"Little Boy Blue"
Dear Friends and Family,
It’s July so, of course, Luke and Emma made their annual trek under our kind neighbors’ house to retrieve all the donations stored up for this year’s Children’s Hope Trip to Haiti in a couple weeks.
It is a huge task, not just the lugging of boxes, but inventorying and packing 1,100 pounds of medical, sports and school supplies. I planned a fresh start this morning.
But, morning never seemed to come, maybe because I didn’t sleep for worry. I worried about our own Little Boy Blue.
Little Boy Blue… Not the way we want to see our babies come into the world, but come blue he did. Early this morning our son Grant and his wife, Britt (both Children’s Hope Team Haiti 2010 alum) gave us a new grandson, yet unnamed…so to Nana (yours truly), he’s Little Boy Blue.
He came not kicking and screaming, but too quietly, too gently, not breathing, not moving. Yet everyone around him jumped into precision motion. Someone started breathing for him, someone doing percussion; they sent pipes down his throat and attached wires to his head; IVs and temperature gauges were inserted and adhered.
Finally, he rests tonight above a cooling blanket designed to drop his core temperature five degrees for three days, then a slow ascent to warm. A miracle of modern science, he now shows every sign of a full recovery.
Such a contrast to the babies we will soon be tending in Mother Teresa’s Baby Hospital in Port au Prince, or The Lamp Clinic in the notorious Cite Soleil Slum or at the free mobile clinic we will run in the tent city left over from the 2010 earthquake. How do I accept that our Little Boy Blue would not have a chance of surviving if he were born in Haiti? Those mothers and grandmothers love their babies, too. Reality is not fair. Its up to us to keep fighting for justice globally, keep working locally, to keep volunteering where we can.
Please help us keep this life saving work going. Children’s Hope teams go every year to serve the poorest of the poor. Any amount helps us to buy food, bring fresh water and propane, get new mattresses for the kids, and soccer and basketballs for the SAKALA sports program. Monetary donations are most helpful, but we are thrilled to accept children’s or prenatal (non-gummy) vitamins, and any of a long list of other wishes.
Please write me back at this address, let me know how you’d like to help. I can send you our wish list, or answer any questions you may have. Donations may be mailed or dropped off at our house, this week. The kids and I will gladly pack them. We hand carry all donations, work only with Haitian-led organizations we have known and trusted, and support only services that are given free of cost. We go where big NGOs often won’t go. And, really, any amount makes a difference. (One dollar buys a tube of anti-biotic cream.) Please, do it for those other Little Boys Blue. All donations are tax deductible.
Peace, all ways and always,
Leisa, Paul, Luke and Emma
Children's Hope
3025 Cambridge Road #A
Cameron Park, CA 95682 USA
916.801.4184
email: lfaulkner@pacific,edu; childrenshope@live.com
blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/
