A lesson being learned

A couple of weeks ago we had an adult male soldier brought to us in the middle of the night experiencing multiple seizures. I started an IV on him and was able to get his seizures to stop with medication. Like many of the soldiers in the area he drinks a lot of alcohol/homemade wine and we were not sure how much of his sickness was related to alcohol and how much was an acute illness brought on by cerebral malaria or some other disease.

The following morning he still had an altered mental status and was unable to verbalize when we asked him questions. In his confused and partially conscious state he had soiled his shorts and so I put on gloves and began cleaning him up. (By this time some fellow soldiers arrived and told us that they didn't know much about him except that he drank all the time.) At one point when I was cleaning the stool out of his shorts I began to feel resentful of the need to clean up after a grown man because of poor choices he made. As soon as the resentful thought came to me God filled me with compassion for the man and tears filled my eyes. I had a spirit initiated attitude change and began thinking about how Jesus would have cleaned his shorts and sat with him--or healed him and taught him about Himself.

As I continued caring for the man, I served God and him with a change of heart. It took conviction for me to serve with humility and compassion; I'm so grateful for the work of the Holy Spirit in my life that day. I need the work of the Spirit daily.

"Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73;25-26

reflecting beneath the neem tree

I've become accustomed to showering by moonlight. It's quite nice--except for the mosquitoes who also like being active at that time of night. There is something special about the open sky above me as the bucket nozzle dribbles down cool water on me and washes away the day's grime, sweat and clinic germs. This is one of the rare times of day when I'm truly alone and is a great time to think. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I listen to the conversations and life going on on the other side of the grass shower enclosure, sometimes I think about what God is doing here in the bush and what I hope He'll do, what He might want me to do differently and how in my frailty sometimes I feel like I've really messed up.

Tonight the moon is particularly striking. I so appreciate the beauty around me here in Sudan. The Arkansas sky pales in comparison to the Sudan sky even though we cannot see the horizon for the overgrowth of bush in the rainy season. God touches my heart with His beauty when the circumstances around me are heartbreaking. I am thankful.

Gullaweing meeting

Today I met this young lady and was struck by the giant cultural and economic divide in our lives. I was born in a hospital with a low mortality rate for infants and a team of people on hand to provide assistance should anything go wrong with my delivery. She was born in a mud hut in a country with a mortality rate where 1 in 4 children die before reaching the age of five.

I attended 13 years of free public education as a child and six years of college courses as an adult. She will probably not attend more than two or three years of primary school--which in Doro/Gullaweing means a class of many children with one teacher meeting under a tree with few, if any, teaching materials.

I always had plenty to eat, toys to play with and a variety of clothes and shoes to wear. She probably has 3-4 clothing items and will wear them until they are tattered. She plays with sticks, rocks and bits of rubbish when not helping with her younger siblings.

I have been treated with respect in my culture as a female. She will grow up with few social rights and little choice as to whether she marries or not or whether her husband will also have other wives.

She will likely remain mostly illiterate for life. I have worked and received fair pay at a number of companies who were grateful to have me as an employee. She will work harder than I ever have and her pay will be that her children have sorghum porridge to eat once or twice a day on most days.

I have traveled to three continents. She may never see Ethiopia which is less than 100 miles away. I am a citizen of a strong country providing freedom and countless opportunities. She has never known peace in her short life and if history repeats itself, may always live in the shadow of war.

I have owned a car since the age of 18 and enjoy the comfort of a solid roof over my head (at least while in the US). She may ride in a car only a dozen or so times in her life, at the charity of someone she doesn't know well and sleeps on the ground on a mat in a mud hut.

I enjoy a diet including a variety of foods, flavors and nutrients. She eats sorghum porridge, greens that grow wild and occasionally will be able to have maize and mango in their season. She will daily carry many kilograms of weight on her head as she provides food and water for her family until she is too old to walk.

I own electronics that she would not even begin to understand.

I was raised in a family where I was taught the truth of creation, the fall of mankind and the death of a perfect Savior for my redemption. She lives in a village that is overshadowed by spiritual darkness. Her mother fears what evil spirits might do to them.

However--this day--our worlds collided. She sat beside me on a log and we listened together to a story in her heart language about a powerful God who created us and cares about us. Maybe God will pull this child out of darkness and into His marvelous light--and perhaps He'll allow some of His light to shine out of me into her life in the coming years as I live on the edge of her world.

Vicki teaches a Bible lesson in Maaban at the girl's fledgling church in Gullaweing.