Things have been really good around here lately. We are getting ready to celebrate Christmas and have been enjoying the festivities that pop up along the way. The kids are all doing well. Haley's medication is still doing the job. Now the challenge is to get her back into her sleeping brace on a more regular basis. She had an echocardiogram on Monday. Her heart looks normal, with the exception of a right arching aorta? Apparently it should be arching to the left. We go back to the neurologist on the 29th to review the results, so we should learn more about it then. Hopefully.
Today was the day that our oldest daughter Julia's Bible Fellowship department went to be a blessing to a needy family. She invited me to come at the last minute. We don't often get to do something like that together, so I went with her. They have an open invitation to families every year. This year I would be the only family member to come this time. At first I felt a bit like a fifth wheel but then we arrived at the family's home in Wimauma.
The sweet family that we visited had six children there with them, in a tidy one bedroom apartment. Their adult daughter, Margerita was there too, in the bedroom in a hospital bed. She was beautiful. Blind and bedridden, she has never seen her own eight year old daughter's face. Margerita was suffering the effects of MS and was a sick lady. Did I tell you how beautiful she was? I told her so (through a translator) and told her that I would be praying for her. Her older sister sat in the room with her while everyone else tried to squeeze into the family's main room. I stood near a familiar looking wheelchair that was tucked behind an open door. The family spoke Spanish primarily, and we were blessed to have missionaries to Mexico join us for the day. The kids gave the family members the gifts they had chosen for them, decorated a tree for them, read some scripture in Spanish and sang with them. Then it was time for us to leave and we asked if there was any special needs that we could pray for. They only had one prayer request, for their sick daughter to be well.
Sound familiar? In that moment, I saw myself standing in their shoes, full of worry over their sick girl. My hear broke for them, knowing their pain so well. We all held hands and prayed for the family, especially for their Margerita. After we prayed for them, the father wanted to pray too. He lifted his hands and prayed to God with words I couldn't understand but with a spirit that I knew well. That was a once in a lifetime experience. I promised the parents to pray for their daughter. They hugged and kissed me and we left. Back on the bus I couldn't speak without crying, in front of a bunch of eleventh graders that probably didn't notice. Julia's invitation was to go and be a blessing. The blessings were mine in the end, along with the reminder to count them more often. God is good.
Please pray for Margerita and her family.
