Donald Update April 7, 2025
- p9foundation
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
In late 2023 a young woman named Favour came to John in Accra, Ghana, asking for
help. She was pregnant, unemployed, homeless, sleeping under a table on the beach.
Her boyfriend had abandoned her when he found she was pregnant. She had come to
Accra from Nigeria and had no family in Ghana. She was totally alone.
John stepped in to provide what help he could. He arranged for her to be placed
under a doctor's care and when she went into labor, she gave birth in a hospital
with all the care that professionals could provide. This was fortunate because the
newborn baby had some breathing problems and was placed in an incubator for a time
after birth.
When they went back out in the world, we continued to provide what help we could.
Favour still had no real source of income, and the little boy had more than his
share of health emergencies. Due to limited resources there was only so much we
could do for them but we did manage to provide the necessities, including paying
for a simple room for mother and child to live in and enough food money to keep
them going. Equally importantly, we arranged for the baby's naming ceremony, a very
important part of Ghanaian culture. As a licensed minister himself, John conducted
the ceremony and gave the little boy the name Donald.
Later, when it came, we arranged for Donald's first year birthday party attended by
friends of John and Favour and others in the community.
So, Donald is more to us than just another body that came and then left through
the activities of John and the work he has been doing in Ghana. He is a part of our
little family.
The last few months have been very difficult. John went through some serious health
issues of his own, including several operations and long periods of convalescence.
So it just wasn't possible to help others as much as we had been
previously. Donald and Favor didn't exactly fall off the radar, but they had to take
second place for a time.
This last week we were finally able to check on them and see what they might need.
John found that Favour had moved out of the neighborhood in Accra and was staying
with friends a short distance away. John sent a small sum of money by phone but a
woman other than Favour answered the phone and accepted the money. If nothing else,
this raised some questions, so John went to where they were staying to check up on
things.
When he got to the house, he found that Favour wasn't there. The lady said that she
had been gone for about two weeks. Little Donald was there but he was ill, laying
sleeping on a mattress by himself in a small side room. The lady told him that
Donald was suffering from the effects of a botched circumcision that had been
performed when he was newborn (this is true, by the way; it has been bothering him
off and on all of his brief life) but frankly, to all appearances, Donald was simply
suffering from neglect. We don't even know whether he has been receiving any sort
of regular food and water.
John immediately took the little boy to the hospital. The doctors told John that
Donald needed to stay in the hospital for at least a few days while they took care
of his health problems. We should know more about his condition on Wednesday.
In the meantime, we need to prepare for what will happen when Donald is released. At
this stage he has been literally abandoned by his mother. If Favour comes back that
raises other issues, but odds are she won't.
