Category: Hospital Ministry

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.

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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

Layne

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

Jon

Hospital Ministry

8 comments

Joyful Farewell

Recently at the hospital it seems there have not been as many patients. I think there is currently a shortage on medication, so people are being sent home to wait until it arrives. Still, there are the few, the few that are worth our time and worth our energy.

Amigos

It isn’t often we see friends who have been in the hospital a long time go home with hope for a healthy life. This Wednesday, however, Sobú, a man from Jon’s Bible study will be released. He has lost 11months with his wife and children and his right eye to the hospital, but he has not lost his life… or his smile. Today we talked and rejoiced together with him about the fact that God has not abandoned him. How faithful is our God. While healing and health is not the only way the Lord reveals His faithfulness, it is a breath of fresh air.

We also talked about the sweet upcoming reunion with his family, the impatient waiting until Wednesday, the first meal he wants to eat, etc. While we will miss his presence at the hospital, our hearts are full of joy and hope for his future. We want to send him home covered in prayer. Will you pray with us?

Pray that the tumor will not return to Sobú’s eye, or anywhere else.
Pray the the current wound where his eye has been removed will heal completely and without infection.
Pray that his left eye would properly adjust, as he is currently having some trouble seeing properly, especially when reading.

We'll miss him!

Thank you for your involvement in our ministry, your involvement in Sobú’s life. Thanks for making it possible for Jon and I to be here; it is such a privilege.

The following a song we’ve recently been singing from the Passion: Awakening album. It is our heart, our mission.

King of Heaven (Isaiah 61)

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh
King of heaven come down

We’ll sing the gospel to the poor
We’ll go to comfort those who mourn
You’ll put together what’s been torn
King of Heaven

We come together in the wave of God
We stand together in Your great compassion
Pouring out our hearts and lives
Fill us up with an expectation

We’ll sing the news of all Your grace
We’ll help the broken-hearted praise
You’ll put Your glory on display
King of Heaven

You help the broken cities rise
Out of the wreckage You’ll bring life

October 11, 2010

Layne

Hospital Ministry

5 comments

Meet My Friend

A Layne Post

I’d like to introduce you to Carlotta.

Carlotta is a friend of mine, an albino woman in the Oncology ward. I’ve visited with her for months, giving her a special place in my heart. She currently has a tumor coming out of her eye, which causes a lot of pain all day, every day. She is a young mom to a precious little girl, Bernacia, her pride and joy. Because Carlotta comes from the north, the time she spends in the hospital is time away from her quickly growing daughter.

Last month she was able to make a quick trip home between treatments, which was such a blessing. She didn’t have a cell phone, so it was her first contact with Bernacia in months. Being so young, Bernacia didn’t understand the large bandage on her mommy’s eye and continued to ask her to remove it. Now Carlotta has a phone, so she may get to check on her daughter every once and a while.

I always wonder if mommies will come back to finish their treatment after returning home. How hard it must be to leave, not only once, but twice, this time knowing how horrific the hospital is.

Carlotta returned last week.

She seems weaker. Thinner. Oh, she is so thin. Her pain seems stronger now… like it is spreading into the left side of her brain. Her body twitches from the knife like pain every few minutes. All I know to do is sit next to her and pray.

Carlotta had some money to buy juice, but she explained that she cannot walk to the store to get it. That was something I could do. I could walk just fine. Marcelino, a dear boy from Oncology, who was currently not on treatment, walked with me and showed me where I could get the juice. (I would have been so lost without him!)

Arriving back at the hospital, Carlotta was so grateful and quickly wanted to sip on her cold orange juice. I think I would have chugged it, but she drank a little and had to stop. A few minutes later I helped her as she vomited in her hospital alloted bucket.

If you can remember, pray for Carlotta this week; she seems to be struggling more.

September 11, 2010

Layne

Hospital Ministry, Mozambique

10 comments

A Broad Smile

A Jon Post

I spent the afternoon with a little boy in my lap, talking, laughing, holding… while poison dripped into his veins. He started day 1 of 5 of chemotherapy today. Little Tomé and his brave little smile.
Every time I come to the hospital Tomé comes running. He’s 10 years old and has lived at the hospital for 6 months now.
Alone.
His father dropped him off at the hospital 6 months ago with incredible pain in his stomach. He later had a cancerous tumor removed from his abdomen and has been doing 5 day chemo treatments on three week intervals ever since.
Alone.
He hasn’t seen his father or mother the entire time.
This post was actually supposed to be about the riots and civil unrest in the city of Maputo over the past week. Layne and I ended up stuck in our house while we waited for the violence that swept through the city to calm down. We weren’t able to go visit our friends at the hospital or even see if they were okay there. The hospital is right in the middle of city and was surrounded by rioters.
I was going to go on and on about the country of Mozambique and what would incite people to burn cars in the streets and bring the city to a stand-still.
But today I spent the afternoon with a little boy in my lap. A little boy usually a bundle of energy and looking for someone to hold him, someone to whom he can belong, someone to call him… mine. Usually Layne and I are called “Tio Jon and Tia Elayna”. Uncle Jon and Aunt Layne. But today, while little Tomé sat in my lap, a woman walked by, saw us, smiled and said “Tomé has been asking for his daddy. I’m glad you came. Tomé has been asking for you.”
I don’t think I’ve earned such a reverent title in Tomé’s life. I think he’s just desperate for someone to whom he can belong. And I’m glad he feels safe enough with me for that to be true of Layne and me.
This is the vision. This is it. We just want to do it in our own home. We want to look after the orphan in his distress. We want to visit the sick. We see Jesus there. Sitting in a hospital bed, arm swollen from countless IV chemo treatments, a piece of gauze taped over a painful sore, with a broad smile on His face.

Thanks friends and family and supporters. Tomé has a family because you keep us here. His broad smile is worth our time.

Thanks.