"How Can You Give Up?"

Eighteen months ago, little Donald Morton was toddling around his father's farm near Archerwill, Saskatchewan like any other healthy two-year-old. Then he developed a limp. Arthur Morton took his son to the local doctor for treatment, but the limp grew worse. The child's arms and legs lost their chubby firmness. His father saw him "grab at things and miss them by inches. He couldn't handle his toys and he'd run into the furniture and knock things over."

Farmer Morton took his blue-eyed son from doctor to doctor, dipping deep into his meager savings. Finally Donald's illness was diagnosed: subdural hydroma, or water on the brain, usually the result of a head injury that tears the tissue surrounding the brain, allowing cerebro-spinal fluid to become pocketed under the parchment-like membrane between skull and brain. An operation to relieve the pressure was unsuccessful.

Slow Starvation. Donald began to have convulsions; he was slowly starving because muscular contraction made it almost impossible for him to swallow. Arthur Morton sold three of his eight cows to pay for a plane trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, last April. There Donald's case was considered again. The doctors' verdict: hopeless.

Back in Saskatchewan, Arthur Morton clung doggedly to hope. In his newspaper he read of an evangelist in Costa Mesa, Calif, who was said to be curing the sick by prayer. Ignoring the advice of doctors, he decided to make the 2,800-mile trip with his son, by then scarcely able to breathe, and wasted to a shadowy 20 pounds.

Unable to afford the $230 plane fare, Morton took the bus. On the back seat he sat upright with Donald cradled in his arms, fed him carrot juice and Pablum, comforted him when his pains grew worse, breathed air into his nostrils when he choked. At one point a party of drunks tried to force the Mortons off the back seat because they were taking up too-much room. "For the first time in my life," said gentle Farmer Morton, "I resisted."

Answered Prayers. After a nightmare trip of six days & nights, the Mortons got to Costa Mesa. There the father and Evangelist William Branham prayed over the boy. "Then," says Arthur Morton, "our prayers were answered." Reading of the Mortons' journey in a Los Angeles newspaper, an elderly Pasadena woman persuaded Brain Specialist William T. Grant to examine the boy, guaranteed hospital and medical expenses. She too had had what doctors called a "hopeless" subdural hydroma, and had been cured of it by surgery.

Last week in Pasadena's St. Luke's Hospital, Donnie Morton was perking up after an operation to relieve the pressure on his brain. He had already gained four pounds, was able to whimper and "wriggle like live bait" as he lay in his father's arms. Although another operation was scheduled, and Donald's recovery still depended on how quickly nature could rebuild his wasted body, Arthur Morton was convinced that his son would live. "How can you give up?" he said. "Look at the spunk in him. God will not let the spark go out."

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