Category: Personal

A Jon Post

Some times it feels like a week flies by but took forever to do it. It’s a weird sensation actually. I’m looking back at this week and it felt long (temperatures at or above 100° with coastal humidity that simply cannot be escaped make time slow to a crawl), but when I think about the days and how many there were it seems like they rocketed by. We’ve been splitting our time between two hospitals instead of the normal one. The extra hospital has been some unplanned appointments where we will be having Anaya. There have been some small concerns about high and low heart rates but by the end of the week she settled down and Anaya’s heart rate was at a steady and healthy level.

We took our guitar to the hospital with us this week. We’ve decided to add music as a regular part of how we bring the love of Christ to people there. We sang some English worship songs that we attempted to translate and sing in Portuguese with our friends there. As we continue we hope to add some Portuguese and Shangaan (the tribal language of this area) worship songs to our list of songs we sing with the patients. When someone is close to death they are rarely capable of conversation and we hope that singing the love of Christ to/over them can bring peace and rest where there is only suffering and pain.

“Show me how you shuffle those cards” he asked with a smile. “I want to learn that”. I smiled back and remembered him teaching me a strange little card game yesterday (sort of a mix between War and Rummy). I had picked up the cards in the middle of the game and offhandedly shuffled them during the game. He had noticed.
His request came at a good time because I had been sitting next to his bed asking the Lord what I should talk to him about next. I had been running out of ideas and suddenly he wanted to learn to shuffle cards.
“Hold them like this…” I began, and spent the next hour laughing, shuffling, and hopefully… just for a bit… helping lighten the load of living in a room surrounded by men dying of the same sickness living in him.
Just by teaching him to shuffle cards.

So Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.  I really do like Valentine’s Day. I kind of look at like a challenge.
There are two days per year that I have stark memories of since I’ve married Layne: Valentine’s Day and our Wedding Anniversary.
I hope… I really really hope that I keep making specific, stark memories with her for those two days every year for the rest of my life.
The challenge is finding that thing that I can do with her that I will remember. I also try to give her a gift, not diamond earrings, not flowers, but something specific to her and to the memory that we can keep and look back on.
Tomorrow is a good day. I get to make memories with my wife. Nothing could be sweeter.

A Layne Post

One year ago, Jon and I visited the Oncology department at Maputo Central Hospital for the very first time; it was the their Christmas party. Little did we know how the people, the place, would captivate us. Little did we know that the Lord would tell us to stay, to give our hearts and our time right there in that hospital.

And yet here we are.

I am so grateful, so fulfilled, so satisfied. The Lord knows what He is doing. A year ago, I felt lost. I felt unsettled and in a temporary location, but the Lord knew otherwise. Thanks for being a part of the journey thus far. Thanks for trusting along with us and for sticking around to see the faithfulness of our God. To Him be the glory.

Christmas party in Oncology 2010

Jon and Tomé as Pai Natal

Lucia enjoyed her hat as well

Lucia feeling Miss Anaya kick

Jon playing Christmas carols, much to everyone's delight

Enjoying music... her smile is contagious

Yet even amidst the celebration, their little IV ports remain taped in place, not allowing us to forget the looming fact that we’re all together because they are in Oncology being treated for cancer.

IV ports

Tomé on treatment

There are so many to love, so many to comfort. May the Lord continue to use us.

A Jon Post

I asked Javan today what he thinks of our lives here in Maputo. I am always little anxious to hear thoughts and get reactions to how my wife and I live our lives. Maybe there’s something in me looking for the validation that we’re doing something right. Maybe there’s something in me looking for a fellow American to tell me that life is pretty challenging here and all the effort I put into just living is worth it.

Maybe it’s all a reflection in my heart of a deeper desire.

Maybe… I just want to rest a weary head on my Father’s shoulder and here a soft “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your Master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:23). I really, really want to share my Master’s happiness.

Javan got the opportunity to share from the Bible at a men’s Bible study that I lead on a weekly basis at the hospital with some men who live there as patients. He spoke of perfect and complete joy. I think that scene in Matthew, where the Master says “Well done, come and share in my happiness” is one that describes what I think perfect and complete joy is.

Maybe that’s what it’s like.

I see so much that is broken and incomplete all around me. I see a broken joy in the patient Jonathan at the hospital (he and I smiled and spoke at length at how happy we were to share a name), whose tumor above his right shoulder looms over him like a death sentence. I see incomplete joy in David, a soft-spoken man whose chemo-therapy treatments sap every bit of strength he has, to where his shell of a body simply breathes and waits for it to pass.

Maybe Jonathan, David and countless others here and scattered throughout the world are all just waiting for that moment.

We’re waiting for our Master to invite us to share in His happiness.

Maybe that’s what it’s like.

So Javan, try as he might to share what he sees in our lives here in Maputo, didn’t fulfill that longing in me. That longing that I have for the Master to smile… look into my eyes and say… “Well done. Come and share my happiness!”

Perfect… Complete… Joy

I think that’s what it’s like.