The guy with “Hepatitis B” passed away this afternoon. He was in terrible shape when we visited him at the hospital on Tuesday. His liver has barely functioning and his blood count was awful. He has been in grave condition for several months. He is the grandson of Papa Painter, the old guy that used to do all the painting at the mission house.
The mother of the twins that had the swollen / bloated stomach that we sent for a scan and then on to Tamale, were admitted into the Tamale hospital yesterday. They drew off 6 liters of fluid the first day that she was in the hospital. She said that she is feeling much better and that it is easier for her to breathe. The doctors are still running test; she has had 2 more sets of scans since she has been there. The doctors have not yet made a diagnosis as to what her problem is. Her twins are 4 months old and they did not go to the hospital with her so the ladies that are taking care of them brought them to the Child Center this morning so we could give them formula to tie them over until the mother is discharged from the hospital. The mother left the babies yesterday and they had only had a little bit of formula that someone let them borrow. The babies were so hungry. Before they left the Center we mixed up some formula and they gobbled it up!
We had Red, the part time driver, mechanic, gravel hauler and welder come to the mission house this morning. We are going to commission him to make a couple of metal book shelves for the master bedroom. We have a special spot for them so they have to be the exact size to fit in the space. We hope he gets them made by next week.
We finished distributing baby clothes this morning. We have been passing them out for 2 weeks and the mothers return to the Center every 2 weeks. If we distribute next week we will run into a problem with mothers that will get a second set of baby clothes.
We are in Tamale. Late this afternoon the man from the DHL office called. DHL is a courier service. He told us that our passports were in Tamale at the DHL office. Evidently DHL no longer delivers to Yendi. Tomorrow is the beginning of the monthly evangelist class so we decided to spend the night in Tamale; be the first people at the office when it opens in the morning and then rush back to Yendi. We have been uneasy for the past 3 weeks because we did not have our passports in our own hands. We wanted to pick them up as soon as possible. As we were coming into Tamale I told Steve that I wanted to drive pass the DHL office just to see if the office happened to be open. The sign on the door said closed but we tried the handle and it was open. We went inside and announced ourselves. A young man was there; he told us the office was closed but when he found out that we had just driven over from Yendi he took pity on us and gave us the passports. We were so happy to have them back in our possession! Now we will be able to leave early in the morning and be back in Yendi in time for the start of the classes. Oh! And by the way we did get the 3 year visa renewals that we requested! Happy Day!
Take care and keep us in your prayers.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
