A Jon Post
It’s been a long day. Well, it’s been a long week… 2 weeks actually. Today, Layne and I got up at about 7 to continue working on this house. When we moved in there were a lot of problems and it needed a lot of work. Leaky/moldy sinks/showers, rusty screws in the walls, sticky/stained tile, peeling linoleum front porch… I could go on for a while here. Anyway, we did some more cleaning and repair work and at about 2 this afternoon I left to do a World Cup outreach. We partner with local churches and show World Cup games in the suburbs/slums of Maputo on a large screen with big speakers and the pastors of those churches get an opportunity to invite those at the games to church, encourage them with the gospel, and follow up when we leave. We set up a satellite dish to receive the games out in some pretty rural areas where TVs are rare and people have little or no chance to see a World Cup game and connect it to a projector. It’s pretty neat actually. Anyway, I left at about 2 and just got home at about midnight. We showed two games in two different locations tonight. It’s a long process. Layne’s been home all afternoon/evening painting a room in our house. We’re both exhausted. We’ve been exhausted for 2 weeks now.
One day last week we were planning to go to the hospital. We had even put our things in the car and were just about to get in and go. We make it a habit to sit down and pray together for some time before we go and so we sat together and just looked at each other. We both recognized quickly that neither one of us had much to offer at the hospital and we were both just struggling. Both wondered if we should just push through it and choose to serve anyway. We decided to stop, pray, worship and just draw close to Christ and to each other.
It was good.
Praying deeply for each other and for our ministry we felt a peace that we hadn’t felt since we moved in. We cried in each others arms and released all our emotional weariness to our Lord.
This house is big and needs a lot of work. In fact it is much bigger than Layne and I can use on our own. We both saw quickly when we moved in that it could be used as so much more than just our personal home. As we were praying and waiting on the Lord we felt the burning of God’s heart for what it could look like.
There are so many people in the oncology ward at the Central Hospital who have a need for a home for short periods of time. They may be dying and simply can’t get home to be with family because of the distance and cost. They may be waiting on the next round of chemotherapy and just sit in the hospital for weeks waiting for the hospital to re-supply. It may be a child… whose parent has left them alone in a hospital. The parent must return to the village he or she is from and the child must face the terrors of a growth inside the body that slowly… but surely… kills.
We want to offer a home for that child.
Two beautiful smiles
We want to offer a home for that man or woman who is facing death alone.
We want to look after the sick. (Matthew 25:36)
We want to care for the orphan and the widow in their distress. (James 1:27)
And we can.
So let’s get to work.
