On Saturday, while bringing a group of 24 Canadians to meet a sponsor child in San Antonio Panec, I was invited by a woman to come pray for their family. One of the cases in the home dealt with an 8-year-old boy who has massive sores all over his bottom. I almost burst into tears when I saw the sores, they are that bad. We prayed for him, his drunken father, and his older sister who was having bad thoughts about her husband.<\/p>\n
While praying, I decided to make him an appointment and personally take him to the best local doctor I know. A friend of Amber’s had sent money to help a needy family. Last night, their project director dropped the little guy off at my house with his 13-year-old sister (one of 6 siblings he lives with). I drove them up to the clinic and went into the examining room with them.<\/p>\n
As the doctor interviewed the boy, I learned that he isn’t one of the siblings, but rather a nephew, a son of the oldest brother who works in the north of Guatemala. His aunt, the girl, explained further that his mom used to hit him a lot, lock him up in the house alone day and night, and rarely fed him (when she did, she would put hot chilis on the food). When he was a toddler, his grandmother (now his adopted mom), went to court to have the child taken away from his mom. He still looks severely malnourished, weighing only 50 lbs.<\/p>\n
The physical exam revealed that all of his lymphnodes were badly swollen signifying that the infections from the sores had spread through much of his body. We got a prescription for meds and I drove them home.<\/p>\n
Driving home, as I wound my car by a stray horse, drunks, people on bikes and other vehicles (with no headlights), I was reminded once again how incredibly broken these people are. This boy barely spoke a word the entire evening even though he was in pain, hungry, wearing the only set of clothes he has, itchy from all the scabies he has, tired, and perhaps a little anxious from having his first doctor’s appointment. He did say “gracias” before shutting the car door at his path.<\/p>\n
It’s tough not thinking that I could adopt this boy and other children I meet with such difficult circumstances. I need to remind myself that they would be happier with their own families and that I can’t adopt from Guatemala.<\/p>\n
I have no point to this post. I was moved, that’s all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Saturday, while bringing a group of 24 Canadians to meet a sponsor child in San Antonio Panec, I was invited by a woman to come pray for their family. One of the cases in the home dealt with an 8-year-old boy who has massive sores all over his bottom. I almost burst into tears … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,17,23,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-admin","4":"post-425","6":"format-standard","7":"category-christianity","8":"category-guatemala","9":"category-health","10":"category-poverty","11":"category-zr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}