Today I thought would be the perfect day to pick back up.
The next blog post is Day 5 of our trip. This just so happens to be significant for today.
Today is World Malaria Day. A Day to bring awareness to the devastation this disease is bringing to a whole continent.
A few facts for you:
- A child dies from malaria every 60 seconds
- Most of the children are under 5 years old
- In 2010, almost 600,000 children in Africa died from malaria
- Malaria is PREVENTABLE, TREATABLE, and CURABLE
- The Healing Faith team encounters 6-8 positive malaria tests each week
- The testing and treatment for a single person infected with malaria costs less than $3
- The average cost of a mosquito net is $4 – too expensive for most Ugandan families who live on less than $2 a day
Day 5, we woke up to the sounds of rain... the girls knew that there was a possibility of us not making it out to the Wakisi village.
We planned on checking on the sweet little boy who tested positive and had started treatment for Malaria earlier that week.
The girls were quite upset at the thought of not making it out there.
So we went to scripture
James 4:13-15 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
We talked to them about how we make plans, but really God is completely in control, and we need to remember He may have something else planned for us!
It helped a little, but they were still upset, what can ya do?! Kids will be kids:)
We loaded up and decided to try and see if we could make it out there...
We arrived and saw the road we were supposed to drive up in the Super Custom (a type of mini van) and knew it wasn't going to happen. The pictures below say it all:
What these pictures don't show is the big hill the van would have to make up in order to get to the village, and even if it made it up, there was no guarantee on what the roads would look like once we got to the village and whether or not we would be able to get out! So we turned around to the great disappointment of all of the kids.
Today is World Malaria Day.
Today Healing Faith is starting a 7 day Campaign.
The goal of this campaign is to raise $25,000 in one week to
allow Healing Faith to purchase a fully-equipped Mobile Malaria Vehicle that
will allow the team to reach the villages year round. Malaria peaks during the
rainy season – the time when it is the hardest for the Healing Faith team to
reach the villages due to poor road conditions. This vehicle will enable them
to reliably reach the villages regardless of the weather and will be a huge
blessing to their ministry.
Click HERE to donate!
Every person who donates $50 will receive one of our new limited edition t-shirts!
And if that isn't incentive enough...every person who donates ANY amount, will be entered into a drawing to win not just one, but TWO tshirts!! One of our newly designed shirts, as well as one of our Logo tshirts!!
Feel free to share this blog and check out their FB page for updates! www.facebook.com/HealingFaithUganda
Rachel
