Godie’s Toe
One of the beautiful little girls that I had the pleasure of spending the last two weeks with was the pastor’s 2½ year old baby named Godie. When we first arrived I noticed that she had a wound that was healing on her right big toe. At that time it look pretty good and I was not worried about it. However, about two days later, Jessica, my team mate, noticed that the wound had opened up and had a nasty infection brewing. Her entire toe was swollen, red and oozing (caution, if you are not a nurse, you may not be able to handle this blog J ). I took it upon myself, with the parents permission, to clean and bandage the toe each day. I tried to explain the importance of cleaning and bandaging the toe to the parents in broken Spanish but it didn’t seem to take as the next day, the baby was running around barefoot in the dirt again. So I scrubbed and cleaned the toe again. At one point I had one of our contacts who speaks both Spanish and English explain the necessity of caring for the toe and I think the message got through. By the end of two weeks, praise the Lord, her toe was healed over enough to not need bandaging!
Another point of interest was that we were asked to pray over multiple children who were sick, most were sick with a cough, this including a 2 month old baby. Praise the Lord, after praying for the little baby the cough went away! Almost all the people around this town cook over an open fire as that is how they were taught. They also make a habit of burning their garbage including plastics. So all the children are exposed to a lot of smoke from a very early age. One good thing is that the government has implemented a program so that every house hold has a proper wood stove that funnels the smoke out of the kitchen area; however, the people do not use these stoves because they are not used to cooking with them!
Living in the village for these past two weeks, I noticed that one very important thing these people need, aside from Jesus of course, is health education! Some of the very basics that we “just know” in the US such as cleaning a cut with soap and water, these people don’t know or understand the importance. Lord I pray that these people would receive education! I pray also that they would learn and take on new life habits that protect the health of the bodies! I pray that they would take part in the government programs to aid their health, such as with the stoves. Lord I pray over the health of the people! Lord take care of them. Thank you Jesus, Amen.
