Kelakil / Tseada Amba Update Sep 7, 2008

It is Saturday morning and the Meskel flowers are starting to bloom, these pretty and bright yellow flowers are the welcome into the coming year; we are just a few days away from the Ethiopian New Year, the year 2000 closes and 2001 starts. Here at Grace Village our wild and rugged terrain is covered with long grass and interspersed with these splashes of yellow, small delicate wild flowers in palest of pink and blues cover other patches creating the wonder of God’s renewal year after year.

This last week was spent in Addis Ababa. We visited doctors’ offices with Yonas our little lad with hydrocephaly. Upon reading his CT scan the doctor said that this little chap will never walk or speak! We explained that he could walk, speak and feed himself! Our Yonas was admitted to hospital, was operated on and is now mending nicely. Beyene is staying with him and they should both come home next Tuesday. The children have been praying faithfully for their little brother, little Benyam knelt and they lay down flat on the ground asking God to look after his special Yonas. We have precious children at Grace Village!

We also spent six hours in Addis Ababa at the official medical supply department buying medicine for the people who are sick in our area. It certainly saved us money though which was good! We had a meeting with the World Health Organization who has promised to help us! This is wonderful news!

On Friday we left early to meet the delegation from the Tigray Health Bureau and World Health Organization at Kelakil where the people are so ill from some mysterious toxin that needs investigating with all the scientific tools available. When we reached there the people crowded around us asking to come and see this child or that person and to give food, medicine or simple to cry with them.

The WHO Representative to Ethiopia came with me and we went to Hagos’ house, so thin and wasted with is big belly full of fluid; his four little girls all sick too... then on to see Gebrehud the 12 year old who is so very sick and finally to a beautiful little 16 year old, her parent’s first born daughter who had been such a precious valued helper in the home, Masho had helped her mother nurse her five younger siblings who had all died, she cared for the two youngest born over the past three years. Lying oh so still in her rustic bed, her perfectly formed face - still, her yellowed eyes closed, her breathing labored, still dressed in her new clothes so recently given and only a matter of moments before death as yet another succumbs to ‘Gua Kua’. We wept with the family; we hugged them and left wondering how many more would die before a solution is found. May God help us!

In sadness there is joy, in sorrow there is peace and all because of the Lord Who gave Himself for us, to Him be the glory for all He has done, is doing and will do for us.

The Oasis Foundation Grace Village Ethiopia

The Oasis Foundation
Grace Village
Ethiopia