Medical / Health

It started six months ago when a mother brought a very thin and unresponsive child to our new nutrition rehabilitation centre. He was 4 years old at the time and only weighed 10 kg, when a normal Nepali 4 year old should tip the scales at about 14kg. His name is Buphal. Buphal is the only son of a woman whose husband left her a few years ago. She has tried to do the best she can by carrying loads of rock and other building materials for a living, but caring for her son has not been an easy job. After all, Buphal is not your average child. Since the beginning of his life he has had special needs. He has a disease called neurofibramatosis which causes neurological problems and some developmental delays, so his mother has no one to support her in a country where there are precious few programs to help developmentally delayed children.

When he first came to the nutrition centre after a brief stay at our mission hospital he did not interact much with our staff. He was severely malnourished and, after only two days with us, developed signs of pneumonia. I sent him back to the hospital for treatment but his mother took him home and we thought that he must have died. Thankfully I was wrong. A few months later he was back at our hospital suffering from severe vomiting and after a few days was readmitted to the nutrition unit. This time he responded to the love, concern, and food that we gave him. It was an amazing thing to see him blossom into an alert young boy. He quickly became one of our favourites because of his kind wide smile and riveting eyes, and as he put on weight he became more and more verbal and interactive.

Even though his mother is not a believer, Buphal loves our Lord. His grandmother attends our church and has had a great influence upon him. Every Saturday before I go to church I always go to the centre to say hello to staff and the clients. He would often be telling his mum to hurry up because he needed to go and pray. It was very apparent that he believed in praying to God because he would grab anyone passing by around mealtime and say “We need to thank God for the food”. This usually happened several times each meal!

As Buphal left our centre the second time he smiled and joked with us as he walked away. We were all amazed at what a little love and food could do. About a month later his grandmother came to our home one evening. She said that I needed to come to her house to visit Buphal. He keeps on asking her when he was going to see me again. He had not been eating well for a few days and she was obviously concerned. I gave her a few eggs and some fruit as well as a 2 rupee coin (Buphal was famous for collecting coins from the pockets of any visitors at the centre).

A few weeks ago he was readmitted to the hospital. He had had some swelling in his face for a few days and woke up at 4am one morning to tell his mum that they needed to go to the church to pray. Thirty minutes later he was unconscious. When he finally arrived at the hospital he was in cardio respiratory arrest and needed CPR. Amazingly, he survived. I visited Buphal’s bed almost every day for two weeks. Each time I go he has been sleeping. His Mom said that he wakes up to eat, says a few simple words, eats a little, and then goes back to sleep. He did have a dental abscess that may have triggered the whole incident. The tooth is now gone but the results of the lack of oxygen to his brain are evident.

Last week at our monthly section meeting (at work) we read the gospel account of the death and resurrection of Jesus with my staff. I then shared the news of Buphal’s condition and began to cry. I think my staff were a little shocked. That’s fine with me. I shared that Buphal knows that he is going to go to heaven and that whether he lives or dies he is in the hands of God. When we went into the time of prayer two other staff asked for prayer about other needs in their lives. I was greatly blessed since these staff are not believers. We were praying to the God that Buphal believed in. He is the God of a little child, the creator and sustainer of all we see and don’t see. Some of my staff have realised that there is power in our God, a power that can only be accessed through faith in Jesus. What a blessing this was for me to see. To think that this opportunity all came from a relationship with a little child!

Yet, the story does not end there. On Easter Sunday we had a special time of prayer for two people at our church. One of the two was Buphal. The next day his grandmother told me that he was now coherent, talkative, again bugging his mum to pray, and seemingly recovered from the event. I had to see this for myself but Buphal’s father, who has been absent for two years, magically returned. The sad news is that Buphal and his mum left for the father’s village the next day and then less than a week later they all went to Mumbai for work. I have yet to see Buphal but I know that whether I see him on this side of heaven or in the presence of God I will look on the face of a child who truly loves and believes in the risen Lord of all creation.

