A Jon Post
Here is the video interview we did with Filomena while she lived here with us at Casa Ahavá. Please take the time to watch it and remember her with us. If you do not have the whole 10 minutes, I hope you have time to go to the 6 minute mark and watch until 8 minutes and hear how much she loves her family and what God has taught her in her sickness.
A Jon Post
Casa Ahavá’s first patient has left.
Zakarias arrived for the first time in April of last year. He spent 6 months in Casa Ahavá and then returned to his home in Beira. As many of you have read here and here, he came back in January and spent another month in Casa Ahavá with his wife and daughter.
After meeting with his oncologist, we received a final, though not unexpected, response from the oncology ward.
His cancer is untreatable.
Terminal.
Fatal.
So he went home.
We spent many of those days while he was here in January and February talking about how he could prepare his life for its end. We visited multiple government offices to arrange for his veteran’s pension and social security payments to continue to support his young wife and children.
And he went home.
A wonderful doctor in the hospital’s pain management unit prescribed some medicine that has helped him tremendously. His pain levels are much decreased and his sleep time is much more peaceful.
So grows his cancer.
So creeps towards its glory, the spirit of Papa Zakarias.
Upon arriving home, he promptly sent someone to find out information on Filomena. As we mentioned here, we have been unable to contact her.
A neighbor had the news.
She died. Two weeks ago.
Goodbye Sister
So arrived into glory the spirit of dear, sweet, Filomena.
When I heard the news all I could remember was the night I held her trembling body in my arms and willed oxygen into her fluid-filled lungs.
For this, Lord? For this? You saved her that night… for this?
Though I know the answers to the questions and the pain that flooded my heart, when I heard of Filomena’s death, those answers brought little comfort. They brought little relief from the weariness that threatened to overwhelm my spirit.
So entered glory, the spirit of Filomena.
Casa Ahavá; Home of a love that chose pain before ease. Home of a love that chooses flood waters before abandonment.
Now Casa Ahavá welcomes her next love. Now she offers her bed and arms to her next friend.
Dear Tia Anita was all packed and ready to come to Casa Ahavá on Friday, February 21st but paperwork and slow processes turned that into Tuesday afternoon, the 25th. Having spent the last 5 months away from her family and faced with the prospect of the next 2-3 with us, her stand-in family, we made the decision to send her to her home town for two weeks to see her daughters and grandchild before her next treatment. She will be back to stay with us next week on the 11th.
So now we pause. Now we try to breath. Now we remember the Sabbath that our Lord made holy, and we try to keep it holy.
I think God thought up camping/rock climbing for just such a time.
Thanks for praying for us, Zakarias, and for Filomena. It is known and it helps.
A Jon Post
I’ve been trying to write this for a while now. I hate it. I’ve started a few times and keep ending up feeling like I’m forcing something out and trying to do a nice mix of emotion, encouragement, spirituality, faith, and all the other nouns or adjective-nouns that are used to describe what we do/write.
I can’t do that right now.
So here you go:
Eliza died last month. Her tumor grew so big it shut her throat and she couldn’t eat or speak. She died in pan. We couldn’t be there.
Filomena is suffering immense pain, her weight has dropped dangerously low, and her phone number, our only way to communicate with her stopped working. A neighbor in her town far to the northern part of this country tells us she’s been admitted to the hospital there and is dying.
Zakarias came to live with us along with his wife and two year old child. I’ve had many conversations with him since he arrived last Tuesday about his health. He’s dying. He only came back because the pain was too intense and there was no way to get any medicine to control it so he came here. We are trying to help him.
We’re finding moderate success.
He’s dying.
Dosma at the Beach
Two weeks ago a young man named Dosma, an 18 year old boy who had come back to the hospital from his village of Calimane, died. I had known him almost two years. About a year and a half ago I took him to the beach and the little shopping mall that’s near the beach. We spent the afternoon talking and thinking about home, the farm, school, his first girlfriend, his mother, my money, his desire to be rich, his need for Christ.
He died two weeks ago.
This has been a tough start to 2014.
Pray for us.
A Jon Post
Following are a few snapshots of our lives over the last 2 months from a family that did a pretty poor job of communicating with all of you about where we are/what we’re doing. If you don’t have time to read it all please just skip to the end where I list a couple prayer requests.
