2 specific prayer reqests

I have 2 specific children that I would like to ask you to pray for. The first is my daughter Mercy's best friend. She is one of the 12 new children and her and Mercy have become very fast friends. Every afternoon, Mercy looks forward to going to playgroup so she can see "my friend." Yesterday her friend was feeling sick at playgroup, came home and had some further health concerns and needed to be taken to the hospital Emergency Room. Her house mother came to my house and told me Donna needed me in the clinic and there I found Donna hard at work trying to get an oxygen tank ready so we could transport the girl to the hospital. I admire Donna (our amazing Australian volunteer nurse) and her quick thinking in these emergency situations! Poor Mercy followed me into the clinic (because neither of us knew it was an emergency situation when the house mother came and got me) and she saw her friend lying on the bed with machines beeping and oxygen pumping through a mask on her face. Thankfully Bryan was on campus so I could help carry the girl off to the hospital and our team from California even pitched in to make lunch for my kids. Please pray for her as she was quite ill when we brought her in and I do not know enough details to explain what she is being treated for.

The second prayer request I have is for a baby boy. He has been with us at BG for a little while and he is just not able to gain weight. Donna has helped come up with "operation fat" (thanks Donna for the idea and the cool name) to help us get him out of the danger zone and Terp is being our extra feeder during the overnight hours (so if you are one of her friends and she seems out of it in the next 2 weeks now you know why!!!!), Donna is helping with a long afternoon feeding (he has difficulty eating) and I am going to do an evening feeding also. Our goal is to really work hard to get some weight on him in the next two weeks so we can hopefully prevent hospitalization.

Tonight I had the privilege of having him at our house and playing with him for a little while. My kids were kind of excited too which made me smile. Elijah got a small plastic toy car for him to hold and washed it extra carefully before giving it to the baby (we are doing our best not to get him sick). When it was time to feed him, he coughed and choked so much that it was extremely difficult to feed him. I took a few moments to burp him and just felt my hand going over every bone in his spine and touching every rib so clearly. It breaks my heart that he is so young and is having such a tough start to life. Please pray that he will be healed of his cough and that he will be able to put on some weight during the next few weeks and to allow his weight to grow.

We know that God brought both of these children to us for a reason and we pray that He will lead them into a time of healing. We do not want to borrow trouble through worry, so we will just continue asking, seeking and knocking on their behalf.