Chelma's Birthday Surprise!

Chelma had her birthday on January 1st, 2009, but it was celebrated with the February birthdays because “Mama-Miriki” (Katrina) was still in the United States. We were visited by some friends from Syracuse, NY, at that time and one of them approached Katrina with tears in his eyes and said, “You must be doing something right.” Katrina, a little surprised, asked why. He explained that he had taken Chelma away from the others and given her a special bag of candy, just for her, but that she had promptly run to the dining room and divvied the loot with all her surrogate siblings. Way to go, Chelma!

Update on Lil' Bill (Denilson)

On the 7th of February, Tom Brian brought back Denilson, our little malnourished child who, at the age of 6-months only weighed six pounds, which is smaller than most newborns. He had been staying with us at House of Hope, but had to be sent to Tegucigalpa because the doctors here could not figure out why he wasn’t gaining weight.

While in Tegucigalpa, the doctors had him on a very expensive formula, which helped for a while, but then he had a relapse. Because of this relapse the doctors did further testing and discovered tat he had been borne with a twisted intestine which kept him from properly digesting food.
Denilson was scheduled for surgery and now weighs a whopping 20 pounds! (He lost about 5 lbs from the 25 he weighed when he relapsed.) He’s a very happy, healthy baby; very small with a very big personality.

We wish to give special thanks to those who knew of his need and responded from their generous hearts to help financially or in other ways.

Aracely

In the book of Exodus, Moses was instructed to build a Tabernacle. He had never done anything similar, though he probably had sufficient administrative skills from having been raised as a prince in Pharoah's household. The main problem was that he had a million recently liberated slaves in the desert, their only resources being that which they could forage or had carried with them when they left Egypt. Where would he collect the supplies to make a Tabernacle according to the specifications God had given him?

Well, God always provides our needs. Right? In order to do that He usually has things set in order before He tells us what to do next. Such was the case with Moses and his task of building a Tabernacle. You see when the Isrealites finally left Egypt for good, God told them to go to their Egyptian neighbors and ask for goods to take with them. They carried expensive cloth, gold, silver, whatever they would need in order to build the Tabernacle, even though they did not yet know they would have to build it.

About a month ago, Aracely, who has a severe vision problem due to badly crossed eyes, was seen by an eye doctor. That eye doctor gave my wife instructions to keep a patch on Aracely's eye. Katrina's own brother had a lazy eye as a child, so she had already known to do this, but having no medical supply store in this remote place she had been binding a bandage around Aracely's head each day to keep the gauze in place over her eye. Talk about a mess!

Well, a day before the eye doctor visit, Katrina had opened a box full of donated coloring books and school supplies. In that box was a package set with a Pirate coloring book and a plastic eye patch for children's dress-up. She had thought it cute but had not made the connection. When the doctor described the plastic eye patch to Katrina, something clicked in her mind and she remembered the pirate eye-patch!

God is so good to us. Whenever He gives us something to do, though it may look as though it's not possible due to lack of finances or supplies, we can rest assured He has already made provision!