The Wounded and the Lost

I want to share with everyone two experiences I've had in the past few weeks and offer up some prayer requests. (To those of you on my email support list, I have already sent this same text to you in my last email update.)

First, when Meghan (the short-term missionary in Ikotos) was still with us over the Thanksgiving holiday, she joined me at the HIV/AIDS center at the hospital to see how their counseling and testing process went. After a while, she asked if we could get a tour of the hospital which was a great opportunity for me as well since I hadn’t gotten a tour myself. One of the counselors in the center showed us all throughout the hospital. (Just to give you an idea of what the hospital looks like: it is an open compound with several different buildings designated to certain focuses like surgery, maternity, outpatient, etc.) The most noted ward of the tour was the children’s ward. I was not prepared for what I witnessed when I stepped foot into this building. The rooms will full of beds with screens between the beds for privacy and there were only a hand full of children in the ward, all of whom could not be older than 3 years. One child was there due to malnutrition. When she was brought in they hooked her up to an IV but the catheter was not inserted properly and it somehow caused a rupture on the side of her head. As a result, she has a large opening on her head where the skin has not, and may never, grow back. She was sitting on the bed eating porridge but she looked so frail. Her arms and legs were so shrunken from the lack of nourishment. She was not much older than 1 or 2 years. Another child was in because of severe burns from a house fire. This child had burns all over her face and torso. Her hands were so severely burnt that the bones in her fingers were barely there. It took so much energy for me to not break down in the middle of the ward. My heart just broke for these children. You can read about these things in magazines and see them on television but you do not really understand scenes like this until you are standing right in the middle of them. To those of you who are doctors and nurses, I have so much respect for you because I know that I could never do what you do. Thank you! I would ask you all to lift these children up in your prayers. Pray for their healing and pray that they would experience love from a parent, sibling, doctor, or anyone. So often, children with defects like these are abandoned because parents just do not know how to care for them.

Second, this past Saturday (December 1) Torit and places all over the world celebrated World AIDS Day. I was also part of this celebration. The HIV/AIDS center set up a clinic in the middle of the town close to the festivities and we had close to 200 people come out to be tested. Another girl and I were in charge of filling out forms for people and then sending them to counselors for the counseling session and test. The forms consist of questions like age, sex, marital status, place of residence, had they been tested before, etc. I filled out 87 forms alone. The goal of the day was to create awareness about HIV and AIDS and to encourage people to get tested to find out their status. We were successful in our goal! Praise God! There was one thing, however, that did bother me during the day that I didn’t realize until I got home. When I had to ask about a man’s marital status and they said they were married, I also had to ask how many wives they had. Not only did I ask this but I asked it so nonchalantly. Now, Torit does have a very high Muslim population so it is not uncommon for a man to have more than one wife. But there are also many men here that claim to be Christians and they, too, have taken more than one wife. The day after the celebration I spent the morning in the Word. I am currently going through Jeremiah and I was reading through Chapter 4. God is telling Jeremiah of the disaster He will send to Israel from the north because Israel has denied God. Israel has committed sins against God, so much so, that they have brought this disaster on themselves. I then came to the part of the chapter where Jeremiah openly shares his anguish for his people:

“Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry. Disaster follows disaster; the whole land lies in ruins. In an instant my tents are destroyed, my shelter in a moment. How long must I see the battle standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?” (Jeremiah 4:19-21)

When I read this, I could understand the pain Jeremiah was feeling because I felt the same for Torit. There are so many people here that are just lost. There are many who are drunk by the middle of the day. Teachers will show up in the schools in the afternoon drunk. Sexual immorality is everywhere. There are many mentally-disturbed people who wander through the streets terrorizing people. My heart aches for these people because they do not know the Lord. They do not know peace or love because they do not know their Savior. But this is not only so in Torit but it is all over the Sudan. Hatred has brought war and pain. Even though the war is over, hatred still exists. I ask that you would pray that God would move through this community as well as the rest of Sudan. Pray for peace to come between the north and the south. Pray that the people here in Torit would see that their lives are of the world and not of God. Pray that all of the missionaries in South Sudan would be a light to the people and that God would use us to pour forth His love and truth.