Disabled boy’s future depends on finding qualified care
By Called and Sent Staff
6-year-old Nehemiah is tended to by a 16-year-old boy named Kenneth recently at Living Stones Orphanage.
SO WHAT NOW?
How YOU can take action!
1.If you know of any home or ministry qualified to care for special needs children like Nehemiah, please call Hope for the Nations in Davao, (011) 63-82-225-1836, or write: patrick@hopeforthenationsph.org.
2. Pray for Nehemiah, that Living Stones will be able to find and pay for the care he needs while he waits for a permanent home.
DAVAO, Philippines—It’s a sunny day at Living Stones Orphanage.
The refreshing laughter of preschoolers tearing around outside is offset by the notable silence of one boy, lying on a mattress in the corner of the living room.
His name is Nehemiah. Cerebral palsy traps him inside his 6-year-old body. The torn, swollen forefinger that he bites uncontrollably testifies to his special needs. The problem is, nobody he knows can meet those needs long-term.
Nehemiah lives with 22 other children here in the Philippines’ second-largest city. One of the first babies Living Stones received back in 2000, Nehemiah was brought to Living Stones by a Filipino non-governmental organization (NGO) when he was 4 months old. He looked healthy; but at his 6-month checkup, the doctor diagnosed him with CP.
Living Stones didn’t have the staff to care for a CP patient—they still don’t—so the orphanage asked the NGO to take him back. They refused to take him for the same reason Living Stones didn’t want to keep him. They asked the government. Same thing. They called homes and agencies specializing in special-needs children. By that time, Nehemiah was more than 1 year old, and the agencies refused to take him because he was too old.
“Meanwhile, Nehemiah is growing older,” says pastor Dan Montenegro, who helped found Living Stones. “For more than five years now, we’ve been trying to look for a home for him—people who can care for him. Nobody wants him. He is an unwanted child. Living Stones is his only home. He has nowhere to go, so he stays with us. The problem is, how long can he stay this way?”
Answer: Not very much longer.
Nehemiah needs a full-time caregiver, someone to watch him and push his wheelchair and make sure he doesn’t bite his fingers. He needs an hour of physical therapy every day. Living Stones can’t afford all that, but the staff does what it can.
Sometimes help arrives out of the blue. Recently a visiting missionary learned about Nehemiah and offered to pay for someone to watch him. She sent a 16-year-old boy named Kenneth, who she met through a friend. “I wanted to help a boy with this condition,” says Kenneth, a high school graduate. “I came just to help.”
Dan says what Nehemiah really needs is a home, or even an orphanage, that can take care of his needs. If any orphanage is equipped to find a new home for him, it’s the one he’s living in: To date, Living Stones has placed 30 children in homes through the federal Department of Social Welfare and Development. They would like someone to adopt Nehemiah, but his age and his needs work against him.
“We have already processed his documents,” Dan says. “He is ready. But nobody wants to take him.”
