Ntombfuti delivered an healthy baby girl. Thank you so much for all your prayers, please continue to pray that she may have an open and soft heart to accept all that I can give her (the least of which is physical aid). Thanks be to God, the Father of the fatherless.

HERE’S LOOKIN’ AT YOU, KID

The African sun is losing is exchanging it’s bite with the autumn air, which seems to go straight to the bones. The cold months are approaching around here, and the green is turning to brown, the winds are taking over, and the fires will begin to eat up the land. But inside the doors of the orphanage things are cozy, excepting the inescapable drafts that make their way through the walls. The children’s health, on the whole, has returned thanks to the hand of our Healer and the faithful prayers of His saints, both here and there. I know that the prayers we lifted up together for these little ones rose before the Throne in a sweet aroma, and God has heard our petitions.

Though the challenge of health seems to have passed for the moment, others have appeared. Lately I have felt like the large weeping willow that is outside my window: my trunk is firm planted in the strong ground of faith, but the rest of me is blown around in the winds of life. For one of these winds I request your urgent prayers:

* There is a 17 year old girl named Ntombifuti who God has allowed me to establish a relationship with, provide her with food and clothes, and taught her how to support herself. She became pregnant nine months ago, and was due somewhere around the end of February. She lives with her mother and seven siblings in a shack about fifteen minutes from where I am, and she and her mother have never had a conversation about her being pregnant. I talked to her mom about it, and she just doesn’t care and doesn’t want to know about it, she’s not bitter, it’s just no big thing in her life, so she’s not concerned about it. About six weeks ago, after much prayer, the Lord opened Ntombifuti up to me, and she asked for help. Last week she asked me if I would still come for the birth if it was in the night, and I can still hear the tremor in her voice that betrayed her hidden fear. Then on this past Friday her mother just said, “there must be something wrong, she must go see the witch doctor”. I tried to dissuade them from the idea, saying I would just take her to the hospital, but they are sure there is a “block” on the child that is keeping it from coming. With sorrow and a broken heart I left it, knowing the only way to change their minds would be on my knees. The baby has not come as of today. Please keep us in your prayers.

On a different note, I want to thank all of you who either sent things with my mother for the orphanage, or aided her in her journeys. Her visit was a blessing and a needed encouragement after nine months of not seeing a familiar face. She arrived safely and she just jumped in changing nappies and feeding bottles and holding and cuddling (the babies, not me….). Everyone here was blessed by her, and quite a few of the workers found her a good replacement for their mothers. Quite comically, a couple days after she was here I started getting these small bumps all over my arms and torso. They kept spreading over the next four days or so, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was, and then we realized that I had borrowed a mattress to lie on while she was in my bed and the mattress just happened to have fleas. So I was covered in flea bites, and we eventually just shared a twin bed – I’m sure it deepened our relationship… But overall the trip was amazing, and I know that it will continue to be a blessing as I visit my parents because they will have such a clearer picture of where and what I have been doing. Thank you so much for your support and prayers in helping her get here.

I will never be able to show all of you my gratefulness for your continued prayers, they continue to minister greatly to me. Please send me any specific prayer requests from all of you, and I will join you in them.

In the same fight & bound together in the Spirit, Nicole

I just want to thank all of you for your constant prayers and support. I appreciate all of your comments on my updates here, and am encouraged and hopeful that God is using the words of my mouth to minister in some way. I wish I could respond to you all personally but I’m not so saavy with webpages as to respond to your comments, so bear with me! Together in the fight, Nicole

In thankfulness to the goodness of God our Father, greetings.

The crisis of the past two weeks seems to be over now as the coughing decreases and dulled eyes regain their bright (and often naughty) gleam. Though one more child has passed from this world, the others have been blessed by the hand of the Healer and are quickly recovering.

My last update has raised some questions about how we do things here, so I will try to clarify some of what I referred to.
Our hospital is about 20 km away from the orphanage, taking about 15 minutes to drive to. When taking a child in an emergency-type situation I will always take another worker with me unless I am going as a precautionary measure. What happened with the little one last week was that I took him in because he hadn’t been drinking well and was losing weight and couldn’t maintain body temperature, it hadn’t become an emergency yet, I just needed him to see the doctor. At the time when I left I didn’t think it was necessary to take anyone with me, and though I tried to find someone anyway, no one was available. Because he was premature he had breathing irregularities in general (which is why I had my hand on his chest while I was driving), but he hadn’t stopped breathing altogether until we were on our way to the hospital. Had he stopped breathing before I left I never would have gone to the hospital alone. Once at the hospital they were able to put him on oxygen and stabilize him for the time being.
At the orphanage we have all the devices to conduct safe CPR, or “resuscitation”. In this day and age it is extremely unadvised and dangerous to conduct a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation due to the possible transmission of infectious blood and mucous-borne diseases (such as HIV and TB). Therefore we have CPR infant masks throughout the Orphanage and train all of our workers on warning signs and emergency measures in young children. Alongside this training we also have classes for the workers on the ins-and-outs of HIV/AIDS, precautions that should be taken, and how to give proper care to infected children.

Hopefully that serves to clarify the picture a bit of how these situations are handled around here. Our constant prayer over these past weeks has been that wisdom would outweigh rashness and caution would outmeasure panic.

As regards my health, I assure you all that I have been as careful as possible given the circumstances. God sustained me through the worst of times, and has granted me sleep after the storm, and has fully sustained my health. For this I continue to be thankful. I am also looking forward to taking a short holiday this next week that I might be refreshed.

Thank you for all of your faithful prayers, questions, thoughts, and concerns. May you now join me in praising the God Who is the strength of those who falter, the shelter for the weary, and the health of the ill. –Nicole de Martimprey