Medical / Health

It started six months ago when a mother brought a very thin and unresponsive child to our new nutrition rehabilitation centre. He was 4 years old at the time and only weighed 10 kg, when a normal Nepali 4 year old should tip the scales at about 14kg. His name is Buphal. Buphal is the only son of a woman whose husband left her a few years ago. She has tried to do the best she can by carrying loads of rock and other building materials for a living, but caring for her son has not been an easy job. After all, Buphal is not your average child. Since the beginning of his life he has had special needs. He has a disease called neurofibramatosis which causes neurological problems and some developmental delays, so his mother has no one to support her in a country where there are precious few programs to help developmentally delayed children.

When he first came to the nutrition centre after a brief stay at our mission hospital he did not interact much with our staff. He was severely malnourished and, after only two days with us, developed signs of pneumonia. I sent him back to the hospital for treatment but his mother took him home and we thought that he must have died. Thankfully I was wrong. A few months later he was back at our hospital suffering from severe vomiting and after a few days was readmitted to the nutrition unit. This time he responded to the love, concern, and food that we gave him. It was an amazing thing to see him blossom into an alert young boy. He quickly became one of our favourites because of his kind wide smile and riveting eyes, and as he put on weight he became more and more verbal and interactive.

Even though his mother is not a believer, Buphal loves our Lord. His grandmother attends our church and has had a great influence upon him. Every Saturday before I go to church I always go to the centre to say hello to staff and the clients. He would often be telling his mum to hurry up because he needed to go and pray. It was very apparent that he believed in praying to God because he would grab anyone passing by around mealtime and say “We need to thank God for the food”. This usually happened several times each meal!

As Buphal left our centre the second time he smiled and joked with us as he walked away. We were all amazed at what a little love and food could do. About a month later his grandmother came to our home one evening. She said that I needed to come to her house to visit Buphal. He keeps on asking her when he was going to see me again. He had not been eating well for a few days and she was obviously concerned. I gave her a few eggs and some fruit as well as a 2 rupee coin (Buphal was famous for collecting coins from the pockets of any visitors at the centre).

A few weeks ago he was readmitted to the hospital. He had had some swelling in his face for a few days and woke up at 4am one morning to tell his mum that they needed to go to the church to pray. Thirty minutes later he was unconscious. When he finally arrived at the hospital he was in cardio respiratory arrest and needed CPR. Amazingly, he survived. I visited Buphal’s bed almost every day for two weeks. Each time I go he has been sleeping. His Mom said that he wakes up to eat, says a few simple words, eats a little, and then goes back to sleep. He did have a dental abscess that may have triggered the whole incident. The tooth is now gone but the results of the lack of oxygen to his brain are evident.

Last week at our monthly section meeting (at work) we read the gospel account of the death and resurrection of Jesus with my staff. I then shared the news of Buphal’s condition and began to cry. I think my staff were a little shocked. That’s fine with me. I shared that Buphal knows that he is going to go to heaven and that whether he lives or dies he is in the hands of God. When we went into the time of prayer two other staff asked for prayer about other needs in their lives. I was greatly blessed since these staff are not believers. We were praying to the God that Buphal believed in. He is the God of a little child, the creator and sustainer of all we see and don’t see. Some of my staff have realised that there is power in our God, a power that can only be accessed through faith in Jesus. What a blessing this was for me to see. To think that this opportunity all came from a relationship with a little child!

Yet, the story does not end there. On Easter Sunday we had a special time of prayer for two people at our church. One of the two was Buphal. The next day his grandmother told me that he was now coherent, talkative, again bugging his mum to pray, and seemingly recovered from the event. I had to see this for myself but Buphal’s father, who has been absent for two years, magically returned. The sad news is that Buphal and his mum left for the father’s village the next day and then less than a week later they all went to Mumbai for work. I have yet to see Buphal but I know that whether I see him on this side of heaven or in the presence of God I will look on the face of a child who truly loves and believes in the risen Lord of all creation.

