Dear friends,
One of the enduring images of the present conflict between Arabs and Jews was the photo of the body of an infant Arab girl, taken in the Khan Yunis hospital after a shell landed in her home.
Two weeks ago, another little Arab girl named Riman ("two gazelles") was rushed from the same hospital to Israel. She was born with a heart defect, and the only hope to save her life was for Arabs and Jews to come together.
Riman was close to death when she arrived in Israel. The oxygen saturation in her blood was only 8% of the normal. Doctors at the Wolfson Medical Center immediately started treating her with a drug called prostaglandin, which opened a duct in her heart and temporarily allowed enough oxygen into her bloodstream to keep her alive.
Today Riman was taken to the operating room. The doctors in Gaza had originally suggested a palliative surgery, the placing of a shunt, which would have spared her life but not corrected her problem. Instead the Israeli doctors boldly opted for a full repair. They opened her tiny, two-month-old heart and closed a hole between the two ventricles. Then they grafted a cow's artery into the heart to bypass Riman's own blocked pulmonary artery. The cost to the hospital of that cow's artery alone was nearly equal to the $2500 which is all they have asked us to contribute toward Riman's expenses.
The surgery was successful, and tonight Riman is recovering in the pediatric ICU. Her mother, by her side in the hospital, is overjoyed; and the love of God is rolling back a little of the darkness that is engulfing this land.
Yours thankfully for Jesus' sake,
Jonathan Miles
Light to the Nations
POB 7012
Holon 58170
Israel