#1 Week of September 22-28
A mad scramble to figure out if we would be able to get 2 our patients home, to the hospital, or to life-extending treatment in South Africa before we left. A mad scramble to find out if one of our patient’s tumor was operable or he needed to go home, and a bus ticket to send another one home who had finished her treatment and needed to spend her remaining days/months with her family.
Family minus Filomena
Zakarias, the surgeon didn’t respond before we left, we did not know if his tumor was operable, he stayed in our house.
Tomás and Eliza, the day we left for the USA (September 24th) we were up first thing in the morning to buy last minute bus tickets to send them to South Africa for more treatment.
Filomena The Day She Left
Filomena, we purchased a bus ticket and sent her home a few days before we left for the USA to make sure she was with her family after she was discharged with no more options to fight her cancer.
September 24th, we left our house at 11 AM and arrived at Layne’s parents house 40 hours later with all three girls in tow. Thankfully we had the gracious help of Jon’s parents who came to visit us and joined us in our long journey to the USA and helped tremendously on the plane.
(whew, that was a long first snapshot but we did a really bad job of telling everyone who reads this blog that any of that stuff happened before we left)
Jovie Meeting the Dolphins
Anaya Running with Dolphins
#2 Time in Corpus Christi, TX
The Texas State Aquarium with our girls. Grandparents helping them swim and play, as well as cousin time. Sitting with sweet, sweet supporters. Trying to recover from the jetlag and help our girls sleep in new places with new surroundings.
#3 October 30th More Travel
Flight from Corpus Christ to Phoenix. Left Layne’s parents place at 8 and arrived at Jon’s brother’s house 7 hours later. This was our first plane travel with our three girls alone. They are super stars.
Layne and Her Dad
#4 More Family Adjustments
Man… it’s hard doing this furlough thing with 3 little children. We could not ask them to be better sports through all of this but a new bedroom for a month, a new bed for a month, different living space for a month, meeting lots of people (supporters) for the first time on an almost daily basis. Well… it’s tough. Our girls are super stars.
#5 Time in Chandler, AZ
At Uncle Joe’s Duck Pond
Seeing more sweet, sweet supporters. Time with other Grandparents. Time with LOTS of cousins, girls napping in the car a lot.
So there are a few, far from comprehensive or descriptive, snapshots of our lives since September. We are currently in Chandler, Arizona in the USA trying to connect with those who pray for us and give to this ministry. We have been trying to sit down with each of you and we still have a little under two weeks to do that. We are very sorry that we haven’t pursued you and communicated with you all well enough to do that “sit down” better. We are finding out that we need to be more diligent with some things and one is our personal and purposeful communication with team mates.
They See Us Strollin…
Anaya Loves Karasi
In closing this little “snapshot” post. Can we ask you to pray for two things?
Would you pray that our children’s health improves? I don’t know if it’s because they don’t have American immunities built up or if it’s just a bug they would have picked up either way but all three, Anaya, Jovie, and Karasi have bad coughs and are very congested. It’s hard for them to rest and, thus, hard for their parents, especially Layne who still feeds and comforts Karasi in the night. Would you pray for them?
Would you also pray that each airplane on our return flight has LOTS of open seats? Neither Jovie nor Karasi are ticketed for those flights and are traveling as lap children. Anaya still needs plenty of help and attention on the flights and Jovie needs space to move so if we all try to jam into three seats it’s just really hard. Would you pray for our flights? Would you pray that a check-in agent magically upgrades us to first class? Would you pray that we have 15 seats to spread out on and rest on for the 40 hours of travel?
Karasi Loves Jovie
We love you guys. Thanks for loving us, even though we lost touch there for a bit.
A Jon Post
It’s been a busy couple weeks. My parents arrived in Maputo on September 15th, ready to spend some time with our family and see our ministry. They spent our final 1 and a half weeks with us in Maputo before our two month furlough. They got to see us running around, trying to tie up all loose ends, getting our home, Casa Ahavá, ready for two months without us. Patients to and from the hospital, to and from administration records buildings, and seemingly endless errands all led up to leaving our home on Tuesday the 17th and arriving, 40 hours later, in Layne’s parents home. It was exhausting.
So my dad reflected on his trip with my mom and he/they wrote this guest blog this week. They/we hope you enjoy.
A Dan Post
Names That Have Faces
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone and thought, “finally a face with a name”. Maybe a relative or a friend of a friend or just someone you have heard about. Vicki and I, after visiting Jon and Layne, met their first patients. Papa Zakarias, Eliza, Filomena, and Tomás are not just names anymore but faces; real people that were not just names but became “friends”.
