Stopping Malnourishment – child by child
Maybe a year ago we found a whole family of malnourished children. We have worked with malnourishment issues alot, but even for us, these children were in bad shape…but praise God we were able to save them.
But unfortunately two of these children went back into malnourishment and as a result one of them died, a little boy, Robert. His sister has survived, her name is Miracle. She spent two weeks in a malnourishment ward and has been released into our care. She will need at least a month of consistant food and vitamins before she will go home to her family. This is a very unfortunate case, where both mum and dad would be good cases for the worst parents in the world. The glaring neglect, lack of love and care and no seeming desire to change.
If the father has any work, he will simply get drunk, the mother seems to make more effort for the children. But in our world a sick or weak child is soon neglected. If they can’t feed itself while the other brothers and sisters are eating, they will just miss out. Then as the child becomes weaker and weaker they stay home more and more, lack of excercise, lack of interaction with other children and adults, parents that are rarely home to care for the child, lack of water…and before to long the child will die.
Children and women all over the world bear the worst of the effects of poverty…but children are the ones that die so easily. Children should never be hungry.
Miracle came home on friday, saturday we took her into our care. She is now living with Pastor Marivic for the next one or two months. She will get three meals a day, daily vitamins and additional nutritous snacks at least twice a day and hopefully her little body will recover enough to go home again.
I will put a new improved, fat looking Miracle in the next blog, so you can see what a couple of weeks of food will do for a malnourished child – YOU WILL BE AMAZED.
This morning at 6am her older sister came to my house looking for her. Flora Mae just loves miracle. I think in places were parents are so often not there, siblings build incredibly strong relationships. So I walked her down to Marivics house, we explained why Miracle was there and let her know that she can visit every day if she wants to. They were so happy to see each other. Kids need so much love, love makes such a diferance in their lives.
In the west we have this ideal that the Asian family is so together, so strong…but we have learned that that is just not true. In the poor communities there are very few families where mums and dads have not been married many times before, had children in those relationships and then moved onto the next relationship. How often does some one tell us they have children here, here, and here. An incredible aount of families will tell you how many living children they have, as so many of them have had children die.
Poverty touches everything – poor people can afford contraceptives, so they simply produce heaps of children, children that they can’t afford to feed or educate, once a man has 5-6 children with this wife, he will often leave as it is too hard to support them. Mum is then left in the situation where she has all these children, so she can’t work and look after them. If any children are going to school, she will take them out of school so they can either scavenge through rubbish or perhaps stay at home with the other children, so that she can do some form of work. So the children grow up uneducated and can’t get jobs themselves…and the cycle just keeps repeating.
Without Jesus it would be a hopless situation…but when Jesus comes into a persons life, the Redeem and Lift begins to happen. As people committ to Him, He begins to work miracles, He begins to provide supernaturally – regardless of the economic situation. An example, Pastor Marivic – a poor pastor living in a slum…NO WAY. Her economics are the same as everyone around her, but her heart is full of Jesus and so she can take in a child, she will feed and clothe Miracle, she can feed other children in her community, she can give and give and give, and her resources never run dry, because Jesus bless’s her so that she can BE A BLESSING TO THOSE AROUND. She has been redeemed and things have begun to lift, she is no longer needy, she is a giver. She has nothing more than anyone else, except JESUS.
If you have nothing else to give, give JESUS to some one – that will make all of the differance.
We just recentally had a visit from two Aussie, Andrew and Michael from Hope City Church in Melbourne. Great guys, with real hearts for the poor. God bless you guys and your families.
