Thursday at ASELSI

Today was our weekly clinic at ASELSI, and it was a little more chaotic (and perhaps a little more fun!) today than usual-- There was a medical team of students and residents here from the University of Missouri who have been working with Sharon all week. They saw tons of patients upstairs while Heidi and Charlie took care of mostly regularly-scheduled people downstairs.

We saw one lady with that team who definitely needs your prayers-- Her name is Julia, and she claims to be 28 (she looks to be at least in her 40's...) She weighs only 69 pounds! She is losing her hair, has no appetite, feels very tired all the time, is very jaundiced, and has been told by different docs here that she has Hepatitis C, gallstones, anemia, and needed vitamins. We do not know what the truth is for her actually, but are sending some tests to try to narrow it down. We will do the best we can to help, but the truth is that there is likely a very chronic illness going on that has little available treatment. She does know the Lord and has accepted Christ, so we prayed with and for her and will continue to do so.

Other patients to keep in your prayers are three pregnant ladies who have breech babies and are nearing term. We prayed with them all and are seeing them back in two weeks, but would appreciate your continued prayers for their babies to turn around! Breech babies delivered at home by the untrained midwives here have very high complication rates-- mostly either death or severe cerebral palsy. They simply do not know how to deliver breeches safely in the home for the most part! Most patients are so scared of going to the hospital (where they will likely have C-sections) that they are often more likely to take the risk of delivering a dead baby at home. This is hard for us to understand, of course, so we just have to pray for the best outcome possible!

The pictures are from a diabetic lady whose prenatal care we did and her new baby, a month younger than Isaac. She is working to control her diabetes and we will continue to work with her on that. The man is also diabetic, but came in today complaining for the first time of these knots on his right knee and elbow that he has had for 10 years! They sometimes hurt worse than others, and so we gave him some ibuprofen and got him an appointment with the Orthopedic Surgeon who comes once a month. We thank God often for him, as Heidi's gynecologic skills are pretty useless in this case!

After clinic, we made a home visit to another missionary family here-- The mom, Emily, is feeling very feverish and flu-like so we stopped by to check on her. We are not able to help much except offering reassurance that she's doing all the right things for herself as far as we can tell. Please pray that she is able to get some rest and that she and her family will soon feel up to serving more soon. The last picture is of Isaac playing with one of the boy's toys there-- There's still quite a bit of growing to do before he's really ready for his own scooter, it seems.

Tomorrow is Heidi's clinic at the hospital, then it's off to the weekend with the Fickers as usual.