| Lives risked to deliver nets |
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| Written by Editor |
| Friday, 08 January 2010 17:38 |
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Sierra Leone is a small country on the west coast of Africa that is unknown to most Americans. To Sam Brickson of the BWA in Africa (the All African Baptist Fellowship) however, it is home. Each year he pleads with His Nets to provide nets for the villages and people of his homeland. Recently a difficult distribution was completed there which stretched out over several months. Sam wrote that due to an especially bad rainy season and high winds, rivers overflowed and concrete houses were washed away. This left hundreds of families venerable to malaria. Baptist youths jumped in to brave high water to deliver nets to those in need. First in the town of Lungi and then on to the Tonko Limab and Susu areas, they risked their lives to deliver nets. In the photo gallery section on this site, you can view some photos of an evening distribution at the Susu Field Clinic. As will all His Nets distributions, a time of teaching about how to protect one’s family from malaria preceded the distributions. His Nets wants to thank Sam and all of the young people who demonstrated such great courage in this latest distribution in Sierra Leone! |
| Last Updated on Friday, 08 January 2010 17:53 |
| Putting a Face on Malaria |
Through the years His Nets has touched more than half a million lives. Numbers however cannot tell the entire story. Just a week ago I was in Ghana with a team to distribute nets east of Lake Volta, near the Togo border. 2,000 nets were given out in small towns & villages and in a school & a hospital. It was at that hospital on our last day of distribution that the work of His Nets gained a new face and a name. Rev. Timothy Wilson of the Ghana Baptist Convention had arranged the distributions and accompanied us to each site. As the week ended, he took our 8 person team to visit the pediatric ward of the local hospital. The head nurse told us that over 80% of the small patients were there because of malaria. To our surprise we recognized one little boy in the ward! His was Onesimus Wilson, the youngest son of our local coordinator! He had gone to the hospital with a high fever due to a malaria attack! His family had only just received an insecticide treated mosquito net from His Nets, but not before Onesimus contracted malaria. Happily we were able to purchase the medicine that “Oni” needed and he was feeling much better before we left. Statistics such as 10,000 people a day dying of malaria or one child every 30 seconds are just that: statistics. When it is someone you know, like Onesimus Wilson, then the fight against malaria becomes real. It becomes personal! Thank you for supporting His Nets and helping to save the lives of tens of thousands like Onesimus Wilson! -T Thomas Read Norman Transcript article |
| First Baptist Church-Marietta, Georgia |
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