Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Urgent Prayer Requests
Jane is down at the Clinic de Madeleine tonight with our good friend and sister in the Lord, Patty Mulay. She has been diagnosed with meningitis and they have admitted her to that hospital. Jane will spend the night with her and let her husband, Dan, get home to rest after spending the day there. He himself just returned from several months in the US after major back surgery and is still recovering. Please pray for Patty and Dan (and the boys, Ryan and Mark). This is a very serious disease and a scary moment.Meningitis is a recurring problem in Senegal. We are all supposed to get vaccinated regularly, but it is rare in the city and we all seem to neglect it. Foolish, but true.
We seem to be going through a storm of health crisis and problems among our friends. First, 10 days back word came that Kathy Dutts' sister, Kristen, had fallen ill suddenly. It was a bleeding brain aneurysm. She was quickly flown from Morocco up to London. By the end of the week Kathy was there with her, so were their parents, Kristen had had brain surgery to remove the aneurysm and Rodney had come back early from the US to be on the home front. Whew! Please pray for Kristen and her husband Brad and two kids, too.Yesterday's news was two-fold. Our friend, Antoine, who works with MIS in the village of Babaak lost a little child to meningitis this week. It is quite deadly with small children and older people here. There is another subject for prayer: Antoine and his wife in their grief.
The other twist was that Delta Airlines announced that they were canceling all of their flights from Atlanta to Dakar from the 8th to the 16th during the Muslim Summit here. The Wheaton football players mission team was scheduled to arrive Sunday the 9th at 5:15 AM. 30 of them were coming here to help us and then the other 35 headed to other countries were coming to Senegal for a day of debriefing. The first group of 10 were to show up here on the 14th! Now everything looks likely to be canceled. Well, that, too, is a subject of prayer as Gary and Jeff back in Illinois try to decide what to do.
Last weekend Jane and I had the privilege of welcoming and orienting a small team from North Way Community Church, the Carters' home church in Pittsburgh. These folks keep coming back. Their leader this year, Dave Guthrie, at left, has become an old friend. If I remember right, during his first visit we did a Talibe Day and he was our photographer for medical cards.
Anyway, the gruop is out in the villages doing medical clinics with MIS all this week, a needed but exhausting ministry.
Guess what airline they came with! They are scheduled to leave Sunday evening the 9th on Delta.
As Sam used to say, "Hoh, boy!" [Quantum Leap reference :) ]
When it rains, it pours.
Last weekend Jane and I had the privilege of welcoming and orienting a small team from North Way Community Church, the Carters' home church in Pittsburgh. These folks keep coming back. Their leader this year, Dave Guthrie, at left, has become an old friend. If I remember right, during his first visit we did a Talibe Day and he was our photographer for medical cards. Anyway, the gruop is out in the villages doing medical clinics with MIS all this week, a needed but exhausting ministry.
Guess what airline they came with! They are scheduled to leave Sunday evening the 9th on Delta.
As Sam used to say, "Hoh, boy!" [Quantum Leap reference :) ]
When it rains, it pours.
