Prayer update

Little Alirio is doing slightly better tonight. It’s been over 24 hrs of continuous nebulizers….at least I’ve managed to stretch him (and I do mean stretch) to every 4 hrs for most of today. Oh how I pray that my director can find and get some inhaled steroids in the city tomorrow so I can add that to his treatment….I am glad to say though that he has been playing more this evening, even laughing and smiling again! And at 0130 this morning after the 1^st nebulizer didn’t work and I had to give him another one back to back….he felt better half way through and started thinking it was play time. It was too cute. I already had run out of “play” toys for him in my “medicine closet” (also known as my office and is really a baby clinic…just don’t tell anyone else in Mozambique)…so I resorted to a pencil (yes it had a very dull point and I was supervising) a bulb syringe and an empty normal saline canister…..we do with what we can, also I has been up since 0700 and hadn’t stopped. Well, he decided it was time to make music and started banging the pencil on everything, yelling, and babbling as loudly as he could. As if the nebulizer machine didn’t make enough noise…I thought we were going to wake all the babies up. But he was having so much fun. When I put him back in the crib, put the warm blanket around him, and placed the mosquito net back over his crib he just sat there looking at me like…what? Where are you going? And pulled himself up and started “talking” to me. I think by tomorrow the tias are going to hate us for waking him up every 4 hrs through the night! Oh well.

As a side note. A bunch of the missionaries as well as their babies have been getting sick this last week. We have had a few even go to the clinic and hospital. One is at home at the moment (on her visit to see her sick mom) in a hospital and being transported to a higher acuity hospital. Her mother had just recovered from the same rare, nongenetic, noncontageous, very serious disease that can take months or years to recover from. The very next day after her mother’s release, she started exhibiting the same symptoms and the disease continues to rapidly progress. Our assistant directors had to fly back to the US on an emergent flight as well for a very critical parent. Please pray that the sickness stops and that everyone will be healed and we can get back to serving the Lord. This weekend we are hosting a big leadership conference for all the leaders in Mozambique on our base. We could use all the help we could get as we don’t know numbers but expect great things! Thanks to everyone that is praying as well as all the encouraging emails and calls I have received this week. I love you guys and miss everyone very much! Ok, have to get some things done before Alirio’s next treatment…then off to bed. I’m beyond exhausted!