The following story is still unfolding, and is so encouraging to my heart, I wanted to share it with you.

A year ago a little baby girl was born in Cuba. Due to complications she required a tracheostomy and ventilator. She is a year old now, still needs the ventilator, but can go home with her parents who are doctors if they can obtain a ventilator. On $60 a month salary her parents could never afford to buy a ventilator if one was even available.
It would have to be a special ventilator for an infant and run on electricity using room air, as oxygen would be impossibly expensive.

Meanwhile last year in Watson Lake Yukon the little 10 bed worn out hospital was replaced with a brand new one. Much of the hospital’s equipment was left behind being replaced with new equipment.

Now go back to June 2014.
Educational consultants with the EFCCM, John and Naomi Hall met me at Shalom Clinic in El Salvador. They were teaching teachers at the Amilat Christian School and I was visiting to see how MEMO projects were going in El Salvador. John and Naomi just happen to live in Watson Lake Yukon!

Fast forward to spring 2015. John and Naomi learn of all the used but still useful hospital equipment to be disposed of from the closed Watson Lake Hospital. They contact me with a long list of medical equipment almost all of which would be extremely useful in overseas hospitals. They get permission from the Yukon Health Authority to donate it to MEMO.

The problem: Trucking companies would charge $6000 to bring all of it to Thunder Bay. Guess what? The pastor of the EFCCM church in Watson Lake grew up in North Western Ontario and volunteered to drive his flat bed truck with all the equipment on it to Thunder Bay while he visited his relatives. The Hall’s paid for the cost of the diesel fuel. The stretchers, delivery table, monitors and boxes and boxes of stuff arrived in October. We have slowly been working at unpacking and checking all kinds of really useful medical equipment over the last 3 months.

Now we go to the first week of this November. Martha Delgado goes to Cuba with the team holding workshops on Senior care in Havana and Santa Clara. While there she meets Dr Montiel Yumar who tells her about the baby needing a ventilator. Back in Canada Martha asks me if MEMO could find a ventilator. I tell her we don’t have one, but who knows.

The next week I am going through boxes from the Yukon. You guessed it! There was a ventilator suitable for a child weighing more than 22 lbs. Runs on electricity 110V using room air with battery back up for power failures up to 10 hours long. As well the Halls had included 3 brand-new breathing tubes to connect the machine to the babies tracheostomy tube. It was compact weighing about 16 pounds.

The suitcase containing the ventilator is packed and will be delivered by a Tourist to Santa Clara the first week of February. Our volunteers are so blessed to be part of this miracle giving the Gift of Life to this precious one.

You can be part of this miracle by supporting MEMO

Jerome