Spiritual and/or Physical Ailment?
About three weeks ago, the younger brother of Mr. W came to visit for an indefinite period of time, just about the time his mother left. In the past, we've heard that he has a seizure disorder and is in poor health. Mr. W, in the days when he was doing better spiritually, talked about how he really wanted this brother to hear the good news. Well, over the past week or so, through different conversations with this young man we are pretty certain he has an evil spirit causing him physical and mental torment. He has an unexplained seizure type problem for the past 10 years, which only occurs while he is asleep and yet several EEG's in the past reportedly have all been normal. He also says that for many years, he has been unable to drink water without serious diarrhea. So he hardly ever drinks water! Yet alcohol does not bring on the diarrhea. This makes no medical sense whatsoever. He also has a few other strange physical symptoms. This week we plan to help him get another EEG and a head CT at a reputable hospital here. If those are normal, we plan to talk to him about the real spiritual issues. He is unique for a Bouyei in that he has a college education and has been working in bridge construction, but because of these other problems he has gradually become unable to work. Now he is helping his brother with trash collecting.

We had a New Year's party for the children in the courtyard. The families there are going through an extremely hard time during this cold winter season. Please pray that Father's love for these children would be shown clearly to them. The kids had fun, and the parents too, and two of the young ladies who went were invited back to play with the kids again!

 

On New Year's Eve, a local family found us and asked us for help with their 11 year old son, who has been sick for 2 months. He has been in three different hospitals, and this last hospital stay he has already incurred a bill of over 20,000 RMB. He has persistent high fevers, lung infection requiring oxygen supplementation, and heart failure. They have not been able to clearly identify a cause for his constellation of problems. Some of the care he had the first two hospitals preclude an accurate diagnosis now. The parents are at the end of their rope. They are poor villagers who have no resources to afford care. They want to know if they should take their son home to die. We need wisdom to know how to help. Today, we are going to the hospital again with a friend of ours here who is an Infectious Disease specialist to see if he has any insights to what else might be done.