Help for a young boy named Barto

A pastor from a neighboring village brought a father and his son to our door asking for help. Barto is 18 yrs old and he is paralyzed from the waist down.

As a young boy, Barto was healthy and attended school. But, as a result of an undiagnosed illness and several days of high fever, Barto's health deteriorated to where he lost the use of his legs. He has also lost most of the use of his arms and hands.

Barto is a bright boy but he comes from a very isolated village with no medical care available, no social services available to help families, and a family without the resources to find help for their son.

We have introduced some very basic physical therapy to the family to help Barto regain the use of his hands and arms. And, we are searching for a handicap center where he can learn a trade to help support himself and even help to support his family.

Please pray for us as we try to find ways to help this boy and his family!

Barto

Fighting for life--

Today we received a call from the hospital asking for help with a tiny little newborn named Fousseny. Fousseny is a two and half month old twin. His brother died shortly after the twins were born.

At two and half months old, Fousseny weighs only 700 grams (about 1 ½ pounds). Fousseny and his mama recently spent 2 weeks in the hospital in the city and when they returned to the village Fousseny weighed a little over 3 pounds. But, in the last three weeks he has lost all of the weight that he had gained while in the hospital.

After teaching Fousseny's mama how to prepare the formula, how to clean and sterilize the bottles, and especially to use only pure water, we enrolled him in our village milk program.

Mama will bring Fousseny to our house each week to be weighed and she will be given more milk as she needs it.

Please pray with us that Fousseny will thrive and very quickly regain the weight that he has lost!

We recently had the opportunity to do our 'back-to-school' sponsorship distribution in our village and 5 other surrounding villages. School starts late here, usually not until around the 1^st of October. But, back-to-school excitement for returning students and nervousness for new students is an international occurrence and we saw and felt these emotions in each of our students here.

Our distribution included a new pack pack for each child, a reading and a math textbook, notebooks, pens, colored pencils, chalk, math sets (protractor, ruler, etc.), a 100 pound bag of rice for the family, and soap. Some of our children also received special gifts that some of our wonderful sponsors had sent for their children. Some of those gifts were special things like a new bike, a new outfit of clothing, a solar lamp, etc.

We cannot say 'thank you' loud enough for our outstanding Sheltering Wings sponsors. I hope that you realize the amazing part that you are playing in your sponsored child's life. You are giving them the encouragement to do their best in school and therefore a hope for the future.

Your children are ready to start school! Thank you!