CHURCH MOURNS AFGHAN BOY’S DEATH
An Edmonton congregation is promising to put to good use the thousands of dollars raised from Canadians across the country left over from an unsuccessful attempt to help save the life of a six-year-old Afghan boy, the Edmonton Journal reported.
Part of the $20,000 raised by North Edmonton Christian Fellowship had been used to send the young Namatullah from Kandahar to a world-class hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, to remove a huge, infected tumor that had ravaged his face, and to combat the cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes and liver. Sadly, despite an initial prognosis by doctors last week that the boy stood a 60-65 per cent chance of making a full recovery, he succumbed two days later to an infection.
“When I got the phone call . . . there was shock and sadness,” Pastor Henry Motta told the Journal. “Right now we are trying to pray for the family and all those who were touched by his little life.”
Motta’s church first learned of Namatullah’s plight when told by Corporal Brian Sanders, a medic stationed at the Canadian Forces base outside Kandahar and a member of North Edmonton Christian Fellowship. The boy’s grandfather had brought him to the base seeking help for the boy, who was thin and frail and near death.
In one Sunday, the 300-member congregation raised $10,000 on his behalf. Roughly an equal amount flowed in from across Canada after the story made national headlines.
Motta said the church is now looking at ways to invest the approximately $10,000 left over after paying for the boy’s treatment and burial to help relieve the unsanitary conditions at a hospital in Kandahar.
“We are learning,” Motta told Canadian Press. “We are finding out it is very difficult. It will take courage, it will take determination. But I believe that we can do something there that will help with the transformation of that society.”
One immediate blessing from this experience, Motta also told the Edmonton Sun, is the goodwill it has generated between the people of Namatullah’s isolated village and Canada’s soldiers in the region. “The leadership of their town declared Canadian Forces their friends,” he said.
Sanders said while he is saddened by the boy’s death, he is confident that the love and generosity that so many Canadians showed towards him was not in vain. “Obviously hopes got raised,” he told the Journal. “Still, Namatullah’s last month was pain-free, he got to ride in an airplane, the lump was gone from his face, and he was smiling and waving when he came back to visit us this week.”
