Josiah's Easter

Easter Sunday started out as any other Sunday: breakfast in the morning, followed by me doing laundry and a 10 am departure to walk about 7 minutes to the local Methodist Church. The church was full of men and women dressed in their Easter Sunday best and filled with singing both traditional hymns and African praise songs. After about an hour the girls had gotten restless enough that I decided to walk home with them. (Man do I miss nursery and children’s ministry!!!). Josiah was complaining of a headache so he decided to walk home with us. By the time we got to our doorstep he was in tears and saying that his stomach hurt also. He had a mild fever so I gave him some ibuprofen and had him lay down in our bed. He would intermittently wake up crying and it would go back and forth between his head hurting and his stomach hurting. He threw up a couple of times and was unable to keep down any fluids.

About 5pm I started to fix dinner and about half way through the beans being done our cooking gas bottle ran out of gas. As luck would have it our neighbors had our spare bottle locked up in their house and they were gone for the weekend! No bread in the house, so I walk the 10 minutes to the local store and discover that they had 2 small buns left and were expecting some fresh bread in a couple of hours. Fatmata is a wonderful lady and must have sensed my disappointment, “I’ll have them drop it by when it comes” she replied. Francis is the local baker who also works at one of the area mines so his baking schedule is somewhat erratic. I returned home to a still sick Josiah and fed the girls PB & J sandwiches with the 2 small buns. After we put the girls to bed we decided that since Josiah had not improved at all and was still not keeping any fluids down that we would go up to the hospital and get the supplies to start an IV on him. Let’s just say that Josiah is not an easy patient! By the grace of God I was able to start an IV on my poor little boy on the first try and knew he was sick because he did not fight us too much. Jeneson and I took turns ‘sleeping’ on the rug in the living room with Josiah.

By the next morning he was not having any stomach pain, only a mild fever and small headache. He started eating and drinking and by the afternoon was almost back to his usual self. We made him stay all day on Tuesday and by Wednesday was out and running around again with all the local kids. Still not sure what caused him to get so ill, but thankful to God for Josiah’s healing. Gave me a little glimpse of what the village mothers go through when their children get ill. I am looking forward to the clinic construction completion so that we can treat some of these children and ease the worry of their mothers.