Mamine

This sweet, beautiful girl is Mamine. She has osteosarcoma of the hip and there is nothing we can do to help her. We sent her home about two months ago to die as there was no treatment we could do for her. I started visiting her two weeks after she left our hospital, expecting actually that I would find she had already died. However she is going strong, aside from the cancer. She is such a beautiful girl and it is simply heartbreaking to visit her each week and have her family ask us if we can do anything. We (Carol goes with me) have looked into many possibilities, even sending her to the States for treatment. Even in the US her chance of survival is 25% and that's with removing her hip and having at least a year of chemo and radiation. Carol has talked to her son who is an orthopedist and gotten his thoughts on the case as well as another surgeon who visited here and met Mamine. As much as we wish there was something we could do, we just simply can't. We brought her to the hospital last week for an x-ray as we still clung to hope that we could do something. You couldn't even see the bones of her right hip as the mass just covered the whole area. The cancer has enlarged her hip area and now has grown into the left side as well. I often feel hopeless. I am reminded though that we serve a God of hope who can heal her even if she doesn't receive physical healing. I shared the gospel with her and her family in Bambara (if you count reading it off the sheet of paper I used to study with for my last Bambara test where we had to share the gospel. I've kept it in my wallet ever since). We've talked about God and had a Pastor come with us. I pray that she will know God's hope and peace and find the spiritual healing she truly needs.