A place to call home..

Back in February, I visited the children’s hospital with a team that was in country. We met a little boy they were calling Divine in the malnutrition ward. Divine had arrived just the day before and was brought in by the hospital cook who had found him abandoned. He was the closest thing to death I had ever laid eyes on before. He was terribly skinny, nonresponsive, and starving. The woman who found him said he was a “divine blessing”. 

Divine, the first time we saw him

When a child in admitted to the hospital, the mother is the one who provides the food, diapers, clothing, ect…not the hospital. The mother is to stay with the child at all times making it difficult to get resources for themselves and their child. When a child is abandoned at the hospital the only one left to care for them is the nurse. In this case, a nurse will take on the abandoned child and use her own money to pay for the child’s necessities. Keep in mind that these nurses don’t always know when they will receive their next paycheck.

After finding this out, a couple of women on the team stepped up and decided to help pay for Divine’s food to relieve the nurse of this duty. After talking with our social worker we decided to buy the food as needed and deliver it ourselves to make sure it went into the right hands. 

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For the past 4 months I have been going to the children’s hospital every couple of weeks with our social worker to deliver the food. On our first trip towards the end of February, we were bombarded with another case. The head doctor in that ward came to us as soon as we walked into the door pleading with us to take another abandoned child. Her name was Grace. Grace has cerebral palsy but wasn’t sick, she just had nowhere to go…so there she laid in that hospital bed all alone.

Grace

At that time we had no space at our center and were not at a place to hire more caregivers, which we would need with a special needs child. I could hardly stand looking the doctor in the face and saying sorry, she’ll have to stay. I just wanted to break down and cry. I left that hospital feeling empty and hopeless…relying on God to take over. The hardest part is knowing that Grace isn’t the only one out there, there are SO many more…and these are the things that keep me up at night and make me ask why to a God who is so much bigger than I am. 

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As I continued to deliver the food to the hospital, I was amazed at how God was at work. Two amazing nurses stepped up and started caring for Grace and Divine as their own giving them some much needed love and attention. They started calling Divine, Ola, after the hospital (Ola During), so he finally had a first and last name. I couldn’t thank the Lord enough for providing care for these kids while they waiting for a home. Seeing Ola’s constant improvement was just a reminder of how big God is!!

After a month and a half of meeting Ola "Divine"...I didn't even recognize him at first!

Two weeks ago I went to the hospital with another team that was here. It had been a while since I had delivered the food because we had been so busy. When we got there we noticed how little Grace was improving, even becoming worse. She was not gaining any weight and showed signs of starvation…not something that you would think could happen in a hospital, I know.

Grace

After talking with our social workers and staff we decided we had to take these kids in for them to survive. There was another little boy at a different hospital with Cerebral palsy who was also abandoned. We put out on Facebook our need for sponsors immediately. OVER NIGHT we got all the sponsors we needed for an intake on 3 special needs kids and 4 new caregivers.

Today 3 new children have a place to call home. They’re no longer laying the same hospital bed that had been their “home” for months. They’re going to be fed, held, and loved on for the rest of their lives. Thank you for everyone who prayed and all of our amazing sponsors!! 

But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. Psalm 10:14