Last Thursday a medical team from
America arrived in Addis, led by Emily’s mom, Cherrie Cornish. What a gift they have been to us and to the
community here! On Saturday we visited an orphanage which is home to thirty
children. We had a baby station and an older child station. Each child was
held, prayed over, and heard their name spoken in love. Orphanages are always
emotional for me. This one was the cleanest, most organized one that I’ve seen,
but there were still children in it. Those children have no families, and some
of them never will. Ethiopia is very concerned with papers and stamps, and not
so much about the person. If one paper is missing, or one thing was done out of
order, a child becomes unadoptable. There are so many in this situation. They will
grow up in that orphanage until they are (I think 16?), and then pushed out
into the street. UNADOPTABLE. What an awful brand. I think sometimes for one
reason or another people think they are unadoptable to God. Something they did,
something they said, a deformity or disability that makes them undesirable to
Him. Thank the Lord that we cannot be branded UNADOPTABLE by anybody or any
government. Jesus set that adoption process in order a long time ago. We are
ADOPTABLE for His purpose and glory. Igzabeher
Yimesgen. Praise God.
One particular child captured my
attention. She was on the third floor, in the farthest crib from the door, in
the corner. She lay on her back, legs and arms sprawled in every direction. She
looked like she might have Down’s Syndrome. Her hair was oily and stuck out in
long thin strings like a sea anemone. She had dried mucous and saliva all over
her face. Her skin was dull and dry. She labored to breath, and just stared at
me. I guessed her to be nine months old. I tried to sit her up, but she did not
have the strength to sit by herself. The nanny responsible for the babies in
the room watched me carefully.
“Simat man neow?” I asked.
What is her name?
“Hiwat.” Replied the nanny.
Hiwat? In Amharic Hiwat means life.
“Sente weur neow esua?” How many
months old is she?
“Hulet ameut.” Two years old.
I was stunned. I turned back to the
malnourished child and lifted her weak body into my arms. Her mattress was
imprinted where she had lain, and the back of her head was flat. I wondered
when she had last been held or taken outside. She lay against my chest and
rasped. I took Hiwat out on the balcony and sat down. She fussed a little, (probably
because my milky white face scared her) haha. I prayed over her and talked to
the Lord.
“Why would you give a name like Hiwat to a
child like this, Lord? Life? What kind of life will a child like this have? She
likely will not ever have a family. She may not ever walk or run. She will
probably die young. Why would you give her a name like Life?”
He answered me in His still small
voice. “Life is not found in walking or running. Life is not about ice cream or
snow mobile rides, or any of the things we define it by. Life is not even found
in a family. Life is found in Christ Jesus, a relationship with Him. And we are
adoptable! Hiwat is adoptable. She may have a simple mind. But sometimes I
think simple people have a greater understanding of God than the intellects in
this world. Hiwat can know God, have life, and have it abundantly. I held her
and sang, “How Great is Our God” because He is.
The next day we arose at 4:00 AM
and fell into the vans headed for Shashamene. We arrived about an hour and a
half behind schedule, but no matter. This is Ethiopia. We set up our clinic
inside a long building with several examination rooms. We had an eye/ear/teeth
station, four doctor stations, and a pharmacy. I got to play pharmacist all day.
J All of you medical
people out there cover your eyes lest your head throbs from our defiance of
alleged scope of practice. We worked until the kids came no more (about one
hundred). Emily and I had made new charts for the children in our program for
the year, so it was great to get a baseline assessment for most of them. We
spent the night in Shashamene and left Monday morning for Akake, the second
boarding school our kids attend. There are much less of our students there, so
we only did clinic for a couple hours. Thoroughly spent, we packed up our meds
and stethoscopes and headed back to Addis.
Tuesday we started clinic in Kore.
We begin at 9:00 AM, break for lunch, and return to treat until 3:00 PM. I don’t
have a final count yet. Today is our last day. Everything has gone very smoothly.
One day, a watch battery was pulled out from the ear of one of our drivers. He
told us that a child had put it in his ear twenty years ago, and he had never
had good hearing in that ear. The battery was rusty and corroded. He could
instantly hear. He held his head in his hands and wept, praising the Lord for
His goodness.
Yesterday was difficult for the team. There
were a lot of sad cases. I had left the compound to run an errand, and heard my
name being called. “Kayla!” a friend of mine called. I turned to see a boy
climbing out of a car with the help of my friend and another man. I have only
seen such a skinny person in pictures. His face was gaunt, his arms hanging
from nothing but shoulder blades. I greeted him, but he could barely shake my
hand. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that I don’t think was a big as it looked on
him. I ran my hands down his sides. He was half the size he should have been. I
felt only ribs. “He’s starving,” I thought. I led him into the clinic, helping
him up the steps and down into a chair. The doctor examined him and listened to
his caring father, who was the man accompanying him. “He is taking all the right
medications,” The doctor said, “but he needs to be carefully monitored. He
needs IV’s. He needs to be in the hospital.” The boy had cardiomyopathy. On the
X-ray he showed us, his heart took up more picture than his rib cage. “He’s
dying. There’s nothing we can do.” What an awful thing to hear. There’s nothing
we can do. The doctor sat down with the father and the boy and explained with a
translator that he needed to take him to a heart clinic for further treatment. Then
he told them about the great Physician, the one who heals us from the inside
out. They listened attentively, and we laid hands on them both to pray. Tears
fell from many eyes as they left. Who can know how seeds planted will grow?
A baby came in with a large burn on
his back. He screamed as they pealed back to dead skin and dressed it. It was
dramatic, especially for the mother. Another lady came in seven months
pregnant. She had ultrasounds with her from two weeks ago that showed the child
she carried was dead. The hospital she went to did the ultrasound and told her,
but left the baby inside. This morning I will take her to the clinic to be
induced and deliver her child. Sometimes the work here is heavy.
Please pray for us as we wrap up
the clinic today. Pray that the people needed to be seen will be seen. The line
is never-ending, and we rarely see everyone that comes. The team leaves
tomorrow. What a great blessing they have been to us and the people here.
God is good, all the time. All the
time, God is good.
