Through one of the churches we are associated with we learned that a young couple had a seriously ill child of just 9 months. The child's stomach had become grossly distended and she was loosing weight. If you know anything about tropical medicine then you might think, like I did, that it was intestinal worms. The mother took her baby to the capital, to Hospital Escuela, for a diagnosis and it wasn't worms.
The doctors kept mother and baby at the hospital (which is rather old and is not a nice place to stay for an extended period) for two months. They determined that the baby's liver had grown abnormally large and that there was nothing they could do. They sent them home just last week telling the mother to buy a casket for the baby and wait for her to die.
Now before you jump off track deciding that the doctors here are idiots, I need to say that the doctors here are good, even excellent, and while the conditions at Hospital Escuela are not optimal, the medical treatment is usually right on target.
We went to the visit the couple yesterday and while there, the Lord put on my heart to take some photos of the family as they will be the only memory they will have. Before we left I was asked to pray for them. Well, I got going and tried to pray for the Lord to hug the family and instead, I starting crying. This poor couple have so little and now were loosing their baby.
Six hours later we were waiting for the photos to be developed and we received the call that the baby had died. We met their pastor and his family on the road on the way back to the house and transferred the pictures to them. We had them laminated so that they want warp in the rainy humidity. We even blew one up to 8 x 10 so they would have a nice big photo for their wall (which currently lacks any photos).
They will present the body in the house and stay up all night with the burial being in the morning. Apparently, they put the pictures around the body and everyone said it is amazingly beautiful! PTL!!!
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted... Ps 34:18
Here's an update from the funeral. The pastor's wife was with them until late and one of the stories that came out is that they had a fight early that morning. The mother was upset at the father because they only had one picture of the baby, that was when the baby was in the hospital for a short visit and was also taken by a 'gringo'. She was really upset about only having one picture! So, when the pastor's wife showed up with the eight pictures we sent, and one of them being the 8" x 10", she told her husband, 'God has really blessed us through the 'gringos'!" (gringos is now a common term for North Americans and is not considered negative)
The other big news is that this couple had only started going to church about three weeks ago, the pastor had a chance to talk to the husband after we left before the baby died, and he accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior!! God is good all the time, and all the time God is good!!!
Wow!
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