today...today...today...how to describe today. lots of emotion today.
sadness
anger
happiness
humility
laughter (belly laughter)
my day started with jeremiah 1:5-8.
"'before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.' 'ah, sovereign Lord,' i said, "i do not know how to speak; i am only a child.' but the Lord said to me, 'do not say, 'i am only a child.' you must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the Lord."
i wasn't looking for that scripture, it literally came and found me, and what a perfect message i needed to hear for today. i was so moved by it that i shared it with the team and i think we all found encouragement from these words.
why did we need those words?
why specifically did we need them today?
today started with home visits. we broke up into teams and each team made anywhere from 4-6 visits in a 2 hours span. i was with david and kelly. another team was john, tom and sarah. another team was randy, linda and angela. the final team was dbubu (sp?), jeanine and katy. we got a chance to debrief tonight and everyone was blown away by what we saw.
with my team, we first visited a family of 11 living in a two-bedroom, 200-300 square foot home...ELEVEN people in this home! to put it in perspective, 200-300 square feet is about the size of 2 bedrooms in america. the place was horrible...
filthy...
cold concrete floors that the kids sleep on...
exposed electrical wires to give them a light in each room...
unbelievable stench (imagine standing in a barn with the overwhelming smell of rotting hay and manure)...
the mom is hiv positive and the only other person in the family that is positive is a
seven year old boy!
we handed out lolipops and a soccer ball when we got there and if you could have seen the smile on this boy's face...in that moment, nothing else mattered! the headaches he was suffering from...didn't matter. the fact that most children with hiv/aids don't survive...didn't matter. the fact that he lived with 10 other family members in a deplorable house...didn't matter.
our next stop was the one that gave me the most emotion. we stopped at the home of pewei (pronounced "pee-way"). pewei is a 27-year old mother of one son...her other son died back in may 2009 from aids. just a few months ago, pewei could not walk on her own. she either used crutches, a cane, or people carried her. the side-effect diseases of aids were ravaging her body, but not her spirit. we were told that she would litterally say, "this will not defeat me...i will walk again...i will survive this." today, pewei is walking on her own, and what is even more amazing is that she recognized us from church yesterday...
the church that she walked to from her home...
EIGHT MILES AWAY!!!
pewei and her son live in a new house now that was built by the government. it is so much bigger and cleaner. her old house was still standing right next to her new house. we got to tour the old house. the difference between her old house was and her new house was a perfect example of the life transformation she had experienced.
old house: small
new house: big
old house: dark with hardly any windows
new house: bright and open
old house: walls made of mud and falling apart
new house: walls made of concrete and standing strong
it truly is hard to put into words, but seeing her hope just stirred within me and sense of hope for my own life. david made a comment yesterday that i will never forget. he said, "you didn't come to africa to go home and sell everything and move here, you came to africa to become a better disciple of Christ." today, the emotion i experienced at pewei's house was part of becoming a better disciple.
the next two houses we visited were the complete opposite of what we experienced at the first two houses. the first lady was severely affected by aids. she lives in a house with her mother...who is deaf. she lies in bed in pain all day and hardly ever gets up. celia, the home care worker travelling with us today said that just two weeks ago she didn't expect this lady to make it. she is still not out of the woods yet, but celia says she believes that if she will stay on her arv's (medication), she will have a chance. she has been sick with hiv/aids for 6 years now.
the final home visit we made was to a young man who is 24. he is essentially homeless. he is staying with a family (not his family) simply because celia, the home care worker, begged this family to keep him for a period of time. this young man's parents are both dead and he has no where else to go. his right arm is broken and in a cast, he is suffering with tb (a side-effect disease of having aids), the family he is staying with does not feed him and he probably weighs about 125 pounds...and he's about 6 feet tall. celia is not sure about his future.
my emotions from those visits...
angry that humanity has allowed aids to ravage our own people like this and that i am just now caring about it.
sadness that these people live in such deplorable conditions and without the weekly visits by the home care workers, most of these families would not have food or anyone who cares about their existence.
humilty when i think about God giving hope to someone who has no reason to have any hope...and yet i complain at the most trivial things...
happiness that there are people here to do care...even though their job is overwhelming
laughter (belly laughter) at our team tonight...we had some real bonding moments...
like when david stuck his hand in cow manure...
or when we got lost on our way to the orphanage this afternoon and got pulled over by the cops and john (our driver) said, "we're from america...florida...tampa...home of mickey mouse!"
or when i chased longhorns...
or so many other times that made today just such a great day for our entire team.
this afternoon we went back to the orphanage and watched a performance they prepared for us...it was awesome! i don't want to get into it too much because this is getting long and we'll be at the orphanage all day tomorrow so i'll tell you about it then.
thank you all for your continued prayers and support! every encouraging e-mail and message i am receiving, i am passing them along to the team. i wish you knew how much your encouraging e-mails meant to us...i love reading them to the team because it's like they're saying in their heads, "wow, people care that we're over here!" very cool, so keep them coming!
oh, and if you want to see random pictures of our trip, i'm posting them on my facebook page (www.facebook.com/jasonanelson).
okay, off to bed...
until next time...