Dear friends,
I'm writing from an airplane over the Atlantic, heading back to the Middle East. Since I last wrote you, we've received invitations for ten Iraqi children to come out for donated heart surgeries in the US, Belgium, Germany, and India. There is potential for many more. Dr. Lee Huhn and pediatric nurse Angela Rickards are wrapping up a month's work in Baghdad preparing lists of children for transfer. They've made good progress in cutting through the bureaucracy involved and are trying now to get the first two children on their way. A new volunteer named Ramona Miller is also leaving today for Amman, Jordan, where she will help with visas and transportation.
It is a joyous thing to see these followers of Jesus laying down their lives for those who have no other hope to live. By God's grace they have avoided the temptation of out of sight, out of mind, or the thought that The world is full of needs. Why should I get involved in this one? I know that my own thinking only started to change on the day in 1994 when I looked at the face of a 13-year-old boy named Andrei, and learned that for financial reasons the door was closed to the medical treatment that could save his life.
May I help to put a face and a name for us to the situation in Iraq? This is 39-day-old baby Mohammed pictured below. He was born with transposition of the great arteries. In the US or Europe he would have been rushed in during his first week of life for the emergency surgery that would give him a normal life. We've seen several Palestinian children saved this way in Israel. But at the hospital clinic in Baghdad, Mohammed's father walked in and laid him on a plain wooden desk and the doctor could do no more for Mohammed than listen to his heart with a stethoscope.
I watched as Mohammed shook his little fists and tried to cry out. He didn't have the strength to make a sound. How shall we respond? Can we love him as if he were our own child or grandchild? Would we spare any effort for them?
Opening our heart to little ones like Mohammed will mean opening our treasure. Because we've tried in recent months to be there for every Palestinian child who has needed transfer to Israel in a life and death cardiac emergency, by Christmas we have need of $90,000. We are just a small and weak fellowship who have joined together through Shevet Achim to care about these children; for this reason I believe God is pleased to glorify himself by working through us.
Your servant for Jesus' sake,
Jonathan Miles
Coordinator
Shevet Achim
"Behold how good and how pleasant when brothers dwell together in
unity" (Psalm 133:1)
www.shevet.org
