Where's the Snow?!

Confession: I don't really look forward to Christmas in Togo. The problem is, I grew up in Chicago and Christmas = cold, snow, and lighting a candle as you sing silent night at a midnight service at church. So far (despite my high hopes and many prayers) snow has yet to fall here in Mango and the high temp was 98 degrees with cool low of 68. Being away from home on holidays makes your realize how much of the emotion of the holiday is steeped in family and cultural tradition, over what we are actually celebrating-- God incarnate, given to us, the lasting gift of grace and promise of glory. 

Neimatou's last day of chemo

The promise of glory can seem very far away at times. Such of mix of highs and lows, day to day it becomes easy to feel as though not much has happened at all. Like anything in life, the mundane can set in and it becomes hard to look back and see any progress. But as I look back at my last post, I am encouraged to realize that both Neimatou and Denise have completed their chemo treatments, and Fatimata and Djamilajoin continue faithfully in theirs. We also have had 2 other children that have since started cancer treatment programs. We sadly lost Mounirou and Abraham, which were very hard losses. Both families expressed gratitude for the efforts and time we spent trying to bring healing to their children, but the loss was heavy. 

Here in Togo, heaviness is never far from joy, though, and we are very close to discharging home Baby S who was born weighting 770 grams (1 pound, 11 ounces) at 28 weeks. She is now over 35 weeks (gestational age) and mom is eager to bring her home. Although Baby S is only now 2 lb. 14oz, mom spends her days trying to convince us that everyone in her family is small, so we should keep this in mind and let her go now. (I'm trying to imagine what a Neonatologist would say in the US to a mom that tried to use that argument! LOL!) We having yet bought into that argument but look forward to the approaching day when she will head to home for the first time. 

We are also weeks aways from sending a sweet boy to the United States for heart surgery. He came to us early 2019 and despite living in Burkina Faso, the family has gone through a lot to keep his appointments and get him where he is today. Through the generosity of Healing the Children and Norton Children's Hospital in Louisville, KY, our little friend will have his heart repaired in mid-January. Please pray for the final paperwork and other logistics to be completed quickly and for his complete healing. Pray that we may find some Mossi (Moh-see) or "More-ay" speakers in Louisville to help his transition as a parents will not be accompanying him to the states. 

I cannot begin to express my gratitude for those of you who have recently given to the HOH Peds Cancer Fund--both outright and trough the t-shirt campaign. The t-shirt campaign  was automatically re-launched when more people decided to buy shirts, so if you missed it, please know that there's still an opportunity to get yours: https://www.bonfire.com/hospital-of-hope-1/. You can also give a tax-deductible donation directly to the account at https://www.abwe.org/work/projects/hoh-togo-pediatric-care and mention Peds Cancer in the comments boxy when giving. (We will SOON have our own page for giving..stay tuned). We have also started a new Facebook page called Surviving Takes Hope, so please find us and follow us so you can stay up to date on what is happening with our chemo kids here in Togo!

I do hope that you are having a beautiful Christmas season and that we are all able to take time and reflect on the beautiful way the Savior of the world humbled Himself for us, and we can look forward to the day when we see Him face to face. 

From Death to Life

The story of Lazarus is familiar to many, even if biblical literacy is not your trade.  Lazarus was a close friend to Jesus and brother to Mary and Martha. Jesus was told that he was sick and to come quickly but he purposefully waited and said, "it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it." By the time Jesus did arrive, Lazarus had been dead four days. Everyone was in mourning and Jesus, seeing this, "was deeply moved in spirit and troubled."

Jesus then proceeded to call Lazarus forth and all watched in amazement as Lazarus rose from the dead. 

The last blog post mentioned the loss of a couple of our children in our chemo program.  Often, we only know a child had died because they stop showing up. Phone calls are attempted but often reach non-charged telephones or are somehow the phone number of someone in a nearby village who doesn't know the family well. This was the case for Jonathan. Jonathan had come to us extremely malnourished--the kind of malnourished you see on TV. He was hospitalized for over a month and didn't smile once. He had completed 4 rounds of chemo and his family was very faithful to keep appointments, until one day....he stopped coming. We called and called. Finally, we reached someone in the village who said, "oh yes, I know that family and their son died over the weekend." The news was a troubling blow. Although he had a complicated beginning, his cancer had responded well to treatment and is a cancer that comes with an 85% survival rate (even in the developing world!). As my previous post mentioned, he was among the cases that made me think twice of even continuing cancer care here in Togo. 

The day after I posted the last blog, Jonathan and his parents walked into the clinic. There is no way I can describe the emotions I felt other than comparing it to those outside of Lazarus' tomb that day! 

You. Were. Dead. 

And now you're alive. 

