Dumelang!
Sharing my Testimony with the Whole Student Body!
Tomorrow I will be sharing my testimony about the accident/recovery with the whole student body (ages 6-18 years!) at a private school in Gaborone. I have a full 30 minutes to share! The YFC Botswana director E.J. has been invited to share there in the past, and when he was recently invited, he felt I should share my testimony. Prayers are appreciated that it goes well and the students are impacted and drawn closer to the Lord.
Visiting those in the Hospital -- Being Christ’s Hands and Feet
[I wrote this awhile back and will now include it]: Friday, one of the national YFC workers, Modise, and I went to the local hospital in Mochudi, both with a burden to visit and pray for the sick. Wow…It was the first time I’ve seen in person people ravaged by AIDS. I know HIV positive people, but there is a definite difference when it progresses over into full-blown AIDS. If that wasn’t motivation for speaking these unpopular messages of abstinence and behavior change to youth and doing whatever God directs to help keep them from getting AIDS, I don’t know what is. I was thankful for the ability we had to go and pray for/with each patient. The night before I had written this prayer in my journal:
“Lord, may You just love through me. Help these patients feel Your love and care for them through us. Bring them hope in the face of despair…Shine through us, love through us, heal through us in Jesus’ name. Help me see with Your eyes, feel with Your heart, and love with Your love…Jesus You touched the lepers, reaching out to the outcasts of society. Lord touch today’s lepers (AIDS victims) through me. Let love flow through me so they will know that You are real, that You are love.”
I only now re-read that prayer for the first time since I wrote it…and I’m amazed at how beautifully the Lord answered it. When I was in one of the wards with several beds in an open room, praying over a man for healing and praying that God would help him know that He sees him there and He cares, I thought, Where are You, God? You do see him and you do care and your heart breaks for him. So where are You? How can people suffering here in these wards know that You really love and care for them? And I felt the Lord whisper in my heart there in the hospital ward, “I am here…I sent you. I’m in you; I’m loving them through you.” Wow...it just struck me afresh and in a deeper way that God has chosen to use frail, weak people like you and me to be His hands and feet in the world today. He uses vessels, 'jars of clay', like us to pour out His love.
My time in the hospital was one of those times where I just felt like God’s love was flowing through me as I took the time to learn their names, talk a bit if they could, and lay my hand on them to pray for healing and that they would know that God sees them there, He cares, and He loves them. The times I felt God loving though me most was when I would just feel like I was able to communicate loving care through my eyes as I looked into theirs…like He was giving me His eyes of compassion and loving them through me. I know that my own human love and compassion would be exhausted quickly in such an environment, but His love is enduring, His love is unwavering, His love can reach out through my yielded hands.
That reminded me of a quote I’d read that essentially says that God chooses to use our hands and feet in the world today to reach out to the broken and hurting. Philip Yancey wrote,
"It occurred to me as I read the Gospels that if all of us in his Body would spend our lives as he did—ministering to the sick, feeding the hungry, resisting the powers of evil, comforting those who mourn, and bringing the Good News of love and forgiveness—then perhaps the question 'Is God unfair?' would not be asked with such urgency today."
Obviously since I found that quote in my journal I have heard and thought about it before…even the prayer in my journal before I went to the hospital talks about letting God love through me, but I guess the reality of it never struck me so poignantly as it did through that experience. And as I’m typing this, this song came on my random shuffle: “Give me Your Eyes” by Brandon Heath—
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see
So this is me typing currently on 21 September again. I typed up all of the above last week, and soon afterward, I picked up a book I bought but haven’t read yet, The AIDS Crisis: What We Can Do by Deborah Dortzbach and W. Meredith Long. Here is an excerpt I read under the heading “The Hope of Christ”—
“So it is that Christians confront AIDS—in painful ministry. If people are to respond to the compassion and love of Christ, that compassion and love must become incarnate in the men, women and youth who compose his church. Christ’s eyes are the crying eyes of the women who came to bury a woman who died of AIDS because no one else would. Christ’s feet are those of the church volunteers who carry firewood to an impoverished widow in rural Malawi. Christ’s anger is the anger of a lawyer who prepares a case for orphans who have had their land taken from them. Christ is present in the millions of Christians who quietly and with little recognition carry the burden of AIDS in their communities and churches around the world…In an era of AIDS, Christ is found where he has always been found. He is with the poor, the marginalized, the sinful, the sick and the oppressed.”
I went back to the hospital last Wednesday with two other YFC colleagues, Modise and Maruping, and talked/prayed with some more patients. One was an elderly woman named Susan who was suffering a bad bout of food poisoning. She was already a Christian and she had been praying that someone would bring her a Bible. We gave her some little booklets with scriptures inside, and she was so grateful. She said we were an answer to her prayers. Another family had an old grandmother in the hospital joined that day by a granddaughter in the opposite hospital bed. The granddaughter had collapsed and was almost in a coma when the father found her that morning. The father and mother were there visiting as well, and when I asked the father how he was doing, he told me they aren’t doing the best spiritually. But he told me he knows that God spared his daughter for a reason and he is thankful to God. He asked if we might come and meet with his whole family at their house to share more about God. Yet another cool opportunity.
Also, just today as I was trying to find that quote in the book on AIDS, I came across this, which strangely fits perfectly with what I had shared last post about the marriage bed being moved out of place [that sex outside of marriage is a roadblock to the Vision 2016 goal of no new HIV infections by 2016]:
“Many people are moving marriage beds. Vows taken to love and support one another for life are frequently broken…The consequences of unfaithfulness are far reaching, bringing the potential for death not only to the one committing adultery but also to the spouse and their born and unborn children…What can we do when our marriage beds are moved? Broken covenants need reconciliation. Pastors need training in counseling couples wrestling with broken trust and relationships.”
Crazy how perfectly that fits huh? And earlier today before I read that, I saw a worker with a jacket that read “Safe Roads to 2016” and it reminded me of my dream with the bed in the middle of the road as a major roadblock on the road to Vision 2016. Interesting…
Ministry at the Sr. Secondary School in Mochudi
Well…due to the scheduling changes and uncertainty going on at the school, the school advised me not to make plans for the Real Life Revolution club (promoting abstinence) until after this week. So the club has been postponed until we return from Cape Town…so hopefully the first week in October. Also adding to the confusion was a fire that broke out this week at the boys’ dorm (thankfully no one was injured because it was during class hours), which required the school to send home all of the boy boarders for the time being.
Unofficial ministry has continued, however. I met with the student on Saturday whom I mentioned last post. We talked for about an hour. We have plans in place for her to receive professional counseling. Prayers for her are still very much appreciated.
Random Tidbits
And finally, for some random tidbits: A German volunteer, Kathrin flew in yesterday and is a new addition to our staff-house family. We now have two Canadians (Twila, 23, and Marge, 17), two Americans (Katie, 24, and me, 27), and two Europeans (Corine, 32 from Holland, and Kathrin, 19). The only one who was here when I came in February was Corine! The other 5 Europeans have since returned home for further studies. It’s kind of a revolving door of a house!
The other day I was walking along the road and a teenage boy I don’t recognize said, “Hello, woman of God!” and then repeated it. I just smiled and laughed to myself. He must know somehow I live in the “Makgoa [white person] house” and we are missionaries. Though, I’ve noticed more often now groups of guys will greet me by name and I don’t recognize them off-hand. And lastly, I saw a white-tailed deer-like animal and a monkey on a run in Mochudi last week…Also saw a monkey in the hospital ward climbing out the window!
Blessings,
Em
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