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We tried to sleep in this morning, but 7:30am is a busy time beneath our window and if I had to be awake at that hour, well it was wonderful to wake up to laughter. We heard thunder throughout the night and woke up to smells of fresh rain and then fresh coffee. We gathered and left the hotel about 10:30, stopped to exchange some money, buy a case of water and then headed to the government children's hospital to pick up Janet and Olivia who had been sitting with little Elijah and his mother all night. Sickle cell anemia has been his official diagnosis for all 3 years of his life. Bouts of high fever and severe weakness have been his symptoms and today he sat in a waiting room of at least 20 babies, all completely surrendered to their mother's arms waiting their turn to see one maybe two doctors.

It was overwhelming, realizing that two children will share one mattress the size of a crib while the parents sleep underneath on the floor at night. Elijah had been there for 7 hours and still there were about five ahead of him and 15+ behind him. Another 8-10 were sitting anywhere there was space, mostly on the floor, of the exam room. Today we were not scheduled to be at the hospital...but once there, it was hard to leave. Back in the van, our reunion celebration was short as we tried to think of a place to fit Jesus and ourselves into what we had seen.

Its nearly impossible to leave, to just walk away. If we had not had plans to return later in the trip, I wouldn't be able to stand myself.

We arrived to Chayah house to the most beautiful voices singing "Welcome back to Chayah House" a sweet song written for us. We greeted each of the children and had some time to visit with Janet about things in general, which of the children had recently been sick, the changes in bed assignments and the reasons, who has taken leadership roles with the others and how church was going. We listed all of the things we came prepared to do and plotted them on our calendar to make the best use of our time. Lunch was served followed by a walk to a house that might possibly suit us in the future. 

Jet lag began to take its toll and we called it a day a little early, heading back to our hotel via boda boda about 5pm. If you can picture 1/2 a dozen sheets of tin roofing strapped to the back of a motorcycle, then cringe with us when the driver miscalculated and hit the left side of the sheets on the side of the bridge and laid his bike down right in front of us. Our guy could have swerved around him except for the shrieking in his ear to "stop and help him!" I'm not sure which one of us it was, but we were grateful the only loss was his pride and some time to retie the sheets. Now if he had been injured we would have followed him to the hospital as long as he agreed to go to the children's hospital we visited early today... its gonna be tough on our hearts until we get a chance to help some mamas get some care for their babies, and then still difficult as the line seemed never ending. "A heart like His"...its what we want, what we ask for and then are completely overcome by the pain of what our eyes are opened to see. "How much more our father in heaven loves His children."

We'll check off day 1 and lay our heads down to dream of all the plans we made today while praying we have the wisdom to be flexible if The Lord wants to change things up a bit. He's such an adventure!