Tema ca. 1964 - 5 July 2009

Tema passed away late Sunday afternoon. A victim of a slow silent disease, poverty, and an overloaded, broke medical system. We did what we could through CHIPS and getting her into the medical system. But in the end, even that did not prove enough to overcome the hurdles of disease and medical non-practice.
Teresa had the opportunity to pray with her a number of times and she came from Christian Family Church in Tambankulu, so we trust she knew Jesus. But it was still very hard as Teresa was by her bedside as she took her last breaths Sunday. Alone. Abandoned by family. We had gone to Siteki and Maphiveni on Saturday to pick up more clothes for her and a month old x-ray that they had failed to send along with her when she was transported to Mbabane Government Hospital. With no family to care for her in the hospital, all her clothes had become soiled from constant vomiting and diarrhea. The hospital supplies nothing. Teresa had met a compassionate lady on the house keeping staff who was doing what she could for Tema. We were going to approach her today to see if we could pay her a little extra to take Tema's clothes and wash them.
Please pray specifically for Teresa. She needs His strength to continue. She has His heart and compassion.

CD4 Count of 3

Then there is the man (Mlungisi) with the CD4 count of 3! A normal CD4 count should be in the 1000’s. I received a call from Lori a few weeks back that this man was very sick and they weren’t sure if he was going to make it through the night. Jabulani took him to the hospital and they gave him IV fluids, as he was very dehydrated. They couldn’t admit him to the hospital, because there were no empty beds, so they sent him back home after midnight. Jabulani had to turn around the next morning and bring him back. They didn’t start him on ARV’s that day because he was still too weak. I went to visit him on Friday of that week, and he was feeling stronger. He was started on ARV’s earlier in the week. When he was walking towards me, I saw that he was literally holding his pants on his body with his hands. He was so thin! When I touched his shoulder bones, it almost felt sharp, because he has absolutely no tissue, only skin over his bones! I could see he was getting tired just standing for a few minutes, so I asked him to sit before he fell. We prayed with him and I felt led to ask him if he knew Jesus. He said that he didn’t, so we explained how to receive Jesus and that He would be his best friend and live in his heart and forgive him of his sins. I asked if he wanted to accept Jesus and he said he wasn’t ready. I told him that all he had to do was to ask for forgiveness and receive Jesus into his heart.
About 2 weeks later Jabulani received word that Mlungisi was ready to receive Christ! Praise the Lord! Pastor La’Salette, Lori and visitors from Phoenix were able to go and lead him to the Lord, as well as several other family members! They have also done some work on his homestead, which was falling apart. What a blessing!
Unfortunetly, about 3 weeks ago, Mlungisi had to be hospitalized. He was able to eat and feeling better. I received a call that he was not doing well and was on oxygen to breathe. I received word that he has gone on to be with the Lord! Although this is very sad physically and emotionally, it is a victory spiritually! He is now in the presence of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! If he had died just 3 or 4 weeks earlier, he would not have gone to heaven, where he is right now! Praise God! Please remember Mlungisi’s family in your prayers!
Sad but True
We have lost 3 of our CHIPS patients in the past month. First was a 19 year old girl who was diagnosed with abdominal TB. She had been hospitalized only for about a week before she died. The day I went to visit her 10th June, she was breathing very rapidly, talking out of her head and looked as if she was scared to death. I asked Jabulani if she had been like this the day before and he said no this is new. We reported to the doctor, who said he would see her. I received word the next day that she had died during the night.
The next one was a man named Patrick, who has been sick for a long time. Jabulani brought him to the hospital on several occasions and they did not admit him. He was finally admitted about a week ago and then he died on Friday 19th June.
The third one is of course Mlungisi, who died the 22nd June, 2009. Although, very discouraging, I know that God is in control and we are doing what He led us to do. So we must keep doing what we know He wants us to do. Please keep all of these families in your prayers, as well as the CHIPS staff. Pray specifically for Jabulani, who is on the front line everyday with these precious, sick people.

Transfer to Mbabane Government Hospital

We facilitated the transfer of Tema to the MGH on Friday. Teresa is working with the doctors she knows here to verify the diagnoses made at Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki. If confirmed, they will start the process of having her sent to Pretoria to have the corrective surgery performed. The doctors here said they would not be able to perform it here because of inadequacies in the Intensive Care unit. Winter has come with a vengeance this week. It is probably a full 10 degC cooler here than in Siteki now. Tema came with only what she was wearing. The past few mornings have dipped down to 0 degC (freezing for those used to degF). There is no heat in the hospital wards.
Teresa and Joelle went thru some of Joelle's outgrown clothes to give to Tema to help keep her warm. And with only a thin blanket from the hospital, she was shivering when Teresa went to visit her. We took out two of our blankets that we had not been using and gave them to her (I think they were hand made by my grandmother years ago).
Please pray for Tema. We have had three caregivers in CHIPS pass away within the past few weeks. All of these and Tema came into the program very sick and have had to struggle to survive. Three have lost and we feared Tema would give up as well.

