A 9 year old...actually she's 16

The other day we had a little medical clinic at one of our new sites in the Madonsa area of Manzini. It is a more rural than most of our other sites as it is outside the city limits and thus is under the control of traditional leadership…the chief, indvuna & bacupho. It is situated in a beautiful area and there are a bunch of children there. Daran & Teresa Rehmeyer as well as Kristen Young were treating the children medically. Charles Young and I were busy outside playing with the children & trying our best to build relationships with the people. There was one girl that I saw that just looked frail, looked sick…she didn’t look like a Swazi with their round beautiful faces but rather she looked like she was from Kenya except she looked like those faces you see in Niger that are starving…so frail, so not right…hard to explain but I guess to sum it up she looked like a skeleton. I find out later that she told Teresa that she was 16 years old…I can’t say I’m surprised because her eyes told the story of a hard 16 years even though her physical characteristics looked more like a 8 or 9 year old. She hadn’t really developed, she was tiny, it was hard to look at her in such a state. She’s had diarrhea for as long as she can remember which usually a sign of full blown AIDS is. Can we help this girl; will she live for another year, another month?? If I go with percentages, its most likely she won’t make it another year…I can’t go with percentages, I can’t go with what logic tells me, we Children’s Cup can’t turn a blind eye, we can’t turn from her because we want to protect our hearts from pain…from what seems like a certainty for her, death…we can’t turn and do nothing. I don’t know how this story plays out, but I know we will pray for this girl, love this girl, and help this girl as much as we can. I also know that when Charles & I were playing with the children she was in there with the rest of them. God allowed us to see her smile, to see her laugh and play without the weight of life on her shoulders. What a privilege it was to give this girl a day of good memories, of joy, of hope. Please pray that we can get the assistance this girl needs and that if we can get her started on ARVs that she’ll be able to handle the shock they are to one’s system at first. HIV is horrible, I hate it…but I gotta stay in this fight, I got to keep on loving, I got to show people hope & love…I got to help train a new generation how to live the right way, a way that leads to abundant life, a way that avoids HIV/AIDS. I’ll try to get a picture of this girl to show y’all.