We would like to offer a picture through our camera lens of who they are, so you might know their faces:
Papa Zakarias
(Papa Zakarias) A 53-year-old diminutive man sits in comfortable solitude in a plastic chair. The sun’s intense rays cannot
reach him here in the shade of Casa Ahavá, where Papa Zakarias lives with his fellow patients. We often see him in this pose, playing his made-up chords on Jon’s guitar, of which Zakarias has become the unofficial keeper. We want very much to come close enough to hear as he softly sings the words he has written to his wife and young children, the loved ones he has not seen these many months of cancer treatments; but we dare not disturb his privacy, and besides … the language barrier would prevent our understanding of the words. But there are other glimpses into his tender father-heart: the way he looks after the other Casa Ahavá patients; his smiling eyes blessing Jon’s and Layne’s little ones; the longing in his voice – “Ahhh, ….. Jovie …” – embracing the name of Jon’s one-year-old daughter as he cradles the top of her head in a good-bye gesture, knowing it is possibly the last time he will see these children as well. Papa Zakarias is easy to love. And we do – hoping, praying for the good news that he has been deemed a candidate for potentially life-saving surgery to remove the hateful tumor that has banished him to a place so far from home.
Auntie Eliza
(Eliza) We love her Mozambican style: the artfully arranged head turban covering her chemo-bald head, the beautiful wrap-around capulana skirt, the fringed shawl. Eliza’s communication and facial expressions vary from day to day, depending on the level of pain or discomfort she is experiencing. It is a relief to see that she freely trusts Layne with her needs and her pain. We have been in Jon’s and Layne’s home for several days before we see an easy smile on her countenance. We are happy that she, a grandmother herself, has been here at Casa Ahavá for all these months, hugging and cheering our precious grandchildren in our stead. Who, we wonder, is loving on Eliza’s grandchildren for her? Occasionally, and comically, we try to communicate with words, hoping that our body language will come through for us; it often doesn’t and we find ourselves looking to Jon or Layne for interpretation. It is not until the day before Jon and Layne will leave for their 2-month-long furlough, that we see the full expression of Eliza’s love and gratitude toward them. We do not understand her words, but her tears say it all. Again, we pray and hope for this one: God have mercy; help Eliza learn to know You in “the power of an endless life” (Heb. 7:16).
Filomena and Vicki
(Filomena) Quiet. Fragile. Recently bereaved of her 16-year-old son. These words pass through our minds as we think of the short time we knew Filomena before she left 10 days ago to return to her village in the north. Her fellow patients firmly believe that being at Casa Ahavá saved her life – at least for a little while longer. On the day of her home-going, she is happy, excited to be returning to her two young children. In spite of her shyness, she seeks Vicki out for a hug and poses for a picture with her. Somehow, the photo reminds us that, just as He sees the sparrow when it falls, God sees her. That He knows her name and her story. That even though we will never see her again, she leaves her mark. For reasons beyond our understanding, God chose Filomena to live at Casa Ahavá for a few months, to love and be loved there. And it was good.
Tomas
(Tomás) One would never guess from looking at Tomás that he is sick. Strong and handsome with an easy smile, he says little, but he knows. For one of our dinners with the patients, he proudly prepares, in Casa Ahavá’s little kitchen, a delicious Mozambican dish of cooked greens. He enjoys an occasional game of Jenga or checkers with me, Jon, and Papa Zakarias. We wonder what he is thinking on Tuesday morning, when he and Eliza board a bus for a two-month sojourn in South Africa for radiation treatment. Will he see his Casa Ahavá friends again?
Casa Ahavá is Real – A House of Deep Love because of your generosity and prayers.
A place that provides comfort to the sick and dying; a place that forgets cancer; a place that is filled with music; a place where games are played; a place where the women hold little Karasi and remember their own children or grandchildren; a place where life abounds even with the protector and guardian of the house – Gasher the dog! A place of sharing meals together, trying to understand different languages (Vicki and I); a place of realizing that our hope in God is the anchor of our soul and the only answer to life’s challenges; a place of gratitude, listening to the patients express with tears how thankful they are for Jon and Layne and all they do, one in particular saying she would have died earlier if it had not been for them. This is what our prayers and generous giving are supporting.
We walked away knowing that Life is being discovered in the Face of Death.