God's Gift of Hope

That rainy night when Ana came so close to death was to become a turning point in her struggle. We know that God in His mercy and love brought about a real miracle. This is not to say that everything was fine from that night on, on the contrary. We would face many more challenges with her as she developed. As Ana neared ten months old the family was being transferred into the capital city of Lusaka. i was given the responsibility of property development for the countries of Zambia and Malawi. We were looking forward to the move because all of us would be together as a family. You see, up to this point Marily had to live in the capital for school and was only able to come out to us every other weekend and when the weather permitted.

Before our move we decided to make another trip to Chavuna-Chinjawa. This time we were taking Hilary with us, she was so excited she could hardly contain it. It was all she talked about for a couple of days.This time we would not have to walk as a friend was going to go with us and he knew the bush like the back of his hand. So, we loaded up the truck and headed for another visit to the area of Ana's birth. The trip this time only took about three hours and was easy compared to the first time.

As the truck approached the village area the little children could hear us coming and were running around, laughing and pointing at the truck. Again, they were shouting "Magua, Magua".
We parked the truck and the entire family soon gathered around. Our friend Elvis came with us and he would interpret for us. As soon as the greetings were over and things seemed to settle we talked about Ana and how well she was doing. The older women of the village were talking among themselves about Ana and how much we must love her.

As we sat and talked the little children were coming up behind Hilary and trying to touch her hair. You see, Hilary had beautiful long blond hair and the children had never seen hair like that. When Donna figured out what they were doing she had the children sit next to Hilary and they ran their fingers trough her hair for a long time. They would touch her hair and giggle and touch it again. This trip we brought out some oranges for the children and Hilary showed them how to smile with an orange wedge in their mouth. It was a touching sight to watch Hilary and the children laugh and giggle at each other over somethig as simple as an orange.

We brought the oranges due to what we learned on our first visit. The children were doing very poor. One of Ana's half sisters had lost her hair due to malnutrition and her half brother was almost totally blind due to measels. We had decided that every trip we made we would bring out fruit if it was available and 90kg. bag of ground meal. There would be no corn in the village due to another drought.