Category: Hospital Ministry

A Jon Post

I’ve sat on that same spot of grass many times. I’ve felt my emotions rise there many times. This day was no different. There I sat, out in front of Oncology, spinning a twig in the dirt, chatting and listening to a group of ladies who live in the cancer ward.
They live there.
There is no where to go for them. They know no one in this huge city of 2,000,000 inhabitants, they have no family within 1000 miles of this place, they have no transport, they have no money.
They live in a cancer ward.
Wake up at 3 AM. Take a freezing cold shower. Take 200 mg of ibuprofen for the pounding headache resulting from late-stage cancer and an IV chemo treatment. Crawl back onto a thin mattress under a ratty sheet. Try to rest. Eat. Sleep. Take 500 mg of paracetamol (generic Tylenol). Eat. Try to rest. Watch a day crawl by and blur into the weariness that chronic pain  and vomit inducing treatment bring in their dance of suffering.
Every day.
For 6 months.
So there I sat, spinning a twig in the dirt. Pedro, one of the two men who is staying in Casa Ahavá, came to visit with me that day. He too sat in the grass, visiting and chatting along with me with this small group of ladies.
“We have no where to go. We have no way to forget that we are sick. We can’t forget that we are dying here.” Regina said, smiling at me through the pain of the truth she was telling. “At least Pedro and the others there at Jon and Layne’s house can forget about being sick.”
Pedro smiled, nodded, and the conversation continued in another direction.
But I kept thinking about what Regina said. I smiled and we kept chatting but inside my heart broke. Oh, how I wanted to say to Regina and the 6 other women there, “Please come to my house! Please come stay with me and let Christ help you forget that you are sick! Please come live in my home with my family and live the truth that you are not running out of life! Come to Casa Ahavá and run into life with us! Please… come forget that you are sick.”
And inside God said, “Be faithful with what I’ve entrusted to you and your family.”
Then we walked upstairs, into the cancer ward itself, and sat with some men in one of the men’s rooms. I talked to Papa Benjamin who sits on his bed all day.
Waiting.
Waiting for his body to be ready to drip a toxic mix of chemicals through a vein in his wrists meant to prejudice his cancer just a little more than his body.
Waiting.
Waiting to go to a home 1600 miles away and bury his 3-year-old daughter, Anita, who died last week with a high fever.
Waiting.
Wishing he too, could forget.
And my heart broke.
Because I have no room for Papa Benjamin. I have no room for Regina. I have no room for Anna. I have no room for Orlando. Casa Ahavá is full with our four patients.

Campande

But for now… We can help 4 precious people forget they are sick. We can watch World Cup games, we can go to the beach, we can go get ice cream in the park, we can go to the huge open air market and buy shawls for the ladies, belts for the men, we can sit in my back yard and watch three little girls play on swings and plastic cars and watch a big slobbery dog run around with a rubber chew toy in his mouth.

Inês

We can sing to Christ of His love with a guitar and read the Bible in lawn chairs and smile together. We can help Pedro, Inês, Campande, and Sara forget they are sick. We can help them run into life.

Pedro

That’s Casa Ahavá.

That’s what you’re a part of.

Sara

A Jon Post

In April, last year, I got a phone call from the doctor who leads up the Social Services department of the hospital. We had spent years submitting papers, meeting with hospital doctors/leaders/administrators. We wanted to do it right, we wanted to wait for timing and favor to come together so that we could know, know, that it was ready. Last year in April my phone rang. It was a short conversation, by I hung up with a shaking hand. The director of the largest hospital in the country had approved us to partner with the Oncology ward at his hospital and house some of his patients. We called this fledgling project, Casa Ahavá.

It’s been a little over a year since our first patient came to stay with us. We’ve had 7 more since. Each has stayed at least 3 months, some up to 6. Each has become an intimate part of our family for the short time they are here.

Zacarias

Eliza

Tomás

Filomena

Anita

Inês

Pedro

Rosa

And more to come.

