Thank you to all who have supported Joseph and put up with my lapse in updating you all! If you haven't heard about Joseph yet, you can read the first part of the story here.
This is how the rest of the story went:
The morning before we were supposed to tell Joseph the good news seemed to crawl by. I was still super excited, and I couldn’t wai to get to the park to tell him. Once we finally got there we met some of our regular street boys (including Hillary!) and started getting organized. At first I didn’t see Joseph, but he quickly appeared after Hillary went to tell him that we had arrived. I thought about video recording his reaction to me telling him the good news, but I was too excited. I said,
“Joseph! I have good news for you! Guess what? I have the money! I asked my family and friends and they helped and now there is enough money for you to get better!”
(Yes, it came out in a jumbled run on sentence like that.)
At first he didn’t understand, but when I told him we were taking him to the hospital, he asked me when. I said,
“Today!”
‘Today?”
“Yes! Today! After we eat some porridge.”
We were supposed to have brought a larger meal that day, but the planning of the food fell through, and I told him I was sorry that we only had porridge. He said to me,
“It’s okay Rose. Let us eat porridge, and then we can go to the hospital.”
Awwwww.
So we ate porridge and talked with the boys. We made them hand over their glue and talked to them about Jesus.
Joseph, on the far left, eating pporridge with some other street boys.
Hosanna and I talked to the boys. A woman from church is translating for us.
Afterwards my squadmate Julie and I took him to the hospital. It was such a blessing to have Julie there- she is a rockstar nurse at this super swanky hospital in Dallas and she really knows her stuff. When I was planning to help Joseph I didn’t think about the fact that I knew nothing about healthcare and the sight of wounds completely freaks me out, so Julie was definitely a God-send.
The hospital was a confusing maze of buildings, courtyards, waiting areas, and lines, lines, lines. It took us a while to figure out what to do, but then we realized that we needed to wait in line to pay the consultant fee, give the receipt to the right doctor, and wait.
The first block building when you enter the hospital.
Wait.
Wait.
We waited for over an hour to hear to doctor tell us that he needed an X-ray and to see the orthopedic doctor. Julie could have told us that, but oh well. We headed over to the X-ray area and got in another line. The hospital was a mess of anxious people waiting in lines, sneezing, and gathering around the counters shoving pieces of paper in the face of staff. Julie and I just kind of looked at each other, but Joseph knew what to do, and soon we were in line for the X-ray. There was an old woman sitting in a wheelchair near us, and a little shoeless boy sleeping on a wooden bench with scraps all over his face.
This line took only about twenty minutes and then Joseph was finished with the X-ray. Then we had to wait for it to print. Thirty minutes later the tree of us walked cautiously away from the X-ray building… no one had given us any bill for the X-ray, so apparently Joseph was eligible for a free one!
We walked back to get a dressing on his arm. I looked at it again, and near his elbow I could see a very small white spot.
His bone.
There had just been a car accident and people were being wheeled in, so they asked us to wait until tomorrow. We also had an appointment to meet the orthopedic doctor, who was supposed to come in around 9:30 or 10:00 am. When we left the hospital it was around 5:30pm.
We rode a tuk-tuk back into town and went to a chips and samosas restaurant. I figured we couldn’t bring him to the hospital and then leave him back on the streets hungry, so we bought him dinner. I told him he could get anything on the menu, and at first all he picked was an order of chips (fries). They cost sixty cents. When I told him to choose something more, he blankly looked at the menu. I ordered him a chips and samosa, the same thing I was getting, and told him to get a drink. He ordered a coffee, which I thought was kind of interesting. I was surprised at his modesty and humility as he picked out food, knowing very well that I was paying for it. Some of the other street boys that we had relationships with tried to drain us dry with every chance they got, but not Joseph.
After eating we told him that we would meet him at the park the next morning at 9am. Julie would bring back his X-ray and receipts, and hopefully we would see the orthopedic surgeon first thing.
