A shout-out of thanks from a few vulnerable kids

 This is Daniel, looking feisty on his final day with us.  When he was admitted 58 days ago, he was hours from death.  His mom had defaulted on her own care and seemed completely unable to deal with his AIDS.  I agreed to pay his hospitalization costs from our Needy Children Fund, never guessing how long he would stay or how expensive it would be.  He was so malnourished and had so many infections.  As we started to pull him out of the TB dwindles, he had a reaction to anti-retrovirals that meant we had to stop them. After nearly two months he is finally off oxygen and gaining weight.  But the real story is his mom.  Daniel saved his mom's life.  Because over these two months she slowly came to accept her diagnosis.  To allow herself to be helped.  To resume her own treatment.  In the last two weeks I hardly ever found her without her Bible open on her lap.  She found life.  I don't know how long Daniel will survive, but I do know his hospitalization was worth every shilling.  Two lives were impacted, and I'm grateful for that.

 Jonah continues to improve, very slowly.  His spine is now stable, and he can be wheeled out into the sunshine.  His mother came all the way from Samburu to this place where she knows no one and barely speaks the language of Swahili.  She is brave.  I am afraid Jonah is blind since his near-death in one of his operations.  But he definitely hears, and stops his restless moaning when I talk to him.  Jesus made the lame walk and the blind see.  Jonah needs that kind of miracle.  Kijabe and the Needy Funds have kept him alive and shown him love, putting him in the place where he can wait for the angel to stir the water, for the healer to pass by.

We've had a photography team at the hospital documenting stories like Daniel, Jonah, and this cute 4 year old who was brought to our outpatient Maternal and Child Health clinic Thursday. He is severely chronically malnourished, with very stunted growth due to his mother's inability to feed him enough every day.  But here he is having the time of his life seeing his face in the camera.  A kind pastor in his town brought him in for care.

Lastly, another vulnerable child, this one a refugee from the largest refugee camp in the world located in Dadaab, Kenya.  The NGO's that work there send kids like this to Kijabe for diagnosis and treatment.  I believe she has a genetic dwarfism syndome, something that is not easy for a family with seven other children to deal with in a refugee camp located in barbed wire fences in the desert.

So many children who live with too little care, space, food, medicine, opportunity.  So many who dwindle without resources or care for too long, and come to us too late.  But these four were helped, by our Needy Children's Fund, the Orthopedic Vulnerable Patient Fund, a local Kenyan church, and the UNHCR and other NGO's.

Thank you to all who have donated in the last month.  The income and expenditure when I checked on Thursday were almost exactly matched.  God knew our needs.  I just keep spending the donations on these kids as fast as they come in, knowing the more we help, the more will be provided.  THANKS.