Africa On My Mind: Pray for Healing

Maurice and Chara both have had surgery a few weeks ago with expectations of minimal complications. The surgeon has since left and both of them have had complications and are leaking cerebral spinal fluid (not a good thing at all!). Both have been taken back to surgery since then. The poor mamas have had to deal with often daily dressing changes, fussy babies who cannot eat because they will be going to surgery, or needing a lumbar puncture almost daily. Both mama’s are tired and scared as we are nearing the end of the outreach and both kids are not healing.

Surprisingly, both little ones have been doing amazing despite the set backs. The last few days I worked last week Chara was waving, smiling, and quite interactive. Three month old Maurice, who came in on the feeding program at 3.53kg (7lbs) is now finally gaining weight (4.19kg), smiled, cooed, and moved around more Friday than I had ever seen him. I needed to do some dressing changes but just could not find it me to stop cuddling the baby and give him back to mama. We are praising the Lord for how suprisingly well they are both doing! At one point Maurice was the only male on D ward so there was much laughter when another mama said that Maurice was the biggest man on D ward. Such a tiny munchkin but since he was the only male, he got that title!

Despite the two kids doing so well, I would pray that you would lift them up in prayer! We do not want to leave them without them being healed. There is only one more week of surgery left and at one point there was hope of flying in a German neurosurgeon. This has seemed to fall through. So….Dr. Gary and Dr. Mark, our 2 amazing max-fax surgeons will be doing their best to heal these babies. Tomorrow, Monday, Dr. Gary will be putting a VP shunt (device that shunts extra CSF from the brain to the space around the abdomen) in Chara. He has done this before but it is definitely not his specialty. Chara also has had increased complications with infection and poorly healing head wounds. Right now we have a make shift shunt for the CSF fluid which is comprised of an IV canula, IV tubing, and a small empty saline bag as seen in the picture. Please pray for supernatural wisdom for the doctors and supernatural healing for these 2 precious kids so that when the ship leaves, they are healed and the mama’s can have peace about their precious kids.

As one of the common African songs go… “Great things HE has done, greater things HE will do. Unto the Lord be the glory, great things HE has done!”