In thankfulness to the goodness of God our Father, greetings.

The crisis of the past two weeks seems to be over now as the coughing decreases and dulled eyes regain their bright (and often naughty) gleam. Though one more child has passed from this world, the others have been blessed by the hand of the Healer and are quickly recovering.

My last update has raised some questions about how we do things here, so I will try to clarify some of what I referred to.
Our hospital is about 20 km away from the orphanage, taking about 15 minutes to drive to. When taking a child in an emergency-type situation I will always take another worker with me unless I am going as a precautionary measure. What happened with the little one last week was that I took him in because he hadn’t been drinking well and was losing weight and couldn’t maintain body temperature, it hadn’t become an emergency yet, I just needed him to see the doctor. At the time when I left I didn’t think it was necessary to take anyone with me, and though I tried to find someone anyway, no one was available. Because he was premature he had breathing irregularities in general (which is why I had my hand on his chest while I was driving), but he hadn’t stopped breathing altogether until we were on our way to the hospital. Had he stopped breathing before I left I never would have gone to the hospital alone. Once at the hospital they were able to put him on oxygen and stabilize him for the time being.
At the orphanage we have all the devices to conduct safe CPR, or “resuscitation”. In this day and age it is extremely unadvised and dangerous to conduct a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation due to the possible transmission of infectious blood and mucous-borne diseases (such as HIV and TB). Therefore we have CPR infant masks throughout the Orphanage and train all of our workers on warning signs and emergency measures in young children. Alongside this training we also have classes for the workers on the ins-and-outs of HIV/AIDS, precautions that should be taken, and how to give proper care to infected children.

Hopefully that serves to clarify the picture a bit of how these situations are handled around here. Our constant prayer over these past weeks has been that wisdom would outweigh rashness and caution would outmeasure panic.

As regards my health, I assure you all that I have been as careful as possible given the circumstances. God sustained me through the worst of times, and has granted me sleep after the storm, and has fully sustained my health. For this I continue to be thankful. I am also looking forward to taking a short holiday this next week that I might be refreshed.

Thank you for all of your faithful prayers, questions, thoughts, and concerns. May you now join me in praising the God Who is the strength of those who falter, the shelter for the weary, and the health of the ill. –Nicole de Martimprey