Courage on the Word Day of Prayer and Action for Children

When I travel to the Africa and Latin America to visit our doctors who are serving in small mission hospitals and clinics, it is the faces of children that remain etched in my memory. The children running along the road, laughing at the lady with the camera, singing in the church, and the children in the hospitals, their parents anxiously standing at their bedside.

As a mother of four, in these childern’s faces I see my own children. I recognize the joy and the fear, the laughter and the tears.

Those of us in the west however need to awaken to the reality of the lives of children around the world. In Uganda today there are over 1.2 millions AIDS orphans. In Guatemala more than half the children suffer from chronic malnutrition. In Cameroon the burden of poverty is heightened by diseases of malaria, TB, chronic respiratory infections. The needs of these children and their communities is what drives our doctors to sacrifice so much to serve, and is what drive my own work.

Today, November 20 is the World Day of Prayer and Action for Children. On this anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, I would like to share with you the story of Courage. This story not only inspired me, but all of the doctors and nurses serving in this small mission hospital in Ghana. Courage is a young boy none of us will forget.