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How Fast it Changes

A Jon Post

Javan came in last night. What a joy and a privilege to have our good friend and brother join us here, be a part of our ministry, see our lives and share our Thanksgiving day this week. I went to the airport last night to pick him up. I was pretty giddy with anticipation. He is our first visitor and has been my best friend for many years. I really cannot express how much joy I had in my heart last night as I anticipated Javan joining me in my life, even for just the few days he’s here.

We took him to the Oncology ward with us today. Smiles, hugs, children and friends running around, eager to meet our good friend and try out any English phrase they may know.

And then it all changed.

Marcelino… dear, precious, 13-year-old Marcelino… is dying.

Last Friday, he was walking around, laughing, enjoying a new ultrasound image of Anaya, and all around getting better. Today was much different. Today he lay in a dirty hospital bed, deliriously moaning and holding the side of his head in tremendous pain. Today he could not muster the strength to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. Today… Marcelino’s weary body teeters upon the cusp of eternity. The pain in his body is the last thread that holds him to it.

This morning, I laughed, I praised God, I thanked Him for His blessings in my life.

This afternoon, I cried, I praised God, I thanked Him for Marcelino… and asked Him to take my friend quickly.

How fast it changes here. How quickly the joy of life is tempered by the sting and victory of the grave.

How fast it changes.

November 22, 2010
Hospital Ministry
6 comments

Our first visitor! (and other tid bits)

Isn't it cozy?

A Layne Post
We are getting ready for our first visitor!

One week from today, Javan Mesnard, good friend to Jon and member of Voices of the World is coming to spend a week, including Thanksgiving with us, and we could not be more excited! How nice to have a ‘touch of home’ for the holiday. The patients in Oncology are eager to meet him as well… our first visitor!
In preparation we’ve gotten our guest room ready, so go ahead, contact us about when you’d like to come visit!

This year will be our very first Thanksgiving where we get to be the hosts. How fun! Jon is happy to have Javan to assist with his turkey preparation and baking. He will be preparing a bacon wrapped turkey = Yum! My list for cooking/baking is quite long, and I plan to do as much in advance as possible. Our guests, besides Jon and I, will include 4 Americans, 3 Portuguese, 1 Brazilian, 1 South African, and potentially 2 Mozambicans. We’ll update afterward to let you know how it all goes down. =)

25wks

In other news, Miss Anaya is growing quickly and healthily. We have an appointment this week, which I love! Since we get ultrasounds at each appointment, I am always anxious to see my baby girl. I am feeling pretty good these days, though the heat seems to make me a bit more tired. Standing up and looking down, my toes have disappeared. =/

I have already had one Skype baby shower from our Arizona friends, complete with games, gifts, laughter, tears, and prayer. What a blessing that was for me. Our Corpus friends are doing something for me, but I cannot know yet… only that something is happening. AND my church here is having a tea/shower for me and my friend Bibiana, who is due the same week as me, early in December. I really feel overwhelmed with love for our family.

Silly Dad

As for our other ‘baby’, Gasher is growing and becoming a regular member of the family. It is already a little hard to imagine life without him… even if that image seems easier. =) We’ve settled into a nice routine with him, and if we can get him out for a nice walk/run in the morning, he tends to be quite pleasant. The digging, eating my welcome mat, shaking his messy jowls all over, stinky toots, etc. just come with package. Ha!

The Lord is good.

These moments of joy, life, and happiness are such an encouragement to me. Anaya kicking in my belly, while I am visiting at the hospital. Laughing and dancing in the kitchen with my husband, while the dogs barks in confusion of the ruckus. Phone conversations with my family. An upcoming visit from a friend.

Thank you Lord.

November 14, 2010
Around the house, Mozambique, Personal
6 comments

One Year Ago Today

A Jon Post

One year in Africa. A month in Botswana, two months in Mozambique, two months in Angola, one month in Namibia and finally, 6 more months in Mozambique. Twelve months in Africa.
And today, one year in, a painful reminder of the reason we are here.
Today, Oombi died. The three-year-old son of my good friend Albano entered the hospital 10 months ago with a cancerous tumor in his eye. Albano brought his son to the Maputo Central Hospital and lived with him, slept in the same bed, spent every long day caring for his son and waiting to take him home. He goes home on Wednesday in a casket.
We knew and loved Oombi. We visited him and his father. Over the last 6 months I’ve sat countless times with Albano, praying over his sick boy, waiting on the hand of our Lord. I’ve studied the Bible with Albano while he held his tired son in his lap. And I’ve smiled and held Oombi as he toddled over to me with a shy smile.
This is our ministry.
One year in.
We have a vision. It’s not huge for now. It’s not to reach hundreds at a time. It’s to see the one. To love the one. To bring a smile to the one.
One at a time.
Our vision is to use the house the Lord has blessed us with as a place of hope. A place of love.
We’ll call it Casa Ahava. Casa simply means house or home in Portuguese and Ahava is a Hebrew word for love. It’s used in the Song of Solomon 8:7 when speaking of a love that cannot be washed away or quenched by a torrent of water. A love that sees all the depth of suffering and pain that will come as a result of choosing to love and yet chooses anyway. Ahava sees pain and misery and chooses to love.
Casa Ahava will see pain and loneliness and offer hope and rest.
One at a time.
This is our ministry. This is our vision.
November 8, 2010
Hospital Ministry, Mozambique
5 comments

