Boy, has it been a long week!! We were supposed to have a number of babies arrive last week, by Friday, but none actually came when they were supposed to. This was fairly frustrating, but then again not too surprising, since things are just run differently down here. And it was nice to have just a little bit more time to spend getting everything ready at the home- buying a few last minute supplies and making some baby food. However, we did get our first little girl Monday!! She's really quite adorable. Her name is Esperanza, and she is 11 months old. And now today, we have a new arrival- Lucas! Who is probably one of the cutest little boys I've ever seen in my life. He is a year and seven months, and absolutely adorable! I'll have to upload pictures soon of the two of them.
So, why are these little ones here. Well, let's start with Esperanza. This little girl, as I said, is 11 months old and weighs just 7 pounds. Basically she's the size of a newborn, which is absolutely heartbreaking. She was born with a cleft pallate and also has a hole in her heart. Her heart has to work way more than it should and is therefore consuming nearly all the calories she takes in to keep it pumping. Then she isn't putting any weight on because of that, and therefore isn't growing. We've been to a number of doctors, and we're hoping to get her in for surgery soon to fix her heart defect, but it may take a while. To do the surgery here in Santa Cruz it will cost roughly 10 thousand dollars. There is a clinic in town called Mission of Hope which gives free health care, and this April will probably be having a team come that could perform the surgery for free, but it's really not a surgery we want to put off with her being in the condition she's in. However, at the clinic they told us that there's a place in Cochabamba, a city that's an hour flight or day's drive from here, that would possibly do it at a smaller price, or another place in La Paz that does surgeries for free but we don't know if they would perform this one specifically. So, a number of options, but right now we're just taking it day by day, praying that she will continue to get better little by little and that God would be watching over her and helping her to grow, despite her condition. And it's great to see how she's improved even in the four days she's been here! She was very quiet and her eyes seemed a bit glazed over and already she is livening up a bit, which is encouraging to all of us! But please do pray for her... she's in rough shape!
Lucas isn't doing quite so bad. He has HIV, but isn't sick at all. There has been Hep A going around where he was last, so they wanted to transfer him here to protect him from getting sick from that. He just arrived a few hours ago and is pretty shy, but he's slowly warming up to us. It's a lot of changes for the little tike I'm sure, so he's a bit quiet, but I look forward to seeing him break out of his shell a little. Again, I just have to say it, he is sooo cute! I'll do my best to put on some pics tomorrow.
We were also told that there's another girl they'd like to bring, who is a year and six months. She also has HIV but we don't know whether she's sick or not, so whether we take her or not is going to depend on that a lot I think. It would be hard to take her in if she is because of all the attention we are already having to give Esperanza. However, if she's not sick, it could be nice to have a little playmate for Lucas. So, time will tell I suppose.
Thanks so much for praying! It's exciting to see things finally coming together like we've been waiting for! For right now I'm working 24 hour shifts every other day with a 2 hour break at 2:30, and then I'm covering for another worker on my days off as she has classes from about 6:30 to 10:30. It's been quite exciting to see God bring things together. I'm so thankful to be here and get to be a part of this during such an exciting time of getting everything up and going. Please pray for us that we would have wisdom as we try to decide how to provide care for these little ones, and also that we would depend on His strength to get us through the tougher days. God is good. I'm thankful to be a part of what He is doing here and am excited to see where this road will go for these little ones.
Feb 4 2011
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