It was "just" another trip to Dadaab, like the dozens that we have taken before  over the past 5 years. Heat, dust, lots of needy children with neglected surgical conditions. And yet, things were different this time around. The patients were all there, but there was a desperation, a helplessness that I had not seen before. There were also hundreds, thousands, of refugees chaotically settled in make-shift areas across the camps. And there were mothers with emaciated children in their arms and sad, expressionless faces.  This past summer the famine in the Horn of Africa had started, and I was face-to-face with some of the realities of this humanitarian disaster. Over the next few months our little organization, BethanyKids, had to grapple with ways to respond to this crisis, to continue bringing "healing and hope" to the children whom God had placed in our path.  "Who is my neighbor?" The question resounded in our ears as we moved from simply offering free surgeries to refugee children to helping address their malnutrition to helping the overwhelmed UN agencies in any way possible - even providing soap for thousands of refugees.

A couple of months later, the media has grown tired of the famine and moved its short-spanned attention to other crises. The relief assistance from across the globe has petered out, the photographers have left. In the meanwhile, the mothers still keep arriving, expressionless and holding emaciated babies in their arms - and BethanyKids' ministry also continues... “Never tire of doing good” (2 Thessalonians 3:13)