Everyone is so kind. And the interest and support from all over the world is amazing. 

I know so many are wondering what really happened to our boys. 

Friday morning I woke up feeling fine and thinking about everything that needed to happen that day. We had planned to go to a few thrift stores with Amber in the morning. In the afternoon there was an important meeting for the local homeschool group. Recently there had been some difficult times and I had been asked to sit on a panel with two other women to help bring resolution and a way forward. It’s rare that I go away and leave the children at home by themselves but I thought that this time they’d be ok for a few hours with Alicia. 

Soon I started sneezing alot. It was kind of odd and I wondered if it was an allergy bothering me. As I drove everyone into town I thought it was weird that I just felt worse and worse. 

Till we got home around noon my head was throbbing so much and I felt feverish. I knew there was no way I could go anywhere. I sent apologies for my absence at the meeting and decide to sleep and see if I could wake up feeling better. I didn’t know then that would be the last time I’d sleep that long in a bed for a few days. 

Around 3:30 I thought the least I could do was help Steele with a lesson in the program we had recently started to strengthen his reading skills. 

I remember sitting at the table with Steele and everyone else crowding around to watch as we worked on the laptop. I kept hoping I’d be able to get the lesson done. I felt like the only thing I could really do was hold my head in my hands. 

We finished around 4:15. I looked at my phone and saw that someone wanted me to give them a call. I decided to go out and sit on our patio and see if the sunshine made me feel better. 

Sometime in the afternoon I had grabbed one of Zahra’s old muslin baby blankets. I was hoping it would be gentler on my nose that I felt like I needed to blow continually. 

I sat down on the bench on our patio in between the two pillows, started the call thinking about how I wished I could go and lay down again.

The children had said in the morning that they wanted to grill hamburgers for supper. It seemed like a good idea if I was going to be gone in the afternoon. I couldn’t remember the last time we had made hamburgers. 

Just then I heard a loud sound like an explosion. I thought that maybe a tire had exploded out on the street. I hoped it wasn’t a gunshot. I was just going to ask the children what happened and looked towards our grill to see Stewart covered in flames and an unearthly yellow glow. He was hitting himself with his hands and running to get away from the flames. 

I started shouting “Roll, don’t run!!” Over and over as I ran toward him. I threw the muslin baby blanket over his head to hopefully put out the flames. I don’t know that it helped that much. I finally grabbed him and pushed him down calling out “Roll! Roll!”

I don’t have any memory of where Steele was during all this. He had been standing beside Stewart as he was lighting the grill for supper. The coals had just a little flame. They were using a yellow lighter fluid gel to get the fire going stronger. 

Instead as he was pouring out the gel it must have ignited into a huge fireball. Steele said he remembers closing his eyes and his face just feeling really, really hot. 

Once I saw the flames on Stewart had gone out I left him on the ground and ran yelling inside for Stennet, Alicia and cool water. They say the only time you should yell at your children is when there is a fire. I heard one of them say later they had never heard me yelling like that. 

I must have run past Strauss who was standing on the porch the whole time. I think he was frozen in place. 

I yelled for them to starting pouring cool water over the boys as I ran back outside for my phone. 

Steele had run into the kitchen and tried to put his face into the sink of dish water. Alicia stopped him. He got some water and ran outside wanting to pour it on Stewart. 

I called Luke and told him to come right away because we had a bad accident. I hung up on him and called Bethany Torkelson and asked her to tell Verlin to come right away because some of the boys were burned. Verlin was a firefighter in Canada. Years ago Bethany was majorly burned so I knew they had personal experience. Alicia and I both called Amber and asked if she could come and bring her B&W. 

I ran back into the kitchen and found Stennet, Alicia and our house helper Emily pouring cool water by the gallons over the boys. The floor was swimming with water. I told them they had to keep going because we needed to cool the their burns. We also gave them a an inflammatory pain reliever. 

Luke got there first followed by Verlin. They took over Stewart’s care carrying him on a cushion out to our porch. We placed washcloths over Stewart’s and Steele’s burns and kept pouring cool water over them both. It was hard to know who I should be caring for. It was obvious that Stewart’s burns were worse but Steele seemed to be the most traumatized. Both had burns all over their faces. Stewart was also burned all over the front and back of his arms and his chest. Later we even discovered a burn on his upper leg. 

With all the cool water Stewart soon started shaking uncontrollably. We were concerned shock could set in. We called our neighbor who is a nurse practitioner to come. Because his arms were badly burned she couldn’t take his blood pressure. But she kept monitoring his eyes and alertness to see how he was doing. 

We explained that we did not in anyway want to do the conventional hospital burn treatment. It was hard to know if we could manage his care at home. But it was even harder to know if we could find a hospital that would allow the B&W treatment. 

The details are a bit of a blur. Justin came with an anti inflammatory I asked him to get. Sterling brought a small case of grape juice. We kept giving the boys lots of juice because we knew hydration was so important. I had called our doctor to see if he could come and give an assessment but he wasn’t in the office. 

Around 2 hrs after it seemed like Stewart was stabilizing. Something upset him and he vommitted badly. Then we knew we needed to at least get him an IV. 

I called our family doctor again and he said they were almost ready to close but a specialist we knew would wait till we got there. 

He took one look at Stewart and said he had to at least go to the hospital for IV and to make sure he hadn’t inhaled any flames. We told him about our treatment we preferred for the burns. 

The hospital was new in town so it was a first for either Luke or I to visit. The head doctor was an Egyptian Muslim who met us in the treatment room and wondered if our treatment was for religious reasons. Before we could even answer he said they can’t force us to do something against our religion. We would need to sign off that we refused their treatment. It seemed to really help that our regular family doctor was there seeing a patient. He knew us and I’m sure filled them in on how crazy our ideas could be at time. 

As different as this “jungle medicine” as our doctor jokingly called it was they seemed genuinely interested in the outcome. The head doctor even joked that if he saw positive results he’d be asking us for free samples. 

All seemed to be going well. Verlin and Bethany with the help of our neighbor were able to apply the first dressing of B&W in the treatment room. Around midnight they finished and left to go home to their families. My neighbor said more than once there’s no hospital in Kenya that would ever let someone walk in with a container of salve and a bunch of leaves to dress a wound. 

The nice head doctor looked at Luke and I and said “ok you can go home to sleep now and we’ll take Stewart to the HDU (a level below the ICU) unit and take care of him.” I wonder how big both mine and Luke’s eyes got as we looked him.

Luke told him “we’re not leaving Stewart here.”

The Dr just looked back at us. I wasn’t sure if he truly thought we were the craziest people he had ever met. 

He explained that he couldn’t have parents in the ICU. He had to preserve the dignity of the other patients. For a little we just all stared each other down. Luke just said again that we can’t leave him here. 

The doctor looked at me and I just told him that I’m a mother and I couldn’t just leave Stewart alone. 

He shook his head and finally said we could stay with Stewart in a private room. 

He then asked where Stewart went to school. We told

him he was homeschooled and I was the teacher. The doctor looked at us and just said something about the teachers always being the difficult ones and laughed. 

Luke and I both knew that we really liked this doctor. It felt like God gave the best possible outcome. It would have been a challenge to keep Stewart hydrated at home. And the nurses and doctor were very gracious and allowed us to treat Stewart’s burns with the B&W. 

• this is just an account of Stewart (13) & Steele’s (9) accident Friday afternoon. Stewart was discharged from the hospital Sunday evening and we continue his care and wound dressings at home. While we stayed in the hospital with Stewart our children cared for the siblings at home. Alicia took care of dressing Steele’s face.

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