...endure them, for, lo, I am with thee...

Manuel Ohene is 14. He was baptized just over a year ago and has been very faithful in this attendance and duties as a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood. He has perfect attendance in seminary and has great friends that support him. I marveled as he walks to and from school each day. He has bent legs and does all movements with, I’m sure, great pain. He has adapted to his circumstances and does well in teachings us to endure to the end for the Lord. He proselytes with the missionaries and has taught with them to two of his friends. He prays they will be baptized soon. His mother and father are farmers who work each day on their small small farm to keep him and his younger brother in school. I have enjoyed being friends with this fine young boy and have followed his gospel development with joy. He attends the temple when we have a temple trip and rallies many of the other youth to come along. I have always wondered why he has such bent and deformed legs? It is a real struggle and with great effort that he walks at all but he never complains. So today, I stopped and talked with him of his condition. At 10 years old he was alongside his mother weeding at the farm. It is custom that around 11AM most farm workers take a 30 to 40 minute nap. Remember that they are usually up at 4:30AM and on their way to the farm by 5:30AM which is still dark. They have done this for years to beat the heat of the day which is usually in the afternoons. This day Emanuel was needed at the farm so had not gone to school. His father was cutting some larger trees down in the process of enlarging their farm. All work is done with a simple machete including chopping trees. Emanuel had lain down for a much need rest; his father was across the way resting too. Soon father was up and at the chores at hand along with mother as the their son continued to nap in the tall grass. Father finally had chipped his way through the tree he needed to fall and it crashed down through the bush and thick brush. It was then that mother began screaming with the horror of the sight that the tree had fallen right where Emanuel had been resting. Together they rushed to find Emanuel pinned under the heavy tree unconscious and twisted among the limbs of the tree. Minutes seemed to become hours before Emanuel was chopped out from under the tree that held him captive. Scooped up and carried to the humble medical center by a grief stricken father and mother; he was alive but twisted beyond belief. A taxi was hailed and they rode the 3 hours to the government hospital in Kibi. Medical staff tried to put broken hips and legs back in order but knew they could not make him walk again. Time lapsed and Emanuel struggled to be able to do the simplest things but most of all he wanted to walk as other kids did. He was ridiculed, thrown sticks at, mocked at the shape of his legs and body, and education had stopped for this young boy because he was unable to get to school on his own as the government law states one must. He was determined though and eventually crawled his first day to school two years after the accident. He now is up at 4:30AM and fetches water for the family before his 60 minute walk to his junior high school. Most kids do this walk in 15 minutes and usually meet up with Emanuel just before they all arrive at school together. O what faith and determination Emanuel has shown to us all. In the Lord, all things are possible. Yes, even the hard things.