Rosina

A Layne Post

Some of you may have read about Rosina on my other blog. Rosina had a large tumor/open wound on her foot that was not improving, even with treatment. When I spoke with her a week and a half ago, she had just found out that the doctors had decided to amputate her foot and probably a bit of her leg. She was struggling to deal with the news, quite sad and overwhelmed. As I watched her face wince in pain, I tried to encourage her that perhaps the surgery would allow the constant pain to stop. Still, I left her in bed depressed.

I returned a couple days later to Rosina sitting, more wobbling, in bed. She no longer wore the cloth to cover her bald head, making her face look more gaunt than before. I sat with her in bed, trying to help support her, whole avoiding the wounds on her leg. The smell of rotting flesh has become so familiar to me. In her discomfort she tried to ask me to scratch her back. Me, not knowing the word for “scratch” in Portuguese, struggled to understand her wish. After some effort from her tired body, we figured it out, and I was able to scratch her back.

Once again I was reminded of people’s need for a companion in suffering. So many times I feel inadequate, angry that a close friend or family member cannot be there to take my place, someone who can understand them easily, someone who can naturally lay in bed with them. However, in that absence, somehow the Lord has placed me there, and in that person’s desperation they seem to cling to anyone, even a strange, foreign, white, pregnant girl.

The next time I saw Rosina she was laying in bed, unable to sit, unable to talk. In some ways I could not believe she had deteriorated so quickly, yet in other ways I was amazed that her body had somehow kept living so many hours, so many days in excruciating pain. That day was full of prayers, tears, and song, knowing her life on this earth was coming to a close. I begged the Lord in His mercy to take her quickly and to save her soul.

I was unable to return to the hospital until Friday, four days later, due to some vehicle paperwork problems. Thankfully, Rosina was from Maputo and had family in town that would visit a few hours a day. She lost her fight on Thursday; I believe her parents were present. I could not believe she had lived so long.

______________________________________________________________________________

Sometimes I feel like our ministry is slow going. It is taking time to get going, to start the project in our home, to fill up our schedules, etc.  However, in moments like I had with Rosina, I think to myself, “She was worth it. She was worth my time, your support, my living so far from my family… Rosina was worth it.”

And so I thank you. Thank you for supporting Jon and I financially, emotionally and spiritually, for being part of this ministry. Thank you for making it possible for this strange, foreign, white, pregnant girl to sit in the beds of few sick Mozambican ladies and attempt to spread the tangible love of Jesus.

November 1, 2010
Hospital Ministry, Mozambique
6 comments

Silence of God

A Jon Post

There’s a moment. I don’t really know how to describe it. It comes after a prayer, a Bible study, a tear, or a simple breaking of the soul.
It’s the silence of God.
I’ve prayed and cried with a man who holds his dying son in his arms and looks at me and asks me what he should do. He has just heard from his wife that another of his children in his distant home is in the hospital. “What should I do Jon? I can’t go home and leave my son here at the hospital, and my wife cannot watch over my other children while one is in the hospital. What should I do?”
So we pray and cry and wait.
And we’re answered by the silence of God.
See it’s easy to walk into a place of suffering with stories of overcoming obstacles, deliverance, and God’s goodness in times of trouble. But how am I supposed to look into the one good eye of a boy who is about to return home with a tumor hanging over his other eye because the one hospital in the country with chemotherapy is out of its chemotherapy treatment. What do I say to this boy of hope?
And the silence of God hangs thick and it nearly freezes the tears to our cheeks.
Andrew Peterson, a singer/songwriter said this:

There's a statue of Jesus on a monastery knoll
In the hills of Kentucky, all quiet and cold
And He's kneeling in the garden, as silent as a Stone
All His friends are sleeping and He's weeping all alone
And the man of all sorrows, he never forgot
What sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought
So when the questions dissolve into the silence of God
The aching may remain, but the breaking does not

I think Jesus knows what the Silence of God feels like. I think He’s intimately acquainted with the torture of the soul that comes with a desperate prayer and the inky blackness that drapes over the heart in response.
I think Jesus hasn’t forgotten the sorrow that Albano, Marçelino and Rosina carry.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.(Isaiah 53:3)
Wow… a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
See, I may not understand what my friends in oncology go through. I may not be able to wrap my mind around the intensity of the pain that they experience every day, hour, and ticking second in their beds.
But the man of sorrows does. He does. He’s familiar with their suffering.
What other God could I turn to than this? What other God answers sorrow and suffering, not by waving a magic wand and making us all smile and making it all go away… but by joining us in it.
Christ Jesus… the man of sorrows. He knows deeply the silence of God.

October 24, 2010
Hospital Ministry
8 comments
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