He’s
only a year old, but Borhkuu Amralt has traveled halfway around the world from
Mongolia to get a life-saving surgery in San Antonio, Texas on Friday. A
non-profit group called HeartGift San Antonio made his trip and his incredible
operation possible.

The
baby was born with a congenital heart defect, a hole. “Because of this hole,
his heart works overtime and he has a daily competition between being able to
breathe and being able to eat,” explained pediatric heart surgeon Dr. John
Calhoon of the U.T. Health Science Center.

Holly McPherson
is a volunteer who is opening up her San Antonio home as a host parent for
Amralt. “It’s been such a blessing. I think the gift has been for us,”
McPherson said. “His parents are not here. So I’m trying to be the mom that he
doesn’t have and give all of my love and care and concern to him that his mom
would.”

 Calhoon and his
colleagues open up Amralt’s tiny chest. They put him on a heart/lung machine to
keep him alive while they stop his heart to work on it. Using a piece of tissue
from the sac around his heart, they patch the hole that would have shortened
his life.

He’s taken off
the machine, and his newly-mended heart starts beating again on its own. In
just two-and-a-half-hours, this child from a foreign country now has the chance
for a long and health life. It’s a chance he would not have had without the
help of CHRISTUS and caring medical professionals.

 “It allows us one kid at a time to be an
ambassador to the world,” Calhoon stated, “to tell the world America’s not as
bad as people perceive us to be now. And it’ll change this child’s life.”