Silas

On Monday, a few of us took Silas with some gentle pressure to our home and bathed him, cut his hair and settled him on a nice mattress under our car port.  Although rather traumatic for him, as he hates water and hasn't been cleaned or had his hair cut for many years, it wasn't too long after we were finished and he began to chat with me, Nadia.  He was a new man.  However, it took him a few more hours to warm up to Ian and some of our national friends that had helped bathe him as he thought they were trying to hurt him.  After one night with us, he became much more conversant.  He told me that I shouldn't be going to Canada to have our baby, but have him or her here in Lae.  He said, "you can't go, you're locals already!"  It took us awhile to convince him that we were also leaving to visit family and our supporting churches.   He was relaxed with us.  But then we had to move him again to his new home. It turned out that his cousin wasn't willing to care for him, but our friend whom we mentioned in the last post was.  He was rather unsettled again, but today we learnt that he bathed in the river close to his 'new' home and was quite conversant with the people looking after him.  He is being loved and cared for there. And now we pray that he will not want to return to his former "home" under the overhang of a closed-down business. We have also encouraged our own church community to support this family in caring for Silas.

Eating more regularly has helped him slowly grow stronger over the past few weeks, but he still very weak. We had to carry him from our car to his new accommodations in the settlement.  Still, we're praying for the Lord to continue to heal him in every way and continue to prepare him for glory!