With open arms

It happened when she was only four years old. Her family loved her and took good care of her, but there was an accident while she was sleeping in the kitchen and little Alberta fell into a boiling pot of cooking oil. The burns covered her back, shoulders, and parts of her arms. Her grandmother took her to a clinic in their Liberian village, but they couldn't even give her pain medicine. She laid there in pain through the night and was taken to another clinic the next day. Alberta spent the next month and a half in a clinic getting treatment for her extensive burns. Her mother wasn't able to go with her, so her grandmother Mariah stayed by her side through the whole process.

But, even after all that time in the clinic, Alberta's care was far from everything she needed. The clinic was lacking the physical therapy she needed and after a short time, her arms had contracted and she had lost her ability to lift her arms up. The kids at school began to tease her and she would come home crying. She couldn't even wrap her arms around her grandma for a big hug because they no longer reached the way they did before.

"It was too much for us," her grandma told me. "She was crying all the time and she was not happy anymore." They sought out more help and found a place to get the surgery to repair Alberta's contracture, but it would cost $1000 USD, an overwhelming amount for the average Sierra Leonean. But,  Alberta's grandmother didn't give up. She found a group of American surgeons who had come to Sierra Leone to volunteer and provide free surgeries. But since they had only come for a few weeks, they had to break the bad news "We have a surgeon who knows how to do the surgery for you, but the follow-up time is too long, so we can't do it." Mariah and Alberta had arrived at another dead end, but they didn't lose hope.

"I knew that if God had saved her that night from dying, then he could help us," Mariah reminisced. So, she continued to pray and hope. It had been over a year since the accident and Alberta was still struggling with the ridicule and teasing of others, but her grandmother held onto her faith in the God who sees everything and loves us more than we will ever understand.

A few months later, Mariah was volunteering as a soccer coach with LACES, an organization in West Africa that uses soccer as a therapeutic method to help children who have been affected by civil war. An American girl named Laura came out for a special event going on with the LACES group and noticed Alberta and her scars. She began asking questions and asked Mariah if it she could take photos of her granddaughter. "My friends told me not to let her take pictures," Mariah recalls. They thought Americans just wanted pictures of children like Alberta so they could use them to make money. "But, I didn't mind her taking pictures, so I said it was fine."

Laura was able to send the pictures to a friend who she thought would be able to help.  In God's providential plan and timing, it turned out that he had previously worked with Mercy Ships and was back on the ship for a visit when she contacted him. He was able to show the pictures to the doctors and not long after, Alberta was on the surgery schedule.

Less than a month later, Alberta and Mariah packed up their stuff and set off for the journey of a lifetime to Sierra Leone. After a fourteen hour car ride to Freetown, Alberta and her Grandma arrived at our "Hope Center," where they would stay until Alberta had surgery.

Alberta pre-operatively on the ship

Three months have passed now since Alberta had her surgery. It has been a long process with a lot of therapies, dressing changes, and even some pain. But, not a day has gone by that I have not seen a smile on that little girl's face.

Alberta in her splint after surgery



There have been many, many dressing changes to her graft and donor sites. But, she is our little all-star. It still amazes me that she sings songs, reads books, and occasionally falls asleep during her dressing changes (some of the other kids still scream!)...One day, we finished reading "Green Eggs and Ham" (which is now her favorite book thanks to her favorite storyteller Beyonce :) and she got down from her dressing change saying "Thank you, thank you Sam I am" to Todd, one of our wound care nurses. It warmed my heart and brought a smile to my face.

While Alberta's wound healing has been slow and her hospital stay has been one of the longest out of our last group of plastics patients, she is finally on the verge of finishing her treatment! Her arms and shoulders are all healed up and she can finally move her arms in all directions. Every time she stretches out those little arms to wrap them around me with a big hug, I can't help but smile and thank God for bringing Alberta to us. He had a plan for her all along and I know He still has amazing things in store for her life!