CHIPS

Tema is a middle aged woman in CHIPS. She is a caregiver for two children and has no immediate family in Maphiveni. She was hospitalized in April as she was getting too weak to stay at home any longer. We visited Tema in the hospital a few weeks back. She seems to be getting weaker, and giving up hope and she is unable to keep anything down. She says that she vomits everything that she eats. She is so weak, that her voice can barely go above a whisper. She also has an abscess on her hip where she has been given frequent injections for nausea. I asked what we could bring that she felt she could eat. She couldn’t tell me anything that sounded good to her. As I talked to her, tears fell down her face and onto her jacket. She was started on ARV’s in March and on TB meds in January. She is in the isolation ward along with several other women. I was able to pray with her and encourage her to believe that Jesus would heal her and she would be able to eat again without vomiting. I asked her if she believed that Jesus is our Healer, and she said that she did. I asked her to agree with me that He was going to heal this nausea and she would be able to eat without vomiting. While I was talking to her, a woman in the back room was wailing and crying! The nurse that was interpreting for me went to check on her and I followed her. The young girl was very sick and crying that her feet were swollen and painful! I was also able to pray with her that the Lord would heal her and remove the pain! These ladies are so pitiful and so lonely, as not many people visit on the TB ward. I called Lori and asked if she and her visitors from Phoenix could go and visit Tema the next day. They were able to do that and were a great blessing to all of these ladies!

Update Tema

We have now discovered through a recent x-ray that Tema may have an esophageal stricture, which means that her esophagus is too small to get food down it, and that is the cause for her vomiting. We are now in the process of having her transferred to the hospital in Mbabane to have her re-evaluated see if she can be sent to South Africa through the Phalala fund to have surgery to correct the stricture.

The doctor at Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki wanted us to transport her in the CHIPS khombi to Mbabane. That is something we are defintely not equipped for, so we may have to pay for an ambulance. The cost of just the ambulance trip is around $120USD. Her hospital bill will have to paid at Good Shepherd as well before they will release her. With no family and impoverished herself, that cost will fall on CHIPS (around $150USD). While we do have a small monthly amount budgeted for hospital and drug costs, it is no where near the amount we'll need to help Tema.

May Update!

Dear Friends,
CHIPS continues to expand and have a life saving impact in the areas we are working in now. We have found the children’s HIV infection rate to be about 6% of those we have had tested. That is tremendous news as we expected the infection rate to much higher. For those 6%, CHIPS is the difference between life and death. The infection rate for caregivers however is about 50%. Fully half of the caregivers we’ve facilitated testing for are HIV+. That is an astounding rate. Over time, that would mean at least a doubling of the number of orphans as these caregivers would succumb to the virus and the diseases that follow it.
It is a huge blessing to see someone who was too weak to even stand, now active and able to take care of their children.

As one of our supporters, you are a part of this!

We have taken the next and crucial step in developing the youth skills program. Beginning in May, Daran started teaching the “Money Matters” course originally developed by Peter Kopp of African Leadership Partners. The alternative title is “God’s Answer to Poverty”. The first all-day class was taught at Christian Family Church International in Tambankulu. Roughly 30 people attended that class. Daran is also teaching a 6 week version of the course to fifteen people at the Mbabane UPC on Monday evenings. We have plans to repeat the class at both these churches and to expand to other churches. We’ve been asked to work on an all siSwati version for non-English speakers in the rural areas. We also are in the beginning stages of developing a “Money Matters 2” course. These courses will form an essential part of the youth skills program.

Teresa continues to be active with the Swaziland Breast Cancer Network (SBCN). It looks like there may be funding to proceed with setting up chemo treatment here in Swaziland. Daran is working with several churches here to develop children’s homes based on the New Life Homes model. Each organization faces hurdles in either finding land or finding funding sources. Please pray for the Holiness Union Church that the land issues there will be resolved and for Christian Family Church that Swaziland registration issues will be resolved so promised funding can be made available.
While aid and development work can be good in itself, offering it in Christ’s name can have an eternal impact on those who receive!
Gabby has started looking at colleges in the States. A parent’s lament: it’s hard to believe our “little baby” will be leaving home soon (even if it’s not for another year and a half). Danielle and Nathanael are helping with worship at HPC-Swaziland. Joelle is as loud and boisterous as ever.
We would ask that you continue to pray for our family’s protection: physical and spiritual; and wisdom and discernment for the effective implementation of the programs we’ve started and you are a part of here.
As we look forward to funding requirements through the remainder of this year and into next and we look at support from all sources (one-time and annual gifts, monthly support, stipend from SBCN), we continue to have a monthly shortfall of approximately $1000USD. We would ask that you share this ministry work and vision within your circle of friends and associates.

