Hi Friends,
Yesterday I (Simon) hiked up to visit with Teli and Marian. I stayed for about 4 hrs and fortunately happened upon them killing a pig as I came to the village; they were just burning the hair off. Teli and his family along with Marian have returned home to their house with a supply of medicine for Marian to take. At the time we were concerned about them leaving the clinic but the nurse there had taken her off IV and had cleared her to return home to aid them in meeting the needs of all of the family. They have 8 kids and most of them were sleeping at the clinic, they had little food but what we and some believers brought them and said they were too hot during the day and very cold at nights. Their kids wanted home and they needed to be near their gardens to get food and maintain them etc. As for Marian, she is now declared stable but she is very skinny and extremely weak. It looks as though her eyesight is not great at all and she cannot speak clearly at all. She can move her fingers but can’t move any other limbs; any movement causes severe back and neck pain and she sleeps most of the day. She still has two weeks of medicine to finish and the family will take her up to the clinic on Sunday again for a checkup. Her family are encouraged with how she is doing so that shows you how bad she must have been. We really praise God that he has spared her life so far but she needs prayer so that she can put on weight, gain back her strength and get full control of her senses and speech ability. This is something we are really concerned about and hope that the Lord will return to normal. There is always a fear with Meningitis that the high fevers involved can damage brain function as well as hearing, sight and speech. Marian was without medicine for a few weeks and had high fevers before the right medicine got to her. Annika and the other ladies from our team are hiking up to their house today to see how they are doing, try to encourage them and work in their gardens to clean and harvest some food for them. Thanks so much for joining us in praying for this little girl and her family.
Language:
Language learning has been slow this week. We have had language helpers not turn up and we have had to make trips to after Teli and his family and so things have not been as productive as they could be. Please be praying we can have a good week starting next week and progress rapidly, we want to get done with language as soon as possible.
Noah and Nya:
Please keep praying for Noah as he is still on two courses of antibiotics for his ears. He has developed some redness in the ears even on the antibiotics and is having some discomfort also. We wrote our DR yesterday and he wrote back saying that we may have to go to a stronger course if these ones don’t work. It’s a lot of medicine for him and if it doesn’t work it may mean a trip to Aus to see the hospital Dr’s there. We are hoping that doesn’t happen so pray the Lord would heal him up. Nya is doing well; but we are mid potty training so pray for us and her as she continues to learn – It’s hard to train at times when we are out in the village she asks to go to the toilet but there are none. We think this may be confusing her a little, so pray for her to catch the idea more completely.
The church:
We continue to go through the book of Acts and have been in ch14, verse 22 was a verse we spent some time on and is particularly applicable just now. We continue to have some reduced numbers because of pressure from the cult and perhaps also we are seeing a falling away. We are having great success in literacy classes, the second class is coming to an end and the students are doing well – they all need a little extra encouragement as they get close to the end to keep faithful. Our teacher trainee’s who are now helping to teach the course are doing exceptionally well. We are hoping and praying to have some ladies from this course one to go into the teacher training program. Please pray this would be so. Overall please pray for continued growth and faithfulness in the lives of this young church. We praise God for the progress and growth we are seeing. To illustrate that a number of the believing ladies along with our own wives have gone today to help Teli and Kariang work their garden for free. This is never culturally done and they always expect payment praise the Lord they are seeing this as a way to encourage their brother and sister in Christ and are doing it expecting nothing in return!
Thanks for your continued prayers! Much love in Christ,
Simon, Annika, Nya and Noah.