Sanu!

Hey, I took up the torch for the group blog today (faithalivejourney.blogspot.com), so here's a copy!

Hey all,
Holly's back, with more energy than the rest, but nothing exciting to report. I haven't felt up to par today, so I came back to the guest house at 9:30 this morning and slept for a good 8 hours! Something I've never done before. No worries, family, I'm okay and there's plenty of mothers to take care of me...just needed rest, and I'm feeling much better than I did this morning. On behalf of the group, that's the report from today. Wait! Chris has just come to the rescue and has decided to blog. An addendum to yesterday's report...Kristen realized after blogging last night that she forgot to let you all know that we brought our lunch to the village that we visited. Even with hungry stomachs, they made us eat first...amazing. Mary Jo has a birthday coming up and Russ suprised her with a birthday cake. They sang "Happy Birthday" in English, our version, with us to Mary Jo. They absolutely loved the cake! Ok, I'll let Chris take over and share his experience for the day.

This is my first time with a cross-blog message, as this will be on the main group blog and my personal blog. (christonigeria.blogspot.com) All in all, today was a slow day for us. If I were to list everything that I did, I'm sure most of you would say I was crazy for calling it slow, but I guess that's a sign of how entrenched we are at Faith Alive. The past few days have really opened our eyes to the issue of malnutrition in children. I confess that I haven't read Kristen's entry from yesterday yet, but I'm sure she mentioned our trip to the outlying village. Today, Bob, George, Russ, Kay, Erika, and I joined Daniel, Asham, and Ezekial for a home care visit. They normally travel by motorcylcle, but we took the van and it took about an hour each way to reach the destination village, and another half mile walk from there. The visit was for an 18 year old who they suspect contracted HIV from a rape. She looks to be in good health and the guys said her health is improving, though she has not been taking any ARV drugs, cause she is in her third month of treatment for TB. Just like yesterday, we got to see all the kids from the village and a few of them were clearly malnourished. We even got to see them getting a bath, which involved a lot of scrubbing! It was funny. But after that we stopped at Asham's village on the way out as a casual pit stop. However, we were greeted byy the moaning cries of Asham's mother who was ill. He said she was sick yesterday, but had clearly worsened. Given where the fact that we were there with a van, we decided that she should come back to FA with us. So 11 of us crammed into 9 seats and we came back. As it turns out, the doctors as FA said that she had had a stroke and needed to be admitted to the local hospital. Unfortunately, the hospital is on strike and not admitting patients. Thankfully she will be staying overnight in a mission house, but I don't know when she will receive adequate medical attention. So, please pray for Asham and his mother, and all of his family. Also, Erika delivered a great message at the afternoon staff devotional. I won't divulge much, but she said before the trip that she wanted to have her world rocked...if it hadn't been before today, it was. She did a great job!

Being here has been to9ugh on everyone. We are constantly challenged to live our faith and perhaps, even sharing it is more of a challenge. I think that I'm dealing with the pain and the suffering here by focusing less on that and more on the positives. To be able to play with a child with a bloated belly and a blank stare and actually make them smile is an incredible feeling. I know that when I leave the problems will still be here and that I will never truly leave them, as they will be engrained in my mind and heart. But my hope is that for one day, or even for one minute, that I have made a difference in their life. If I can bring joy or happiness to any single person in this 10 days, then this trip will have not been wasted. I am encouraged by the work being done and the people doing it. For those of you who contributed to this trip, and all of you at First Pres. I can assure you that this is truly a noble cause and a great learning experience for all of us here.

I hope this isn't too long! God be with you all! Say-go-bay! (Goodnight in Hausa)