2010 July 12 Archive | jon and layne heller

A Layne Post

The past couple of weeks Jon and I both had some pretty bad colds, first him, then me. Because the patients at the hospital are on Chemo, it is better for Jon and me not to risk passing on our little sickness. Jon missed a couple days, and then I missed all of last week. I realized that I really do miss the sweet people there, and my heart was warmed that they asked for and missed me as well!

The World Cup is over. Congratulations Spain! Now that it has ended, our lives and schedules are about to shift. Due to visiting hours and coordinating with other volunteers, Jon and I can only be visiting in the Oncology Ward on our usual Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays for 2-3 hours at a time. At this point, we are not positive what we are going to do with the rest of our time.

There are some options, and Jon and I are in prayer about these. We do not want to “do” just to “do”, but we want to be passionate and obedient to the Lord. We also want to be faithful stewards of our time and your support. We desire to fill our days with service and love for the community. At this point, finding the best ways to do that may take some time. Please feel free to ask us any questions or raise any concerns.

We still want to get our house ready to have people stay, however, there are many steps to take before we can do that, which you guys can pray with us about. I’ll list them to make it a bit easier:

We need to obtain permission from our landlord. Due to the nature of what we are asking, essentially to allow people to come and die here, we feel it is best to speak with him in person. Because he lives in South Africa, the next time we can do that will be the beginning of September. We want to be smart and not rush things because of our passion, and we believe that waiting will better our chances of success.

We need a partnership with the hospital staff. We want to work hand-in-hand as a support and help to them.

We need some legal backing and possibly some permits. If people die here, we need to be above board and not run the risk of being ‘blamed’.

There are certain cultural ‘rules’ we have to take into consideration. (Paying for funerals and whatnot.)

So that is where we are at. Tuesday we are heading to South Africa, again, to try and obtain our resident visa. The resident visa allows us to apply for our resident permit here in Mozambique. If all goes well, we will apply later this week.

We put a new video in our “Some of Our Stories” tab. Click here to watch it or click on the “Gas and Visa in Africa” in the column on the right.

We love you guys!