WELCOME to our new Samuel!

(posted for Stephanie from Facebook)

Meet our Sweet Samuel!

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Samuel has been a "Mercy Home Kiddo" for 3 days now, but he has yet to come to Mercy Home because he is sick and in the hospital. On Wednesday we received a call from a doctor at a local government hospital. She told us that she had a boy who was 7 years old, HIV+ and in great need. So with that information we sent our social worker to the hospital to check out his situation. Once she arrived at the hospital and got a bit of information we learned that this boy needed help quickly. Help his grandparents couldn't give him. His grandfather said he couldn't afford the medications needed, couldn't keep up with the HIV medications he was on (he hadn't taken them in at least 2 months), couldn't get the blood transfusion the hospital said he needed (this hospital wasn't even equipped to do it either) so he was going to take Sweet Samuel back home and drop him off with his sick grandmother.

Our Sweet Samuel was going to be left at home to die. So what do you do when faced with getting him the care he desperately needs, which will cost us (Mercy Home) a great deal of money or allowing him to return home and die? I know that sounds harsh, but that was literally our reality on Wednesday. Everyone I know would choose life, just like we did on Wednesday. Samuel has had all the odds stacked against him...he's a double orphan, HIV+, severely malnourished (he weighs 14 kgs or 30 lbs) and he lived with elderly grandparents who don't understand and can't keep up with the medications and nutrition that an HIV patient requires.

Since being at the hospital it has been confirmed that he has malaria, his blood count is in fact extremely low causing him to need 2 bags of blood, he has thrush in his mouth causing painful open sores and he has about 6 new medications in addition to his 3 HIV medications. If Samuel didn't get the care he needed he would have died. He was too sick with a weakened immune system and severely malnourished. His body couldn't just bounce back from this without medical intervention.

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So thank you! Thank you for putting us in a position where we could consider stepping in and changing the direction Samuel's life was headed. Thank you for listening to the Lord and helping us meet the needs of these children time and time again. If you would like to help us cover Sweet Samuel's hospital bill (we do not have a total yet, but we assume it will be $300-$500+) you can go to afm.ngo/donate and mark it for Samuel or Mercy medical.

We have been quiet the last couple of days because Jeff and I both have had malaria, but we've been so busy we haven't been able to just rest. The moment we can we fall asleep and we (and by we I mean me ;) have a 2 month-old who still wakes up in the middle of the night. Praise God that malaria isn't near as harsh on us as it used to be. We are bouncing back much faster and able to keep working at some level during our sickness! Thank you a million times more for your prayers, support and love for Mercy Children's Home!

#aboutfacemissions #mercychildrenshome #orphans #james127 #theleastofthese #hivpositive #thankyouforgivingtotheLord #kenya #bungoma #nonprofit

(Samuel is feeling much better today and will be released tomorrow morning to come home! we also still need to retire our $2400 debt for Jeff's medical bills that we had to borrow from our construction land fund. Pray about about anything you can do to help us meet these two important needs)