate. On Friday morning and Saturday morning, we had 2 more severely malnourished children come to us. These 2 are the most severe we've seen yet. Imagine if you can a 5 year old girl that weighs 7.5 kg and a 3 year old boy that weighs 7 kg. It is almost unfathomable until you see it with your own eyes. Kette and John are their names. Their bodies are skin and bones; their fat and muscle completely wasted. Neither of them has the strength to stand. They lie in their mothers' arms staring blankly into space, completely disinterested in the world around them.

This is the work of the Enemy at its worst. It is unjust and cruel that children who should be running around and playing and learning and discovering the world around them are languishing away like this, literally starving to death. It's not that there is no food. It's hard to pin down what has triggered these children's condition. For some it is a sudden, early weaning due to the mother's next pregnancy with a lack of nutritious weaning foods. For others, it seems to be a severe illness that set them back and they lost their appetite. Protein-energy malnutrition is a vicious cycle. The more malnourished they are, the more illnesses they have and the less interest they have in eating, and the more malnourished they become.

Please cry out to God on behalf of Kette and John. We have seen wonderful progress in several children as we've treated their infections and given their parents a simple formula of goat's milk, sugar and oil to follow to give them every 3 hours around the clock as they recover. Specifically, please pray that Kette's mother and big sister will remember how to give her 2 medications and how to make up the formula. Her mother was having trouble remembering everything on Friday since we also had to give Kette's baby brother 2 medications. He had malaria and possible pneumonia. You mothers out there--imagine having all of that to deal with! Pray that these children will be able to keep their medicine and milk formula down (both have been having trouble with vomiting) and that their bodies will begin to heal and recover and gain weight. Pray especially for a miracle for Kette. In addition to being severely malnourished now, she has clearly had stunted growth for a long time. We could hardly believe she was 5 years old.

We have already seen a wonderful answer to prayer for John. On Saturday his mother and grandmother told us that they had been getting goat's milk from a neighbor but that he had begun refusing to give it to them. Today Grace and Butros, our language helper, walked over to their home to check on John. On the path, who did they bump into but the neighbor with his goats! Butros was able to explain to him that this child desperately needs the milk in order to survive and asked him to provide it, which he agreed to! Talk about a divine appointment! John's mother remembered exactly how to make up the milk formula and has started giving it.

These are the little ones that move the heart of God. We've got their names pinned up in our dining hall now so we'll remember to pray for each of them. There are 10 now that we know of, some making remarkable progress and others still in serious danger: Gideon (a little boy that Vicki saw while we were away), Issa, John, Kette, Martina, Omo, Ona, Phoebe, Stephen, Tienga (the 10-year-old with leprosy). Please join us in lifting them up to the Father.