Jon Archive | jon and layne heller

Learning to Create Family Out of Brokenness

A Jon Post

There is much brokenness here. There are broken families, broken spirits, broken bodies and broken hearts. We swim in it.
One shares about a faithless husband who brought a deadly virus into the bed with him which only adds to the mountain that she must climb to find health…
here is brokenness…

Rosa

One shares about the family that sent her away because they were afraid of her cancer and her tumor, thinking it was infectious and that the plague of cancer must be driven from their house…
here is brokenness…
One shares of a child not 5 months gone… lost to malaria, tuberculosis, or some other preventable sickness… and now cancer is ravaging the child’s mother…
here is brokenness…
One shares of a 6 year old son who misses his father beyond words… and while the father sits in my back yard his little son cries out to his mother to please let me talk to daddy on the phone first!!!
here is brokenness…

But there is still life.

There is life when Anita comes out of her room singing praises to God in the morning.
There is life when Pedro plays checkers with me and doesn’t want to stop.
There is life when Inês laughs.
There is life when Rosa finds her appetite again.

Though these small things seem inconsequential and minor in comparison to the agony that threatens… these humble signs of life are the driftwood that we find in this tempest of cancer.

Pedro

So this is our broken little family; Jon, Layne, Anaya, Jovie, Karasi, Anita, Inês, Pedro, Rosa and Gasher.

Pedro and Rosa just joined it last week.

We need help.

Our family is running out of money. Pedro and Rosa both need some special care (they both have open wounds that we clean and dress every day) and that only adds to the speed that our bank accounts are drying up.

We need help.
I know there are a lot of people who read this blog and pray for us. The biggest focus of this blog is to keep those who already DO give to us informed and to try to help them feel a part of what is happening here with Casa Ahavá. But beyond that, I know that there are many people who read this who haven’t given.

Please. We need help.

Family Dinner Time

Would you share this on your social networks, tell your friends, tell your church, try to find someone who can do what we cannot: Fund this thing.

We need about $1000 more per month to keep this family going.

We will continue to try to be the hands God uses to heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.

Would you help those hands keep working?

To those of you who are already helping; thanks. We really, really, really do know how much of a sacrifice it is. We do. It’s not small. It’s not forgotten.

Thank you.

Life

May 12, 2014

Jon

Casa Ahava

4 comments

Things I am Praying for in April

A Jon Post

These are the things I’ve found myself praying for this month:

Trust

That my faith would grow as strong as my obedience and that my obedience would grow as strong as my faith.

That Casa Ahavá’s ministry leader would teach me to follow Him closely and that I would never think I’m leading it.

Brave

That Anaya would always trust her daddy.

That I would always look to be the servant of society, not its leader.

That Jovie would be brave.

That my beard would look good with a little grey in it.

That my knees and back would hold out a few more years.

That Christy would remember her husband well and that her children would find their heavenly daddy while they miss their earthly one.

Mending

That my gratitude would always come before God’s provision for my family and my patients.

That Layne would always melt when I hold her

That my dog would stop making such a mess.

That I Anita’s broken heart would mend.

Pirates

That my hands would stay strong enough to catch my daughters when they fall, soft enough to hold my wife when she’s weak, skilled enough to make nice things for my patients and tender enough to hold theirs when they are sick.

That my kids would be able to memorize and sing the pirate song with me that Tigger sings in Winnie the Pooh… “IIIIIIII love to live the piraty life, sailing the seventy seas…”

That I may continue to learn about self-sacrifice and servanthood from the way Layne serves me, my kids and my patients.

Teaching

That we would keep getting to know Anita and Inês as they continue to know and trust us and our family.

That Layne would always believe how much she captures me.

Strong

That Karasi would be strong.

That Christ would redeem and have mercy.

That I could learn from Inês’s years and scars.

That my children would not grow so used to death that they don’t mourn those who die and that they would not be so broken by it that they cannot find wholeness.

Scars

That Layne’s eyes always find mine.

That no one in our home would be afraid to live or scared to die.

Melt

April 12, 2014

Jon

Around the house, Casa Ahava, The Kids

3 comments

Come Meet Filomena

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.

March 16, 2014

Jon

Casa Ahava

1 comment

Pausing for a Breath

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.

March 4, 2014

Jon

Casa Ahava, Rock Climbing

6 comments

This is All We’ve Got Right Now

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.

January 20, 2014

Jon

Casa Ahava, Hospital Ministry, Things we're dealing with

10 comments