Category: Personal

Jon continues to serve in the Covid unit at the central hospital encouraging and supporting their emotional/spiritual health as needed. Mozambique’s numbers are rising and thus the strain on the staff as well. We are trying to be creative in thinking of new ways to love them.

Casá Ahava feels busy and alive. We did some much needed maintenance around the place over the holiday, while patients went home to enjoy the end of the year with their families.

Meet our current patients at Casa Ahavá:

In other news, Jon’s cousin Caleb came to visit over the holidays and help us renovate a small veranda into a new consult/bandage changing room! His church back in Tennessee helped fund the whole thing. AMAZING! We have since started regular meeting with our patients, connecting about symptoms and well-being. I think they are feeling more seen, heard, and loved!

Finally, starting on Monday we are excitedly beginning renovations on a small room outside, which is currently used as Jon’s tool-house. For some time we have noticed that our current men’s side usually sits with 2-4 beds open, while there is a line at the hospital waiting for women’s beds. When we created the project it seemed natural to do 6 women’s beds and 6 men’s beds, however, the need is unequal. We are going to turn the new space into a 4 bed room with an en-suite bathroom, so that the current men’s side can be transitioned to another women’s side. When the project is complete we will be able to offer 12 women’s beds and 4 men’s bed in addition to our hospice in the our home. It feels like a natural and proper step and we are thankful as the Lord blesses each step we’ve taken.

Thank you for your unwavering love and support, even in such a trying time around the world. Lord willing, we will travel to the United States in June and look forward to visiting with as many of you as we possibly can!

Reflecting.

Breathing.

Giving thanks for God’s faithfulness through all our seasons. He remains good.

Last month we had a few sudden difficult weeks, but as always, the Holy Spirit was near. For now, we are grateful it seems as though life has calmed, at least patient-wise.

This week we got the chance to go the beach. It was a little cool, especially for the ladies, but nice to get out and get some fresh air.

Jon’s cousin is coming in December to visit and do a work project at our house to renovate a little room for bandage changes and counseling. We are really excited to spend time with him and show him our beloved country. The girls are excited to have someone else around for Christmas!

We are aiming to return to the States for our furlough toward the end of June next year. Given our big family and 2.5 months we stay, planning starts early. We look so forward to hugging many of your necks, looking into your eyes, and telling you how very grateful we are for your love.

A Layne Post

How time is passing, and those we were getting know have quickly eased into those we call family. We have grown comfortable with each other, learned each other’s ways, each other’s preferences. We have months to recall, perhaps it is not much, but progress. We can sit in silence and not feel awkward. How nice to have things to call on, things to laugh about. She likes vors sausages, he likes physical fitness and learning English, she is always serious and rarely peppy, she like yogurt when she feels sick, she always gets mouth sores and recovers slow, she is worried about her upcoming school exams, etc. On the other hand, how hard it is when difficult conversations arise… prognoses or outcomes.

The switch from patient to friend/family is not recommended by any formal education. They tell us that need for emotional separation is essential to survival. Distance is key. But what happens when God called into this? Into the impossible? Into the “you’ll never make it”? Into the inevitable burnout?

Supernatural sustenance. He does it.

We do our best at self care, at noticing our shortcomings, our short breaths. When our chests feel heavy and flashes of difficult moments become hard to shake from our minds, it usually means it is time for some nature, some family, some seeing the greatness of our God in His creation, glimpses of our Sustainer, our ever-present help in times of trouble. We are at that point.

This week we will head for a couple days to a nearby beach, made possible by the generosity of a stranger become friend. The weather looks unfavorable, yet I am assured the Lord will meet us. He always does. Pray for us! It is our desire to love and support those in our care the absolute best we can.

Pray for Casa Ahavá. 3 patients will do Chemo this week, making for a rough two weeks ahead.

We are forever grateful to you, our supporters. Your prayers and support are noticed and cherished. Thanks for being part of our team, part of making a difference at Casa Ahavá: Lucas, Imakalada, Gisella, Changue, Olinda, Luisa, and Augusta’s lives… and all those we are supporting in their homes… Madelena, Rosa, Custodio, Armindo, Eugenio, Joanna, Filomena, Rebecca.

A Jon Post

Grief is not a disease from which I recover, it is not something that I hope has a cure, it is nothing to which I will ever seek a vaccine.

This week Lurde died at home with her family. She lived in mine and with mine for a full year and we grew to know much of what was beautiful and much of what was not in her.

Just like a family should.

Lurde loved deeply at times, selfishly at times, lazily at times, and lavishly at times. She ate too much and laughed more than her fair share. She didn’t clean up after herself much and she always ensured that I knew that she cared about how my family and I were feeling. She went out of her way to ask how rested we felt each day.

Now she is gone. Now we grieve.

I’ve learned something in the eleven years I’ve been privileged to spend with the sick and dying in Mozambique: Grief itself can be a ritual.

No, I do not mean grief rituals; things like funerals, wakes, gathering in remembrance, nightly prayers, etc. I mean grieving on purpose as a ritual.

I wake up each morning and sit in the still of the darkness before the sunrise. I practice breathing, I practice praying, and I practice grieving, then I come inside and have a cup of coffee.

Breath, prayer, grief, coffee. These are my morning rituals. I do not pretend that they are the best morning rituals nor that I am any good at them but they seem to do their job of keeping in in touch with the my Father, with the living, and with the dead.

I stay connected to Lurde, to Luisa, to Mariana, to Loice, to Torres, to Manejo, to Teresa, to Justino, to Maeza, to Augusto… the ones I love and grieve from this last year. There are many more names on that list from the years prior. If I do not make my grief my own, I think my grief would own me.

So I practice a simple ritual. I breathe. I pray. I grieve. And I have a cup of coffee.  

P.S.

It feels remiss to post this without mentioning the state of the world and this virus. I can’t help but notice how I feel that much of the reaction I see en masse among those I know and those I don’t bears a striking resemblance to grief.

Questions like, “what if we had locked down sooner?” “What if we had closed this border or that?” “What if it’s not that bad?” “What if this is all for nothing?” “What if someone else was leading?”

All seem so similar to questions like, “What if he hadn’t gotten in the car that day?” “What if she hadn’t smoked for all those years?” “What if we had gotten a screening for the disease sooner?” “What if I had just called her and told her how I felt?” “What if things had been different . . . would he/she/they still be dead?”

These are not questions that lead to answers and, it seems to me, they are questions spurred by grieving without knowing it. Oh, how I wish we could learn to see and know our grief.  

One time, a man looking at his own coming death, called his closest loved ones and asked them to join him in a garden. “Stay here and keep watch with me” he said and fell on his face on the ground and grieved before a Holy Father. I like to think of that man as the one in whose steps I am trying to walk. Maybe at least I can stay here and keep watch over the dying and grieve with them when they ask it of me.