I realize that some of you are thinking, "but he was never dead, clearly". Clearly this is true. The political climate on the Ghana border were the family lived had become very tenuous which prevented them from crossing the border in Togo to get to our hospital. But from our perspective (and from the perspective of those mourning Lazarus), the outcome was already final, and only Jesus knew otherwise. 

When we told his parents that we thought he was dead, and that someone in his village confirmed this, they threw their hands up and laughed and said, "well of course he's not dead, he helps me work in the fields!!" All we could do is laugh in joy alongside of them and praise our Lord that this was the case. Because just as in the plan of Lazarus, these things take place so that God's Son may be glorified through it. I likely would not have considered praising Jesus for Jonathan showing up at his routine visit for cycle 5 of chemo. But you better be sure I was praising Him now!! 

Who can know the mind of the Lord? I may never understand the full extent of why Jonathan's story took the turn it did. Johnathan did finish chemo and is doing well. He has even smiled for us. 

Another patient, a 21 year-old student named Lamboni has also completed his chemotherapy for a rhabdomyosarcoma. We celebrate deeply with these patients as they become like family to us during their long chemo courses. Even as I type, we have 2 new 21-year old students diagnosed with osteosarcomas (malignant cancer of the bone). Pray for them and their families as we provide them with their only opportunity for treatment.

Neimatou

Pray also for our other kiddos as they continue ongoing cancer treatment here at HOH:

Denise- 2 years old with a Wilms Tumor

Mounirou- 3 year old boy with a Wilms Tumor

Neimatou- 16 year old girl with osteosarcoma

Fatimata- 12 year old girl with leukemia

Djamilatou- 12 year old girl with liposarcoma

Want to know how to financially help these children with cancer? Go to www.abwe.org/give and Use Account number 0763831-002. This account goes directly towards paying for the care of each individual patient receiving pediatric cancer care at HOH. 

Onward

Today I saw Martin who came into the hospital as an outpatient for a cough. Martin was our first child to ever be cured from Leukemia here. It was surreal to see him today as I just received news from a village that another one of our cancer kids passed away at home. We’ve lost 4 of 5 cancer kids over the last month which makes you wonder if the oncology program is something to continue. Who can’t help but think that? 

Amadou came to us because another hospital refused to treat him.
He was best known for giving fist bumps to all the nurses.
We lost him at the end of week 4 of ALL treatment.
(Picture used with permission)

But right on cue, 6-year-old Martin walks in looking as normal as any other 6 year old boy—trying to pretend not to smile; too cool for his team of Pediatricians and nurses. He’s a big brother now, which is something much more wonderful to focus on then his monthly chemotherapy visits from a time passed. 

I have no doubt that Satan himself spends time bringing up defeats in our minds and making them seem so much bigger than the triumphs that run parallel to them. Discouragement is not just a difficult emotion but instead a powerful weapon aimed at handicapping our hopes and crippling our callings. 

As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun” and Satan’s method of discouragement is no exception. Thankfully, the Lord established a counter-measure for us, thousands of years ago, often referred to as alters, or stones of remembrance. In Genesis 28, Jacob took a stone to sleep on at which time the Lord gave him a vision and promise to give Him the land and bless the families of the Earth through his offspring. Jacob then took that stone and set it up as a pillar, marking the place of promise. 

We also see this happen when Joshua leads the Israelites into the promise-land after the Lord parted the Jordan river for the 12 tribes to walk across safely. Each tribe took a stone out of the river and were instructed to put them together as a marker of remembrance “so that the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever!”

Something we (I) often don’t do well at the hospital is marking the successes, the healings, the discharges home. A story was told to me today of someone’s guard who was thanking us as a team for the presence of the hospital here and all it has done for the town. My friend responded with “actually, we are grateful to God for allowing us to be here and become a part of your community.” He responded, “yes, yes. Of course, we are thankful to God, but we must thank YOU as well.  Often people don’t have money to pay ahead of treatment, which is how all other hospitals function. My son had a cough last year but we had no money since it was planting season. My mother-in-law told me to go to the Hospital of Hope because they will treat your son right away and allow you time to go find money. We went, and it turns out he has asthma. He got better, and now when he coughs he has a medicine and gets better. What would we have done if you weren’t there?”

I have no doubt that when that child came to the hospital, it was a “bread-and-butter” asthma episode that we didn’t take too much notice to—albuterol, steroids, maybe some oxygen and home! Nothing glamourous and nothing to post pictures of to show the miracles happening here….

….or is it? Is it part of the miracle happening here? 

