Sweet little Watan

I absolutely love this little boy! His name is Watan which means "country", named by his Syrian parents who miss their country so much. He was born with webbed fingers and toes here in Germany. Other than that, he is totally normal in every way. He has the sweetest personality you ever could imagine in a kid. Recently, he underwent surgery to separate the fingers on his right hand. They grafted skin from his stomach to his fingers. After a week with a cast on his hand, they removed the bandage to find the skin completely dead and black color. We were all so sad as we had prayed for it to be a success. He underwent 2 more surgeries for the same hand and had to have more skin taken from his stomach. His poor parents are so weary from being in the hospital for almost a month. Last Friday night, they couldn't take it anymore so they escaped the hospital (telling them they were going out to eat) and came to our Family Game night at the Lighthouse. I thought it was pretty neat that the one place they wanted to go to escape the hospital was the Lighthouse. When the mom walked in, she collapsed in my arms and sobbed. She had so much pent up grief at watching her baby suffer like this and not being able to express it. Her husband actually told me (when he saw her crying), "Oh, she's overdoing it". I almost smacked him!! All the women hugged her and comforted her and it was so sweet to see how they've all become family at the Lighthouse. Watan still has this huge cast on his arm but they're saying that at least one of the fingers has accepted the graft and the other ones will probably be OK without doing more surgery. Now they will take a few months' break and then have to go back to start the second hand. This family is very dear to us. They come every single Friday night and the mom comes to the ladies' gathering on Tuesday mornings. They. have heard the gospel many times but are staunch Mus. We pray that somehow the love of Jesus will reach deep down into their hearts and they won't be able to refuse anymore.