I was looking back over our blog and wanted to share something with you… mostly just a bunch of names. I’ve listed these names once or twice before but I wanted to give some scope to what we feel God gave us to do. We arrived here and felt God stir our hearts to minister in this way back in 2009. It’s been almost 5 years since that time and we’ve chronicled a lot of stories we’ve been privileged to know. Most of them are filled with pain. Most, but not all, ended in death.

I know I’ve asked you to pray with us before and I’m asking again. My faith has been growing in regards to prayer recently and I know I don’t do it enough. So I need help. Would you pray with me? Would you pray that we continue to be given the strength to serve?

Below is a list of names of people we’ve met and told a personal story about here on this blog. Don’t go reading all of them. But if you recognize one or two, would you open that story and read it again and pray. Pray that God gives what is needed to invite any future stories like it to share in the story of Casa Ahavá.

Pray with us please.

Emilia 

Joaquim 

José Manuel 

Tomé here and here

Carlotta 

Sobú 

Rosina 

Marcelino 

Joanna 

Lúcia here and here

Rudu 

Esperança 

Jonathan 

Nelson 

Maninha 

Da Luz 

Marta 

Fernando 

Cleo 

Silénçia 

Christino 

Nelsa 

Monica 

António 

Alice 

Nelson 

Moisés 

Edson 

Pedro 

Manuel 

Samuel 

Pedro 

Xavier 

Rosário 

Dosma 

A Jon Post

Lord, not yet… not now.

Praying out loud, then in my heart, then under my breath, then moving my lips, in English, in Portuguese…

Lord… not yet. Be merciful… not yet.

Filomena Loves Holding Karasi

Filomena sat in the back of my car in a sweaty panic.
“I can’t breathe, Jon. I can’t breathe!”
“I know. I know. You’re going to be fine. You’ll be fine. Just hold on.”

Lord… be merciful. Don’t let her die… not yet.

Our little car screeched onto the sidewalk in front of the 24 hour clinic and I wrapped my arm under Filomena and got her inside.
“She can’t breathe! Where is a doctor?” I asked, trying to communicate urgency to the man behind the desk, while communicating calm to Filomena at my side. “She can’t breathe.”

Lord… be merciful.

In a small examination room, oxygen being piped over her nostrils and mouth, Filomena sat heaving her chest up, desperately trying to fill lungs that refused to inflate and offer her blood its critically important oxygen supply.

“Take it off, I can’t breathe with it on.” Filomena said, clutching at the oxygen mask and pulling its elastic band over her head.
“Wait, dear sister. Wait. You need this air. You need it. I know it feels horrible but trust it. Trust me. You need it. It’s helping. Wait, dear sister.”
“I can’t breathe, Jon. I can’t.”

Lord, not yet… not now.

Filomena had been feeling fine until 9 PM last Sunday night. She had eaten dinner, watched a little TV and at 9, lain down to rest. Her problem started as a slight difficulty in drawing full breaths. She described it as a weight on her chest that she couldn’t take off. She let Layne and I know when it started and we both went to her room to see how she was. She was clearly struggling to breathe so we made the cautious decision to get her to a doctor and make sure it wasn’t anything serious. While I went to find my car keys and wallet, her breathing drastically worsened. When I came back, ready to drive her to see a doctor, she couldn’t draw enough breath to stand up.

Lord… PLEASE

On the examination table she sat there quietly, swaying back and forth from exhaustion but unable to lie down because the little breaths she was drawing couldn’t be found when she lay down. I held her against my chest and kept praying.

Lord… PLEASE

Layne, at home with the girls, echoed every prayer I prayed and rallied our families to join us.

LORD, WAIT! NOT YET!

An emergency X-ray of her chest showed her lungs were full of fluid. The doctor inserted a tube through her ribs and into her right lung. 1.8 liters of yellow fluid came crawling out.
1.8 liters. The average female lung capacity is 4.2 liters.
That’s for both lungs.

