Monday, March 27, 2006

One year ago


One year ago
Originally uploaded by House of Hope.
It's almost impossible to believe that one year ago this week we were brought a 4 pound 10 day old little girl that was so sick we wondered if she'd live. After many sleepless nights, numerous visits with the doctor, various treatments, and many cans of baby formula Dieula (or Lala as we call her) turned 1 years old on the weekend. She has been a blessing to us from day one, and it has been a joy to have her here with us at the HOH. After being treated for her initial illnesses, Dieula has really done well, and has turned out to be a very intelligent, funny and enjoyable little girl. Her mother died when she was 7 days old, her father tried to do his best for 3 days before he brought her to us, sick, starving and desperately in need of medical attention. Now a year later she is walking, almost talking (her favorite word to try and say is "Spot" our 5 month old puppy whom she loves dearly. Spot just seems to enjoy licking her face and knocking her off her feet whenever he is nearby-I can't quite figure out why she loves him so much!), and has learned to communicate using sign language (please, thankyou, goodbye, bravo, sorry), thanks to some advice from various friends to try and teach her. We are so used to having extremely sick and malnourished children and toddlers here, that it has been fun to have one who was ready to teach things like that.



We enjoyed our last group of visitors, and have no others coming in the immediate future. We are busy getting ready for my (Jenny's) departure for the US/Canada the end of April. We are working on materials for me to take along, and also working on getting Linda and one of our boys (St. Germain) more comfortable on the computers so we can keep in touch while I am gone. Please pray for us as we essentially have only 4 weeks to pull everything together. All of our students are busy writing exams this week. and would appreciate your prayers as well.



We admitted a 4 year old boy this past week named Sonley. He is extremely ill, we hope with TB in his lymph glands, but we suspect it is worse than that (possibly cancer). We are keeping his mom here with him since he is not doing too good. He has showed some improvement during his stay here, so we continue to pray and ask you to pray as well that he would continue to heal. They have taken a biopsy of his glands to send to PAP, so until we get that back we won't know exactly what he has. If it isn't TB, there's nothing that can be done for him in Haiti, so please pray that we'd get the results soon, and that he would continue to get better. We also admitted a young girl named Magdalene, who has TB in her lymph glands as well. Please pray for her continued recovery. All the other children we admitted last week seem to be doing ok.



Daphny Love's mouth is getting better and better each day. She can now fit in 10 tongue depressors lying on top of each other which is just great improvement from what she could do when she came here (getting one in was a tough job). She is talking more and able to eat with her teeth now. She's had a tough adjustment period here, she didn't want to be here, but seems to be coming out of that stage now and is making friends with the other girls her age. Thank you for your prayers for her.



We continue to thank God for all of you who read this and pray for us regularly. We appreciate you support in this way very much.

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