Medical / Health

One of the things that I was most eager to do during my time in Pakistan was to learn how to tackle these situations, and while I’ve had a couple of chances to participate in breech deliveries, the twins have been more elusive. Every morning my eager inquiries as to the presence of an impending twin delivery received a head shake and a reply of “Not today.”

Then, finally, the midwives greeted me with huge grins and the news that they had just admitted a woman with twins. Five hours later, one of the senior midwives walked me through the challenging process of delivering the twins. I can’t think of many things in life as joyful as the moment when a baby first enters the world and lets out its first robust cry. Every healthy birth that I have seen has been that way – miraculous and full of wonder. But the birth of these two baby girls – my first set of twins – was particularly special to me, and when they were both safely delivered, I looked up at the mother with a smile, expecting her to be lit up in the way that new mothers are: completely given over to relief and awe at these wonderful new people that she had brought into the world. Instead, the mother of the twins had her face in her hands and was shaking her head, and her female relative who had come to be with her during the delivery was ranting angrily in Urdu. I looked inquiringly at the midwife who explained that the mother and her sister-in-law were very sad because now the mother had three daughters and no sons. For the next fifteen minutes, as I helped clean up and get the woman settled, I watched as the mother-inlaw entered and proceeded to join in the sister-in-law’s angry tirade towards the mother who sat limply in bed with a defeated expression on her face, knowing that she had failed twice over because neither of her twins had been the desired son.

My initial response was anger – that these two perfect and beautiful babies would enter a world in which their own mother and grandmother see them as signs of failure. But my anger gradually faded. It’s not their fault – these women have received so little respect themselves that they are unable to see the value in a female child, in their own daughters. They are taught to measure their successes by the sons they produce. Life as a woman is not easy here. I’ve lost count of the number of women who have come to the clinic after 3, 5, even 12 miscarriages or after anything from 3 to 17 years of infertility. They look at me with despair in their eyes and say, “If I don’t give my husband a son, he will divorce me” or “He will take another wife.” I’ve also lost track of the number of second wives who have come in bowed under the pressure of producing the son that the first wife failed to produce and chafing under the bitterness of the first wife who strives to make the new wife’s life as difficult as possible.

The occupation of helping women through childbirth is an emotional roller coaster: a woman goes through the worst pain of her life and then, suddenly, the pain is replaced by utter joy. In one room a baby takes its first breath, and in another room, a baby who will never draw breath enters the world lifeless. One woman cries as she hears her baby’s heartbeat for the first time, and in the room next to her, a woman cries as she learns that her baby’s heart has stopped beating. Last week the doctor and I came to two women who were in adjacent beds. In one bed was a woman who after seven unsuccessful pregnancies and after spending three months in a hospital bed had finally given birth to a son. She held that baby as though he were the most priceless treasure in the world and looked up at me with a face lit by absolute joy. With the advent of that baby boy the very real threat of divorce had instantly dissolved. In the bed next to her was a woman who had had nine miscarriages but was now exactly six months pregnant and who, before today, would smile delightedly up at me every morning as her belly slowly swelled. This morning, however, the woman wasn’t smiling. Reluctantly, she confessed to us that she’d had contractions all night. By the time she acknowledged it she was in full labour, and she went on to give birth to the 24 week baby. In Pakistan, this baby didn’t have a chance. It was too much to look at these two women: the one gazing down at her new son as though every dream had been fulfilled; the other staring down at her hands, her face empty of hope.

I haven’t come up with any answers for why babies are born into a world that doesn’t want them, but I do know that one of the greatest privileges of being here in Pakistan is being able to minister to their mothers. The greatest wonder of our Christian faith is Emmanuel – God wondrously and unexplainably with us, sharing in the good parts of life – friendships and family, new births, worship, fulfilled dreams. But God also undeniably with us in the disappointments, in sickness, in broken relationships, even in death. In the meantime, I hope that these disappointed mothers will learn to love their daughters. I hope that the twins will have a better life than their mother has had – a life in which they are cherished for who they are. And I hope that all of them can come to know the love of the One who formed them and who will one day wipe away our tears for good.

