Mission Stories

Dedicated and resourceful, this island health assistant is "Always--the Overcomer". ...health assistant Kiki Always soon realized that Marcia would need extra medical attention if she and her baby were to survive.
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The hunt for a little girl with impetigo turns into an inspiring story. ...the four year old is from Kapinga Village, a Pohnpei ghetto where the people live in abject poverty...
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Paralyzed 14 years, the man never even saw the world outside his window. Weljohn Billiman is a man who for 14 years has been confined to the cement floor of his thatch-roofed hut, unable to see the world outside his window.
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While out playing one day, seven-year-old Lulahana was hit in the face with a rock, leaving her blind in her left eye. While visiting Chuuk a month later, a Canvasback eye team was able to examine Lulahana. They diagnosed her with a traumatic cataract...
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Small acts of kindness make a big difference for a crippled five-year-old girl. In September, 2001, a Canvasback orthopedic survey team found the five-year-old at the Pohnpei hospital in traction with the fourth broken leg of her young life...
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Neither rain nor dark of night could keep the island women from attending that all-important meeting. Arriving in the Marshall Islands, we were a bit surprised to discover the complete absence of health services for women on the outer islands....
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A race against time to save the infant boy was interrupted... by a miracle. The doctor reckoned that the tiny baby would die soon without treatment. Sullen, listless, vomiting; the infant hadn't urinated in 24 hours. I felt his warm body and thought, Lord, surely you won't let this precious little life slip away!
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When children must play with knives, things can get out of hand. Swoosh! Ten-year-old SuAnne was hacking the top off of a coconut, as all island children do,when the machete sliced deep into her left index finger, cutting it clear to the bone.
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Impetigo was such a big word for a little girl, yet this ugly disease might cost her her life. But her sad eyes tell you that Rosina does understand how it feels to have itchy, encrusted sores ravage the beautiful brown skin on her tiny arms and legs.

Rosina's young mother saw the sores advancing daily, but felt powerless to help her. She cuddled her little girl in her arms, sorry that she must suffer so, but determined that she learn to accept her fate because no medical attention was available.
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"Please don't take the casts off!" cried the boy who had lived all his life with painfully twisted ankles. He was afraid that they would return to their original, crippled condition. Young Nebo already had been walking on his painfully-twisted ankles for more than ten years, and no doubt he knew the even deeper pain of childish taunts and barbs.
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"Does anyone know CPR?" This mother of seven was also the health assistant for her island. But there was one basic skill she lacked. During the course of conversation, Lydia mentions a young boy who drowned several years earlier because no one knew how to save him.
"I asked her if she knew about CPR and she said no, but that she would like to learn,"...
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A mechanical failure caused the Canvasback team to make an unscheduled detour... and save a life. When the ship reached Paata, the already rough and windy weather had turned for the worse. John came out to meet them in a boat with the replacement generator, plus one very sick little girl named Joanne. In addition to having two boils on her forehead, Joanne's left eye was swollen like a golf ball.
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His stomach was swollen and he couldn't sleep; he thrashed in agony at night. His parents could only watch and pray as his painful abscess grew worse. Then the medical ship Canvasback arrive at their island. Removing his shoes, Dr. Franklin House entered the small board home to find the boy lying on a mat beneath mosquito netting, his lower back and stomach a bulging mass of festering fluid. His heart ached for the boy.
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Her baby teeth all decayed or broken in ragged shards, she lived with pain that you and I would consider unbearable.... Like many children in the remote islands of Micronesia, Craytay's baby teeth are all either decayed or broken. She chews with the ragged shards, having grown accustomed to the continuous pain. Pieces of these teeth, like splinters, will remain to irritate her sensitive gums long after her adult teeth have come in.
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The infant girl had a host of life-threatening problems. Would the doctor's best be good enough to save her? ...He, [her father] wanted his other four children to be seen too. It seems they'd buried the child's older sister just the day before. The three-year-old girl had weighed only 13 pounds when she died.

Dr. Crider asked the father if he knew his older daughter had been very sick. "Yes," he said, "but what could we do?"
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