This is the first time we ever saw Jackson. We were in the mountains of Haiti! We had just finished a Mobile Medical Clinic and were getting ready to get in our trucks and drive back home! Suddenly, a young man about 20 or 21 years old came with a little boy and asked us to take him home. The child’s belly was so swollen and huge. We agreed to take him and do what we could for him.

Two young girls on our team offered to take him to the “outhouse.” He was “so heavy” that they had a hard time lifting him onto the old wooden “hole” in the outhouse!! We knew very little about malnutrition, especially the kind of malnutrition where the child’s body was so full of fluid that you could hardly pick him up! We took Jackson down the mountains with us to our orphanage, and the next morning, we took him to our doctor.

We soon learned how “close to death he was!” That began the long journey of finding the right doctors who knew what to do. We finally ended up taking him across the border to the Dominican Republic. Jesse Ostrander took on the responsibility of finding doctors for Jackson. One of our nurses, Phanise, took on the responsibility of caring for him. This has taken many years.

We are thankful to our special “friends and partners” who have really helped with Jackson’s medical care, and especially Jesse, who has spent much time with Jackson trying to find the right doctor for him! Jackson is now 18 years old, and we are trying to get him a medical Visa so that he can have a “kidney transplant” in the States, and then come back to Haiti. We have the donor, and now we just need the Visa to get Jackson to the States for surgery! The Lord has already worked many things out for Jackson. We are standing “on the edge of a miracle for him.” Sherry