A Layne Post
On Friday this week, it will have been 6 months since we left the United States. And what a whirlwind it has been! We have stayed in 5 different countries for weeks to months at a time. (Two week minimum) We have loved deeply and lost tragically; and all of it has opened our hearts to know Jesus more and more.
He is beautiful and terribly mysterious.
Tonight we were chatting with new friends, explaining how we plan to live in Africa for the rest of lives, or at least as far as we can see in the future. It really feels like home; we are so comfortable here. Every now and then I try to imagine us back in States, living life… and I can’t. We belong here; God placed this place, this continent, in the core of our beings. We are captured. I believe the Lord knew this before we were knitted in our mother’s wombs.
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While in Angola we visited the hospital one day. We were supposed to visit a sick young girl, the daughter of the missionaries’ friends; however, when we arrived she had been taken into an emergency operation and was not doing well. The doctor kept telling us it was bad, very bad. Minutes after being there, the father was taken aside and told his thirteen year old daughter had died of appendicitis.
Wobbling he came of the room in a state of shock. After a few helpless sobs, he knew he had to find his wife, her mother. She had just gone to the river to wash some clothes, a simple task, one she does everyday. But today was not ‘everyday’. I knew she would never be able to forget this day. He went to find her with the little strength and sanity that he had.
I wanted to hide; I shouldn’t have been there. This was private, and I was a stranger, an intruder. I tried to blend into the wall.
The body, so small and petite, so young, was wrapped in sheet and taken on a stretcher into the chapel. I heard the wailing coming in the distance. My previous detachment suddenly began to crumble, as I was drawn in. I slipped behind a pillar.
Her mother, physically supported by the shoulders of her husband, came wailing, thrashing, and singing out the name of her dead daughter. It was haunting. Other women joined in the wailing, almost in dancing movements around the body. It was raw grief, eerily beautiful and confident.
As I stood outside, behind my pillar, sobs welled up for the loss this family was experiencing. This life here; loss is common, closer it seems.
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Sitting on the front steps of the hospital in Menongue I thought of my friends at the hospital in Maputo, and I longed to be with them, to be the arms of Christ once again to the sick and dying, to people I knew and who knew me.
The Lord knows what will satisfy us more than we could ever muster up. Six months ago when we left the United States, we would have never imagined our new found passion, but our mysterious Lord in His beautiful ways knew.
I cannot wait to see what else He has in mind.
Thanks for your continued love and support. We think about and pray you, individually; we love you so much. We have no new health news for now, though I haven’t been sick this week. Praise God!
Short hair for me; 6 months of beard for Jon