Blessings & Peace!
Daran & Teresa
Gabby, Danielle, Nate, & Joelle

www.AfricanLeadershipPartners.org

African Leadership Partners, Inc.
PO Box 994044
Redding, CA 96099-4044

CHIPS - Progress!

Sikhumbuzo is a little boy who is part of CHIPS. He is 7 years old, and still very sick. He was born with HIV and His mother is HIV+. He has been treated for TB in the past, but we are not sure whether he completed the treatment. He was started on ARV’s a couple of weeks ago while he was hospitalized. The first time I saw him, his stomach was very swollen and his breathing was very rapid. He was a very sick little boy. Each time I see him he seems a little stronger! I first saw him in church after he was discharged from the hospital. When he saw me, he gave me a big smile, which melted my heart. We visited him this past week at his homestead. He has a runny nose and a cough, and some sores around his mouth that may be herpes. I instructed Jabulani to keep a close watch, and if he was unable to eat or the cough was worse take him in to be checked again by the doctor. It is very important to watch these little ones closely. They seem to get sick so quickly!


Praise God, we were able to bless them with some clothes that visitors from Australia brought for them. Sikhumbuzo's mother was so happy. She also has a daughter who is younger than Sikhumbuzo who is not HIV+. The Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) program seems to be working!



Baby Joshua is another little one in our program. He is 9 months old and his mother is the sister of Sikumbuzo’s mother. He was in the hospital after Sikumbuzo. His mother is also HIV+. We are not yet sure if Joshua is positive or not. He will be tested again in a few weeks. He was hospitalized for dehydration, diarrhea, and malnutrition. When we visited him in the hospital, he was having horrible diarrhea, and his mother had no more diapers for him. While I was standing there, he had diarrhea all over his mother and my feet. As she was trying to clean him, he was continuing to have diarrhea. We asked the nurses for towels to clean him, but they had none. The nurse brought a diaper that was big enough to fit an adult and it covered his whole body up to his neck. We ran to town to get diapers, towels, and blankets so the mother could keep him clean. When we returned, she was crying. The baby was so lifeless and weak. I think she thought he was going to die. We prayed with her and told her to keep her eyes on Jesus, He will not leave us! Joshua is now out of the hospital as well. We visited him also this week. He was smiling and looked like a different baby! Praise God for answering prayer!
He is still very small and thin, but starting to pick up weight. I instructed his mother to work on his motor skills, crawling, sitting, and standing. She said that he was crawling before he got sick, but has now stopped. This is very common with sick babies and most of the time can be recovered.


And here is the CHIPS Khombi with Jabulani, Lori, Teresa & Daran. Thanks to Claypotts Trust and all our collective supporters that make this possible.

Money Follows Wisdom (and not vice versa)

Daran has started teaching the Money Matters class (God's Answer to Poverty) that Peter Kopp with African Leadership Partners originally began here in Swaziland. The class is set up help people identify and confront cultural and learned behavior towards money and wealth that is counter Biblical. The first day long class was at Christian Family Church in Tambankulu. He is teaching a six-week version of the class at the United Pentecostal Church of Mbabane. We had over thirty in attendance in Tambankulu and are averaging twenty at the UPC.
The first step in addressing poverty is to teach a Biblical perspective on the responsibilities, uses, and accumulation of wealth. But also to show that poverty is a multifaceted problem that has to be addressed as a connected system: material poverty, physical weakness, isolation, spiritual poverty, powerlessness, and vulnerability.
Maybe a key point of the first half of the class is that even our natural talents, abilities, and dreams are resources that God has given us to use and are a starting point for working out of poverty. It was great to see the proverbial light bulb go of in some of their heads that the cultural and learned response to managing resources (or not) was flawed and the Bible offers concrete principles for managing same. The class ends with a look at the family and finances and teaches about budgeting, planning, saving, investing and borrowing.
Daran has started researching a "Money Matters II" class that will begin where this one left off in teaching business and entrepreneurial skills, business ethics and morality (with the Bible as the moral compass), critical thinking, and problem solving.