Lord… please… be merciful.

Filomena started breathing. It wasn’t perfect, her left lung was still full of fluid, still not doing its job, but she was breathing. She was breathing.
And then she started resting.
At 2:30 I finally felt comfortable leaving her resting. The clinic told me they would transfer her to the central hospital’s Oncology ward the next morning at 6. Come back at 5:30 they said.

Lord… be merciful.

A couple hours rest at home and then back to the clinic to make sure she got on the clinic’s little ambulance and then back home to get two of our other patients and get them to the hospital for scheduled doctor’s visits.
The day blurred by as Filomena was first admitted into the Central Hospital’s emergency room (as is common for clinic-hospital transfers), seen by a doctor there, had a new X-ray taken, had blood tests done, and then… finally… transferred to Oncology to be seen by her oncologist.
The Lord was merciful. She is alive. She’s alive. She’s still very tired a week later, but she’s alive and she’s breathing normally.
He was very merciful.
Filomena is still with us. She’s here and God is good.

Oh, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

A Layne Post

Last weekend we hosted an afternoon get together with the Doctors of Oncology. All but one were in attendance, and the one that was unable to come had planned on it, but there was a family emergency. What a blessing to have their interest and partnership! We praise the Lord for His favor. It was a sweet time of them becoming better acquainted with Casa Ahavá, our vision, and our family.

Now that we’ve shared with you our growing vision for Casa Ahavá, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts and feelings about it all. (If you aren’t sure what I am talking about, check the previous post and the pdf included and the video.)

Thinking about the ability to offer a place of comfort and a feeling of home and community to more patients is exciting. Jon and I are consistently approached by patients eager to leave the hospital, wearied by months in the same bed and lack of visitors. With hope in their voices they ask about our project, and Jon and I have to tell them we are sorry but the space is currently filled, though we will keep them in mind if a space opens up. Then when space opens does up, we still have make hard decisions as to who to invite to our home. It is never easy. If we expand we still may not be able to accommodate all that have need, but I would still love to offer more.

I’ve been thinking about managing more patients, their appointments and medications. That seems a little overwhelming; it would require some good organization! We do well enough right now with four, but 10 would be a big increase. Often times their appointments and needs to be at the hospital would overlap so we could transport many patients there at once. That would be nice, but without doubt it would increase our trips back and forth from the hospital, which can feel taxing in the crazy traffic, especially during rush hour. Often it can be 45 minutes or more in the car just one way (More often than not, this is Jon’s responsibility as I stay home with the girls to get them out of bed and get the day started). When feeling well, the patients can take public transport, so that may have to happen a little more frequently depending on schedules.

Then there is thinking about our need for a bigger place and all that is involved with that. The money seems near impossible. Typing all the zeros in $500,000 just makes me want to give up. However, on the other hand, it is so big that I know if it happens it was an act of God alone. There is a certain peace in that. The idea of a bigger place comes with the work of moving and making a new place home with 3 babies, which sounds exhausting, and then maintaining that new bigger place – more work – more money. I really have to turn it all over to the Lord, trusting one step at a time. Deep in my soul, I am at complete peace – something only possible supernaturally.

Dreaming of space for a fitness/wellness room, a garden area, a learning room/library, and chapel area is all rather exciting. Sometimes I get sad seeing our patients with little to do during their time at our home. While rest and recuperation are important, too much down time can lead to too many negative thoughts and discouragement can settle in – I have seen it. Casa Ahavá needs improvement in this way.

Jon and I have talked multiple times about the Lord and His timing. Right now, we believe the Lord has called us to cast the vision. We are trying to be faithful in that – communicating clearly and to many. If you have questions, let us know! We are not sure when the Lord plans to bring the vision to fruition. It seems like good timing right before furlough to the States, but we’ll see what He is up to, won’t we?

Pray with us! Talk with us! Dream with us!

We are so thankful for our team, knowing we are alone as we venture out onto the water. Thank you!