Adán is 9, but he looks about 4.

He was born with a deformed spine, and he's got almost a 90 degree crook in his spine, which visibly juts out of his back. Adán is a very active boy, running and playing long and hard with the rest of the boys, which is a delight to see, especially considering that when Adán arrived at Hogar Amiguitos he could barely walk as a result of being carried everywhere for most of his life.

If you were to meet Adán, you'd probably find him to be one of the cutest kids you've ever met. Anyone who'd disagree has never seen Adán smile - it's incredibly charming. His smile lights up his mischevious little eyes, and I think it just might be humanly impossible to resist smiling back.

His spine deformity has caused and will continue to cause problems for him as he grows and develops, and the staff of Hogar Amiguitos have been working to get Adán the corrective surgery that he needs to help him grow at this stage of life. This week we received word of the possibility of this being available for him in mid-November, so right now we're scrambling to find the money to afford this new cost. This would be the perfect time for Adán to undergo a surgery of this type (school lets out for the year in a few weeks, so he would have two months off to recuperate). However, with Joy away until about the same time, I'm not sure how the quest for financial support is proceeding. You can certainly keep this in your prayers over the next week- it would be so greatly appreciated.

Although Adán is here, he does have family living several hours away, with whom our organization has also been involved. Adán's picture isn't complete without knowing the rest of his family as well.

Adán's mother lives far up in the mountains, in a very small and poor village, with her two little girls (5 and 2), their father, and his parents. Adán has a grandfather who has been here to visit him. He is a very sweet, very tiny old man. From all that I've seen Adán's family is very very loving. However, their life has been almost impossibly hard.

Several years ago, Adán's mother was doing some washing in the river, when several large boulders fell around her, crushing her legs and trapping her there in the river. She lost both her legs (and, needless to say, a lot of blood) before she was found and rushed to Managua (a long and difficult journey under much better circumstances) for the medical treatment that saved her life. Meanwhile, her youngest child, only eight days old, died of starvation back home while Adán's mother Ruth was in Managua fighting for her life. It seems the father hadn't been able to afford milk to feed the child in her absence.

While the medical possibilities of this escape me, Ruth has had another child since losing her legs; her youngest is now about two and a half. The family is very, very poor. They have almost no food, and the two little girls are very malnourished- one is bloated, and the other's hair is falling out.Our social worker, Profe Ana, makes visits to them and has taken up vitamins and clothing for the kids, but vitamins do very little if the kids don't have any food to eat. We are well aware that if the family were to be left to continue like this, these two girls would certainly die of starvation. Fortunately, the ministry has been working with Mi Familia, Nicaragua's government child protection agency, to intercede for this family.

Profe Ana's been working for the past while to make arrangements for Adán's mother to recieve a set of prothstetic legs. This afternoon, Ana and another missionary friend made the long trek uphill to the village where Adan's family lives to bring Adán's mother down with the two girls, and take Adán's mother to Managua to be fitted for her prosthetics. She's going to need surgery on one of her stumps first. The process should take about three months, during which time the two little girls will be under our care at our other centre in Los Cedros (for children 6 and under), where they'll be well-fed and will hopefully regain their health and vitality. We are also hoping to get a chance to share the gospel with Ruth during her time in Managua, because as transformational as the medical assistance being made available to her family might be, external change can never do what internal rebirth can.

So at the same time as this opportunity for Adán's surgery has come up, so has this opportunity to help Adán's family. It is amazing to me that a week ago, neither of these things were more than hopes or wishes, and today, they're viable opportunities. It feels like God is opening all the doors to help this family, so we're praying that he will continue to show us our role in it, and help us to resolve the remaining obstacles, questions, and financial burdens in his time.

I'm very much hoping that Adán will recieve his surgery this November - it really seems like now would be the perfect time. But there are thousands of dollars standing in the way of making that a reality right now. And it's hard to accept sometimes that whether it's now or later, it's all in God's time and good judgement.

Please keep these things in your prayers, if you would, over the next few weeks. I will do my best to include updates on the progress of this family's situation.

In other news, the rain's falling and the roof's leaking. A missions team came and went. The kids have new kites, and I'm doing what I can to keep them from being lost or broken before they actually get a sunny day to use them. And, as an old country song says, time marches on.