One of the other great lies of Satan is the idea of the ‘mundane’. One definition of mundane is “lacking interest or excitement” and the other is “of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one”. Is there any other greater lie that the people, the work, the lives around us (including our own) are of this earthly world rather than a heavenly one?! The Lord’s hand is at work in constant motion all around us—from the warm wind, to the muddy terrain, from the 80-year old patient to the premature infant, it is all a wonder of excitement and awe. We will only fully understand the depth of it all when we are face to face with our Creator one day. It is each of our callings, not to be doing medicine in Africa, but to see things as Christ sees them; to open our eyes and see the story unfolding before us day by day; to hear the stories of how the Lord is working and using others to bring healing to hurting people. Our calling is to be a part of it, to enter in, and refuse to believe there is anything mundane about it. 

While walking around our hospital compound a few months ago with a friend, I stopped suddenly as I saw this bare bush on one of our corners and was way more excited than my bystander friend. “Look at those fractals!” I exclaimed, showing my true math-nerd heart. As to avoid sounding too nerdy, a fractal at its simplest is something in which each smaller part has the same characteristic as the larger whole in increasing detail. The bush I was staring at had branches and twigs and even thorns all branching out at perfect 30-degree angles. Each one perfectly separated and changing directions at the exact moment and the exact angle it was designed to be at. Fractals are found throughout nature (snowflakes, galaxy formation, pulmonary vessels and even some varieties of broccoli!). The question for each person is, is my life is reflecting one part of what whole?I often look at trees that have grown tall but done so despite years of wind and rain trying to blow them over. You can see the exact moments where they were designed to grow in one direction but had to turn and twist in order to fight against the elements, in order to stay where they were meant to be. The result isn’t a perfect fractal, but instead another work of art and beauty all-together. All of our lives are reflecting a part of a whole for the time we are given. None of our lives will look like perfect fractals either, but instead, as we fight the notions of discouragement and the mundane, we fight to stay in the fight, to stay a part of the whole, HIS whole, until we are made perfectly whole for all of eternity. 

Two days after Martin left, I received a call from the clinic. “Kelly, I have a young girl in my room that has an abdominal mass. Another hospital thinks it’s a Wilms Tumor and sent them to Lomé. They won’t go to Lomé because it’s too far. Can we treat her here?”  

And so, the program pushes onward. 

                        Denise is our newest addition to the HOH Heme-Onc program. She is being treated here for an abdominal Tumor. If you would like to Donate to the Pediatric Oncology Fund that allows these families and children to receive care here at the Hospital of Hope- please go to www.abwe.org/give and use the account number 0763831-002.     
Thank you in advance.(Picture used with permission)

Stay

I received news a few weeks back of a baptism that took place in a village I know well. A witch-doctor father of a child I knew and loved who often refused to even come to our hospital, is now a baptized follower of Christ. As I sit far away from Togo here in DRC, I am reminded of how our call is to be obedient, then get out of the way. There is no one that changes hearts and minds other than Christ himself; no one other that turns water to wine, ashes to beauty, or witchdoctors to believers. 

Coming over to DRC to help with the Ebola response so soon after returning to Togo was not a decision taken lightly.  But it many ways, it was a culmination of many experiences, desires and skill sets both planned and unplanned. Much of my time has actually been spent in government and NGO partner meetings. Any frustrations I have had in Togo with government dealings now seem dwarfed in comparison. But even in these, I’ve had sweet moments of seeing how the Lord always gives someone nearby, often from unlikely sources, an ally— Someone who has protected me in a situation, offered encouragement where it wasn’t expected, or a helping hand without being asked. 

I do not think this outbreak shows any signs of slowing and it is painful to imagine what this region may have in store for the months to come. We now have an open Ebola Treatment Center in the community, but suspicion is rampant as is widespread denial that Ebola exists at all.  But the sweet moments continue as a patient says to us “You all have treated me so well here, I wonder if I can work here for you after I get discharged?” After asking him what he wanted to do for work, he said, “maybe I can be one of the men that makes sure people are washing their hands.” 

While many in the community are resisting transfer to isolation units and hiding illness in communities, our patient is trying to find out a way to stay among us, and it’s nothing but a beautiful picture—not of us—but of the invitation that the love of Christ is to those who experience it. Don’t we all long to stay in those moments of life where we feel surrounded by the grace and love of the body of Christ? These glimpses of heaven, when we experience Christ among us, are what allow us to continue in a work that is often juxtaposed by trauma and devastation. And the irony is that even during those devastating times, Christ has not parted, but remains in the midst of us, reminding us of that day of victory that will come, a day we long for more and more with each passing hour. 

I will soon be leaving DRC and heading back to Togo. In many ways, my three months here has felt more like nine. In many other ways, I feel like we just started. Please continue to pray for the team that remains and for this land to heal both physically and spiritually. Pray that we all may continue to walk in a way worthy to the calling of Christ as he serves his people through us.