A time to praise and a time to pray

After very little sleep last night, I awoke to my cell phone alarm at 5am this morning. I am NOT a morning person, but I am a bondservant that needed to check in for duty. After a shower, two cups of coffee and my daily devotional I was set to go. I quickly got Enoch out of bed, dressed him and gave him a quick breakfast. And then we were out the door, hailed a boda boda (local moped) to the taxi stage and made our way to the city for Elyssa's court ruling and another trip to the doctor office. Thankfully Elyssa did not need to be present for the ruling as she was already present for the hearing. I met the lawyer at higcourt at 8:45am and we saw the judge at 9:30am--we were the last legal guardianship ruling for this particular judge as he is being promoted to the higher courts. All that the judge said was, "I approve." Praise the Lord. God is the One that administers justice for the orphan!

Enoch and I hailed another boda-boda to the dr's. I had ordered a pneumonia vaccine last week expecting to have Enoch immunized today--this is important for sicklers as they often die of strokes and heart attacks which can be the result of a chest infection. However, once we got to the nurses 'station' we found out that the child must be 2 years for the particular vaccine. The nurses told me, however, that the dr. wrote a note that he wanted Enoch's hemoglobin checked again. Normal hemoglobin for a healthy person is 12, normal for a sickler is 7 and last time we had Enoch checked he was at 5.7. Today, his numbers read 5.4--they usually want to do a blood transfusion when the hemo. drops below 5. I spoke with the dr. and he told me this is normal for an infant and that over time, with proper treatment and care, his numbers should rise, although his average may never get over 6 or 6.5. I am always careful about keeping a close eye on Enoch (and Elyssa's) behavior to make sure they are not going into a crisis--lethargic, fast heart rate, vomiting, swelling, sleeping a lot, etc. Again, we are praying for God to do a mighty work with renewing Enoch's red blood cells. He is such a joy to our family.

So, we are praising the Lord that He has counted us faithful, by His kindness, to yet again become the legal guardians of another precious soul. And we continue to pray that He will use us to "care for the sick" and be instruments that bring life back to Enoch--both physically and spiritually.