A Jon Post

I’ve known Pedro for about 8 months now. He first arrived with his 15 year old son who had a cancerous lump on his neck/shoulder. I even wrote about him and his son, Antonio a few months ago when Antonio had surgery on his tumor.

Antonio received 6 months of chemotherapy, had 2 surgeries, and was pronounced cancer free. He went home.

Pedro and Jon last June (Pedro wearing a shirt Jon’s dad sent)

3 months into Antonio’s stay at the hospital, Pedro noticed his right leg swelling and a pain high on his right thigh. A few weeks before Antonio was discharged and sent home we found out why Pedro’s leg was bothering him.

Cancer. Lymphoma.

Antonio went home 3 months ago, Pedro stayed and began his own treatment.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Pedro. Talking about Christ, about his family, about his childhood, his farm…

In quiet moments of honesty, we’ve spoken about being fathers. He has confessed his frustration, his weariness and his silent grief that, though he is the leader and protector of his family, he is here…  600 miles away from the people who need him most.

3 weeks ago his daughter, <**edit** she was 24 years old and had two small children**>, grew very sick. Coughing, fevers, extreme exhaustion…

Pedro’s wife took her to the hospital where she was admitted with tuberculosis. Pedro and I wept and prayed together often as he agonized over his inability to care for his sick daughter. We prayed for her health, we prayed for her mother, we prayed for his family.

Pedro’s daughter died last night.

She stopped breathing in her sleep.

And Pedro didn’t get to say goodbye to his precious girl.

It is with Pedro’s permission that I write his story here. These next few days he will be struggling with an extremely private suffering and I was hesitant to make it so public.

But he asked for your prayers.

We scrambled today to get him home, even planning at one point for me to simply drive him the 600 miles to his house. For a few family reasons it worked out better for him to take a bus, so I accompanied him to the bus station to get his ticket. I’ll be driving him to the bus stop at 2 AM tomorrow so he can start his journey at 3 AM and probably get home by 9 or 10 PM.

It’s a long trip.

And he’s asking for anyone who reads this to pray with him.

Please… please pray specifically for the Pascheco family. Pray that they mourn well. Pray that they remember their daughter and sister fondly. Pray that their knowledge of the fellowship of Christ’s suffering increases their hunger for Him. Pray that they rest.

A Jon Post

“Don’t forget these.”

I tell myself that in, paradoxically, the times we have at the hospital that are filled with either the sting of death or the victory of life.

Last week it was during the victory of life.

14-year-old Edson was about to begin the 14 hour bus ride back home after a visit to oncology here in Maputo. He lived here for a year from December 2010 to December 2011 with his mother and baby sister. We know them well. Edson and his mother were back (his baby sister is old enough to stay with the grandmother and father this time) for a follow-up visit to check to see if the cancer was growing back. Edson had just received the good news that, after the two weeks of staying in a hospital bed waiting for the results, the sonogram test to check for cancer came back clean.

He was free to go!

We had all been expecting and praying for this result but it was good to have the paper in hand to show it. He was leaving at 3 AM the next morning.

On a whim I asked him if he wanted to go for a ride with me to celebrate. We’d go down to a big department store on the beach, walk around and just have a good time saying goodbye.

In my car and to the store we went!

Edson with Anaya Last Year Before He Left

Have I mentioned that Edson wants to be an engineer when he grows up? He wants to design buildings and talks about how he loves to draw and design them already and how, in school, all his classmates come to him and ask him to draw them something when there is a drawing assignment. I told him about how my dad and brother are both engineers and that they design bridges! He was astounded as I told him how they design them to cross huge waterways and tower over landscapes. When I bragged on my younger brother for his integral contribution to the design and construction of one of the biggest bridges in Canada his eyes got huge and his grin wide. He told me he wanted to design the biggest building in Mozambique!

I sprung for a couple bottles of Coke and a couple chocolate candy bars and we went and sat at the beach drinking our cold Cokes and eating our chocolate, talking about his favorite movie, “Homen Verde” (It’s “Hulk” for you English speakers, “The Green Man” as it translates from Portuguese), how there’s a new one with The Green Man in it called “The Avengers” and how well he does in Math class at school. He doesn’t like his Portuguese class and prefers to stick to the science and math subjects.

On and on the conversation went, mingling moments of life’s victory into what has felt recently like a time of death’s sting.

“Don’t forget these.” I told myself again. “These moments are equally as important as the moments we are honored to accompany someone to eternity’s door.”

These moments, moments of life, Coke, and chocolate, are the echoes of the good news that awaits us on the other side of that door. Without these moments, we would have nothing from which we could reference the hope we have for something exponentially better. It is in these moments that Christ’s smile is reflected.

“Don’t forget these.” I told myself… not for the last time.

A Jon Post

As we’ve written before, what we do seems to have a strange and painful rhythm. We see times of joy, rest, and friends recovering from cancer. Then the waves crash back unto a shore washed clean of disease… pain returns… death finds a way.

And we write another story like this.

I didn’t know Moisés very well. I talked to him a few times after he arrived three weeks ago but didn’t have any time to sit with him personally and hear his story. He was laying in his bed when we first met, one face among three new ones. I knew his roommate well, and was surprised to see all 3 new patients there that day. I introduced myself and was pleased to meet new friends and file new names into my head and hope to remember them later.
Moisés sat, shook my hand, and smiled as I told him who I was and why I was there. We shared a few words and spoke of where we were from and  then I entered a conversation with another friend in the room.
I saw Moisés other times as I’d pass through but we never spoke privately.
Until last monday.
I had actually been planning on spending time with a roommate of Moisés who was receiving chemotherapy that day. When I entered, there lay Rui on chemo and there sat Moisés coughing blood. The weight of the two men’s suffering bore down hard on me as I passed the threshold into that room.
Rui could barely talk and lay on his bed with a pounding headache. Moisés looked at me and started talking about his pain. Because he was coughing so much it grew hard to understand him. As he spoke and I strained to hear, I heard the end of a sentence… “I’ll do this until I pass.”
He kept coughing.
I prayed desperate prayers, pleaded for mercy from a merciful God, and tried to keep my voice steady.
A peace swept the room. My words slowed and trust fell on us all soft enough to not make any noise but hard enough to drive our fears out of our hearts. Moisés breathed deeply, Rui gripped my hand tightly, and I breathed an amen. Christ’s hand rested on us and we sat together wordlessly.
I stood up, encouraged both men to rest, and left.
Later that night Moisés sat in a chair next to his bed, put his arms on his bed, put his head down and stopped breathing.

So we write these stories and we wonder whose we will write next.

For now, we pray to the God who holds life and death in His hands, and we trust those hands.

Please pray with us. Pray that lives are not lost, that hope is not forgotten, that Christ is known and that hearts find strength.

Please pray that we hold fast.