Haunted

The other day I sat down in the waiting room at Emma's allergy shot appointment and picked up a magazine.  It was TIME.  I started flipping through and the title of an article stuck out to me: "The Perils of Pregnancy: One Woman's Tale of Dying to Give Birth".  You can read the article here and you can click on the "Photos of Mamma" at the end to see a photo montage of this woman's last moments.  The images are disturbing, but this is reality for so many women in our world.  Please take the time to look at this story.  This woman, Mamma Sessay, at the age of 18, died hours after giving birth to twins.  In her country of Sierra Leonne, approximately 1000 women die for every 100,000 births.  Worldwide, one woman dies from birth complications every minute! (according to www.womendeliver.org) And the majority of these complications are easily preventable or treated.

 I know there may not be much point in rattling off a bunch of statistics to you.  You are probably like me, where these numbers don't always mean a lot to you until it really hits home.  It hits home for me because our sweet Mercy is one of these statistics.  This child that so many of you are growing to love... that we long to hold and call our own only needs a family because her mother did not make it.   The world already has too many orphans.  We can do something to help keep these women alive and keep these families together.  Would you consider giving toward a birth kit?  You can read my post here about these kits.  For $5-$10 you can help to save one woman or child's life.

As I was searching today for the TIME article about Mamma , I ran across this article.  Isn't it amazing how God orchestrates things?  This article details the malaria crisis in the world, focusing on one Ugandan town, Apac, that is filled with the disease.  The statistics in this story are mind-boggling.  The pictures in the photo essay will tug at your heart.  More than 800,000 people died of malaria in 2008... nearly 90% of those were in Africa, and also nearly 90% of those were children under the age of 5.  This is another problem, that until you've experienced it first-hand, it doesn't really make sense or hit home.    Cody's Aunt Trudy (founder of "Libraries of Love" nearly died of malaria on her first trip to Uganda.  I've held a child burning up with malaria fever in my arms.  I've seen children with IVs in their heads and deathly ill in Dr. Patrick's clinic.  I still have really seen nothing of the crisis of malaria first-hand.  But my baby, Mercy, has seen it.  She's seen people in the clinic die from it.  People in her village are sick from it every day.  She's one of the few with easy access to medication and care, but many people around her every day are not so lucky.  It's hard to imagine that a simple mosquito net can save a life, but it can.  One net can help to save the life of every person that sleeps in that bed.  Would you be willing to give towards providing nets for families in Uganda?    Read here for more information on how you can help provide nets for MercyTrips to pass out on their next trip.

3 month old infant sleeping safely under a mosquito net

I'm reading Radical by David Platt.  It is an extremely challenging book.  It's very convicting and it really shakes up so many ideas of our Christian faith in America.  Part of the book I was reading today talks about a Christian's call to help the poor and needy.  He talks about "blind spots" in our faith or "areas of our lives that need to be uncovered so we can see correctly and adjust our lives accordingly."  One example he gave from history was how so many American Christians rationalized slavery.  To us it seems appalling to call yourself a Christian, yet be in favor of the enslavement of a person.   Platt wonders if 150 years from now, Christians will look at us and say "How could they live in such big houses? How could they drive such nice cards and wear such nice clothes? How could they live in such affluence while thousands of children were dying because they didn't have food and water? How could they go on with their lives as though the billions of poor didn't even exist?"  Wow, that is convicting to me.  I highly recommend you get this book or listen to the sermon series online.  You can find the sermon series here.  But I warn you, that it will make you evaluate a lot of things in your life.

You certainly don't have to give to my causes.  These are just what's touching my heart and hitting home for me right now.  But I do encourage you to do something, give something, help someone.  Life is too short and we have way too much stuff.