Medical / Health

One of the things that I was most eager to do during my time in Pakistan was to learn how to tackle these situations, and while I’ve had a couple of chances to participate in breech deliveries, the twins have been more elusive. Every morning my eager inquiries as to the presence of an impending twin delivery received a head shake and a reply of “Not today.”

Then, finally, the midwives greeted me with huge grins and the news that they had just admitted a woman with twins. Five hours later, one of the senior midwives walked me through the challenging process of delivering the twins. I can’t think of many things in life as joyful as the moment when a baby first enters the world and lets out its first robust cry. Every healthy birth that I have seen has been that way – miraculous and full of wonder. But the birth of these two baby girls – my first set of twins – was particularly special to me, and when they were both safely delivered, I looked up at the mother with a smile, expecting her to be lit up in the way that new mothers are: completely given over to relief and awe at these wonderful new people that she had brought into the world. Instead, the mother of the twins had her face in her hands and was shaking her head, and her female relative who had come to be with her during the delivery was ranting angrily in Urdu. I looked inquiringly at the midwife who explained that the mother and her sister-in-law were very sad because now the mother had three daughters and no sons. For the next fifteen minutes, as I helped clean up and get the woman settled, I watched as the mother-inlaw entered and proceeded to join in the sister-in-law’s angry tirade towards the mother who sat limply in bed with a defeated expression on her face, knowing that she had failed twice over because neither of her twins had been the desired son.

My initial response was anger – that these two perfect and beautiful babies would enter a world in which their own mother and grandmother see them as signs of failure. But my anger gradually faded. It’s not their fault – these women have received so little respect themselves that they are unable to see the value in a female child, in their own daughters. They are taught to measure their successes by the sons they produce. Life as a woman is not easy here. I’ve lost count of the number of women who have come to the clinic after 3, 5, even 12 miscarriages or after anything from 3 to 17 years of infertility. They look at me with despair in their eyes and say, “If I don’t give my husband a son, he will divorce me” or “He will take another wife.” I’ve also lost track of the number of second wives who have come in bowed under the pressure of producing the son that the first wife failed to produce and chafing under the bitterness of the first wife who strives to make the new wife’s life as difficult as possible.

The occupation of helping women through childbirth is an emotional roller coaster: a woman goes through the worst pain of her life and then, suddenly, the pain is replaced by utter joy. In one room a baby takes its first breath, and in another room, a baby who will never draw breath enters the world lifeless. One woman cries as she hears her baby’s heartbeat for the first time, and in the room next to her, a woman cries as she learns that her baby’s heart has stopped beating. Last week the doctor and I came to two women who were in adjacent beds. In one bed was a woman who after seven unsuccessful pregnancies and after spending three months in a hospital bed had finally given birth to a son. She held that baby as though he were the most priceless treasure in the world and looked up at me with a face lit by absolute joy. With the advent of that baby boy the very real threat of divorce had instantly dissolved. In the bed next to her was a woman who had had nine miscarriages but was now exactly six months pregnant and who, before today, would smile delightedly up at me every morning as her belly slowly swelled. This morning, however, the woman wasn’t smiling. Reluctantly, she confessed to us that she’d had contractions all night. By the time she acknowledged it she was in full labour, and she went on to give birth to the 24 week baby. In Pakistan, this baby didn’t have a chance. It was too much to look at these two women: the one gazing down at her new son as though every dream had been fulfilled; the other staring down at her hands, her face empty of hope.

I haven’t come up with any answers for why babies are born into a world that doesn’t want them, but I do know that one of the greatest privileges of being here in Pakistan is being able to minister to their mothers. The greatest wonder of our Christian faith is Emmanuel – God wondrously and unexplainably with us, sharing in the good parts of life – friendships and family, new births, worship, fulfilled dreams. But God also undeniably with us in the disappointments, in sickness, in broken relationships, even in death. In the meantime, I hope that these disappointed mothers will learn to love their daughters. I hope that the twins will have a better life than their mother has had – a life in which they are cherished for who they are. And I hope that all of them can come to know the love of the One who formed them and who will one day wipe away our tears for good.