The cruddy part of that learning and growth seems to be that the the greatest growth is born out of hard situations and painful things. You just don't seem to learn all that much from having a perfectly easy rainbows, leprechauns and unicorns type of life.
Renald is just one of the people that have deeply impacted us in Haiti. It was a year ago this week that he returned to his family. The smiling photo posted to the right is a recent photo from a visit to the RHFH clinic. He is not really steadily gaining weight, but he appears healthy and has not lost any weight. In Haiti, that is basically a victory. And we'll take it.
Renald was almost four years old and weighed only 13 pounds. He was filled with worms and very sick when his mom brought him to RHFH in Cazale, Haiti. Licia and Lori allowed him to come live with us during his recovery. Because of Medika Mamba and lots of love he went back to his mom very healthy and 25 pounds. He touched many visitors and readers with his joyful spirit and his will to survive. He is a beautiful picture of God's healing power.
The day Renald returned to his family, we wrote about the experience here.
Paige spoke about Renald at the WorldWideVillage Banquet last year. See it here. (Password: Renald)
Licia and Lori at RHFH are the hands of Jesus as He works healing miracles in the lives of hundreds of kids each year. They help nurse children back to health and return them to their families month after month. They are a part of what God is doing to restore these precious little ones. Here and here are a few of the kids they helped last year. There are dozens more posts like this if you wish to plug in the key words "Medika Mamba". If you go to their blogs you will see posts like these every month.
To learn why malnourished kids can sometimes appear puffy rather than skinny, read this post.
Just yesterday RHFH posted this beautiful progression of healing:
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| Week One |
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| Week Two |
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| Week Three |
Licia and Lori pour their lives out to help these kids, the only thing they need from us is prayers and financial backing.
The average treatment lasts about 10 to 12 weeks. The cost to treat one child using the Medika Mamba product is $100. These girls look THAT MUCH BETTER after only three weeks on the product.
In twenty days Brittany and I are going to run a half marathon in SanAntonio, TX - we have spent a lot of our training runs talking about and praying for Haiti. On one of our last runs we spoke only Kreyol for a long portion of our run in order to help clean the cob-webs off of my dusty and limited language skills. It is not news to you that we are emotionally invested in Haiti. We decided last minute that we should use this opportunity to ask you to sponsor all or a portion of treatment for a malnourished child by sponsoring one or both of us for our November 14 race. We want to run for these girls pictured above and dozens like them.
This is a relatively short fund-raising effort. We have 20 days.
We would like to ask you to take the next 20 days to pray specifically for the suffering children in Haiti. Before this most recent crisis dealing with Cholera, Licia said that she was seeing a higher volume of severely malnourished children coming through her doors.
In addition to that prayer request we respectfully ask that you consider whether you might be able to help treat a child by giving a financial gift.
For every $100 that comes in, another child admitted to the RHFH Rescue Center can be treated with this fabulous, miraculous, life-saving product.
Let's see if we can raise enough money to treat 40 kids in the next 20 days.
Ready, set, go!
* All donations given through the chip-in meter will be designated to purchase and provide Medika Mamba at the RHFH Rescue Center.
