skin and bones and teeth and eyes.

I gave a shot IM (intramuscular) today and there was no "M" on the little boy.

I hate malnutrition.

How does a 3 year old get to have
ankles the size of my thumbs before the parents
see that their baby is SICK! The little joints
are all swollen up, while the skin just hangs
over the bones. I started his IV today and got
worried that when I put the tourniquet on that
his bone might break. The skin is so loose that
it pulls inches away from his little body,
reminding me that his body was never meant to be this small.

He was meant to have a lot more life and strength in him.

He vomits up everything that goes
into his stomach. He just refuses to eat
now. The mothers here use their fingers to smash
down the noses of their babies and then pour the
liquids in their mouth, forcing them to
swallow. The little nasally, nose-plugged cry
is just straight up associated with malnutrition for me.
I keep reminding the mother that she needs to
wash the boys clothes….wash the drape that she is
wrapping him in. I said, "Take off this shirt
that is covered in vomit and get him a different
one." The father kind of stopped and thought for
a bit, "We don't have another one." Ah…. I
remember now. It's not like you wanted this for
your baby…but times are tough. He smells like
urine and it just makes me want to take him away
and put him somewhere where he can actually get
better. These are some of the worst conditions to get well in.
Sometimes I think about all the
people that I could give these babies to back
home. This one could go to the Davis'. This
one could go to my grandparents. I'll bet
Carley Brown would take this one and he'd be a
cyclist someday. I know we can't just change
the world by moving people out of the bad parts
and into the good parts though. We have to try
to make the bad parts good. You'll never move
everyone out of the bad situations. Oh but
sometimes you just want to fly home with these
kids and put them in a bed with covers. You
want them to sleep in a room that doesn't smell
so bad and eat food with vitamins in it.
This is a rather depressing email
I'm realizing and next time I promise I'll write
about something happy. But sometimes I have to
get it all out. I had a little explosion the
other day. J I'll tell you about it sometime
when I get home. You know those moments when
everything has just built up and you LOSE IT!?
Alex wrote to me the other day. In
his email he said he had read recently that
REALITY can be changed by our PERCEPTION! When
we see something as GOOD, we make it
BETTER. Doesn't that just click in your head
when you hear it?! There is a song by Relient K
that I heard again today. It's old. But speaks
about just what I've been experiencing
lately. All these things are just building up
and sometimes it's hard to go into a day and feel
fresh. But I love the last line that I give of
this song. What if today I had no
discouragement and only hope and
assurance. What if I had never seen defeat here
in Chad, and when I walked to work in the morning
I anticipated that God was going to do something
amazing. So here is a bit of the song:

Let it all out.
Get it all out.
Get it out. Remove it.

Don't be alarmed, when the wound begins to bleed.

We're so scared to find out.
What this world is all about.

So scared we're going to LOSE IT.

And knowing all along…that's exactly what we need.
Today, I'll trust YOU Lord, with the confidence,
of a man who has never known defeat.

Miss you all. Love Emily