Nets, Pills and Prayers

As I mentioned before, the mosquitoes here seem to really like me. The first several days my arms were just eaten up at night. A few of the kids have gotten a few bites, here and there. But we have had much less since having the nets up.

The problem now though, is having the kids stay under the nets. Some of the kids seem to move around in their sleep a lot so the first night, the net came down. The second night it stayed up and they stayed under it mostly. The third night I checked on them about 4 times and they were wrapped up in it a bit, then on the opposite side of the bed, out from under the net, or the fan was blowing the net around.

We have been taking the malaria pills since before we left, as a preventative. We just had our 3rd dose today. I am happy to report there were no tears today! The first time we gave it to the younger kids mixed in dry thick lumpy oatmeal, as that was all I had in the house on the day we were leaving. The second time it was given in orange juice. So today I mixed it in yogurt and Emma ate it fine and Caleb did great with it. Jackson did not even know it was in there. We gave high fives with Caleb and he said, “I didn’t even cry this time”. “ It wasn’t too bad”. So that my friends was a victory!

Supposedly in Lusaka malaria is not prevalent as it is in other parts of the country. It is not good to be on the meds long term so we had thought about taking it for the first month or so and then when we travel out of the city to other areas.
If you do start to show any of the signs of it, they automatically assume you have it, put you on the medication and then confirm with a blood test whether you have it or not.



We can’t see the kids all night long and if they are under the nets or not. We can’t know that every granule of the medicine was mixed in, and not spit back out. We can’t keep ourselves from being bit by the mosquitoes. We can take precautions and seek to prevent things, so that leads to the third word in the title. Prayer. We do what we can but ultimately it is prayer and God’s provision and protection to keep us from getting malaria. So please pray with us about that.