Into Africa

Our final days in Goma are filled with more time with people -- teaching, encouraging, trying to let our 'light shine.' Our team, right before we head home.  Dr. Jo Lusi, an amazing surgeon and man who is a champion of human rights, human hearts and the rights of women, stands near me. On our last morning, Steve and I do rounds with the medical students, and Tom and Mary Ella spend time in the OR with the surgeons. It's funny how 'used to' something one can become -- I see patients, again and again, with tuberculosis and malaria and HIV and, sadly, it's like I've just seen the common cold.  I see armed men with grenade launching guns, guarding buildings, and I am no longer aghast.  I see and hear a bleating goat tied up under a bush at Maji, and not surprised when it is then served for dinner, that night.  Todd and Chris and Marc fix physical brokenness in hopes of helping on a much deeper level.  Marc and Chris operate on more goiter cases, 'abdom...

Yesterday, fresh water falls from the sky in massive amounts.  We are in chapel, where we are every Tuesday and Friday and Sunday morning, while we spend time in this space. The young woman, a surgeon in training here at HEAL Africa, begins to preach. Here in this place, this house of God, changes are happening, with hopes that they will ripple out across the country -- changes that bring a new idea that women have value. They have value to the church and value to the world.  She begins to read from Proverbs 31:10-31, in French.  I follow along, as best I can, in my English Bible.  My team members do, too. And then the rain pours down louder, like bullets on the metal roof -- perhaps not the best  analogy to use in this war torn country.  Then a loud pop of a transformer blowing echoes across the room.  Water drips -- no, it drains -- through the ceiling across the room from me.  People move their chairs and scurry to find large bins to collec...

It has been days since I posted last – not because I don’t have anything to share, but rather, because words have been hard to come by AND we have been without internet.   I feel very far from home right now -- much farther than I did before.   The days continue on, the sun rises, the sun sets, people come to the HEAL hospital looking for hope, and many find it – cleft palates repaired,   thyroid goiters removed, and infections treated. We see a baby with a terrible chest wound, a woman with a large arm tumor, a man with cancer, who will not have access to chemotherapy, a mother with HIV and TB.   Some leave with the same problems they came with, and others never leave, other than leaving to go Home. Top view of new construction, in front of current patient ward.   View from the third floor of one of the patient wards, towards the out patient waiting area. Side view of construction work at the hospital. Wood pole scaffolding. My senses ...