My Christmas Wish - James Joseph

***Disclaimer - The following post has pictures of a medical condition called Bladder Extrophy with complex hypospadias.  These pictures are meant to bring awareness and to seek assistance of medical treatment***

James Joseph Chapter 2:

Today in church one of the visiting missionaries talked to us about names.  We have a lot of visitors and teams that come in and out to Canaan and for them trying to learn 60 plus kids names, plus another 20 staff names and 11 missionary names (good thing the dogs and pigs don't have names) often you get asked multiple times while they're visiting what your name is.  She went on to say that though she may have to ask us more than once what our name is there is someone much more important who knows our name.  

Someone who never forgets our name.  Someone who has engraved our name on the palms of his hands - Isaiah 49:16.  Someone who knows the exact number of hairs on our head - Matthew 10:30.   Someone who knows to the second when we arise.  Someone who knows all of our thoughts even before they're thought - Psalm 139:2.  Someone who knows what will happen in our life.  He knows our plans for our future - Jeremiah 29:11. 

This is what I shared with Mamma James a couple of weeks ago when she stopped by the clinic one Tuesday afternoon to talk and say hi.  God has a plan for James.  God knows what He's doing.  I assured her that we haven't forgotten about her little one, that there were are still are people praying for James and searching for a way to help.  Multiple people have spent the last six months trying to help James get to the states for surgery.  Though there have been many doctors and hospitals that have been contacted we have not been able to find both a doctor and a hospital that will accept his case.  Concerns that he's not in immediate danger to not knowing how long his case would take were some of the reasons why he wasn't being accepted.  It's hard to hear these reasons knowing full well that if this child was born in the States or Canada this problem would have been worked on a long time ago.  

It is comforting to know however that old and new friends are still fervently working and helping out with this.  After seeing a picture of James I posted on my facebook page a good friend who used to live in Haiti wrote me about wanting to contact doctors in her area about James.  She and her husband had been praying about helping patients that needed to come to the states for surgery.  Just last week there was a team of surgeons visiting the mission next door and I took James knowing they wouldn't be able to do the surgery but hoping to make a contact.   We are waiting to hear what God has in store with these leads. 

About a month ago at 5 am for a week straight I awoke with a heaviness on my heart for James.  The burden I had to pray for him was over powering.  As I laid in bed, I prayed that God would open a door for James, that there would be a doctor and hospital willing to take on his case.  That the doctors I did contact would respond whether it was with good news or bad news.  

Dear friends, I am still praying for James.  I ask that you join in praying for him and for his Mom as well.  I don't know who reads my blog (except for my friends and family), but I ask that if you read this you share this post with your friends, post it on your facebook, email it around, share it in hopes that someone connected with a pediatric urologist and hospital will see James and be able to help him.

That conversation I had with Mamma James that Tuesday ended the same way it has with all our other conversations.  Bondye konnen...li konnen tou she told me.   

God knows...He knows it all.

 

James at his Mom at one of our hospital visits

Frontal view of James

James 14 months