I Pray a Blessing On You

Joseph’s Smile

Yesterday I journeyed out with two Tree of Lives workers, Doreen and Josephine to the slums for a home visit.  Three hours from Nazareth and several Matatu rides later, we finally arrived at the home of Joseph.  Joseph was HIV positive and also had suffered from a CVA, leaving him with impaired speech and difficulty walking.  Joseph lost his wife 3 years ago and he and his three children lived in a single metal room.  In addition to housing his family, this small room also held a store in which the proceeds were used to feed the family.  Joseph was a man of little possessions, however had more faith than any one person I have ever met.  He was thankful to God for all he had and truly trusted him with the healing of his disease.  Joseph received food packets from Tree of Lives to supplement what he was unable to provide for his children.   When learning I was from Norfolk, his face immediately lit up and he couldn’t thank me enough of all our church family and Trees of Lives had provided him with.  The small amount of food included in these food packets made a huge difference in Joseph’s life.  We hear so much about Tree of Lives in Jim Wood’s sermons each Sunday morning, but you can never imagine the true blessing of this ministry until seeing the smile on someone’s face like Joseph.

by Laurie Leonard, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Do You Want To Be Made Well?

Do you want to be made well?  Jim Wood asked the team to contemplate this question in our after dinner devotion.

By today most of our team has experienced the deep privilege of home visits.  As we trek in small groups across Kenya entering into homes of dirt floors, tin and potato sack walls we can’t help but think to ourselves: can anyone be made well?  There are times I’m sure, where the mission-hearted ones of us contemplate living in Africa.  I think ultimately that would be the easy route as far as creating a comfort zone.

The real challenge for us is going to and returning from Kenya and figuring out how to move from one life to the next.  How do we cope with the crisis situations we sit next to on a plastic stool or lace-covered cushion in each home visit?  How do we love with our entire selves and not bring a child home with us?

Today we all learned about an American trance we are lured into, a trance that causes us not to be ready at the moment Jesus wants us to do something we don’t think we can do or

“get up and walk.”

We learned how to heal ourselves from this trance through the story of Jesus healing the paralytic beginning in John 5:1.  We have to want to be made well.  We have to tell Jesus “I want to be made well” and as a group member pointed out this evening, one thing we have in common with each African, each starving child, is that we want to be made well.

by Morgan Burrows, college student and member of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Glimpses of Victory

Jim Wood often shares a favorite quote from Trevor Hudson;

“everyone sits next to their own pool of tears.”

Some people’s pools, however, are more immediately visible than others.

Today I accompanied Zacchaeus, one of the health care workers at the Holy Family Center, on his home visits in the Kaiwaida neighborhood.  Each client (patient) we visited was HIV positive, and our mission was to check on their health, determine whether they were taking their medicines, and offer support related to their disease.

For every family we met, HIV/AIDS was their least pressing concern.

The first client, Elizabeth, was not able to afford her hypertension medication ($10 a month).  Her blood pressure was 220/120.  After explaining the seriousness of her situation, we left her with instructions to go to Nazareth Hospital immediately.

Peter and Lois, the second family we met, were both HIV positive, as is their 3-year-old son Martin.  Henry, the adorable 14-month-old who sat on my lap, is testing negative but  that’s still tentative until he’s 18 months.  Peter is unemployed and unable to provide food for his wife and five children, and they are two months behind in rent on their tiny, dirt-floor home.

Esther is a single mom of four; her husband left when he found out she was HIV positive and he was not.  Her home is a single room with no bed, so she has constant health issues from sleeping on the floor.  Like Peter, she expected that her family would have nothing to eat tonight.

The last client, Lois, was perhaps the most secure financially.  However, her husband, who was just released from prison, has taken a second wife, and spends most of his time with his new family (in Kenya, polygamy is not uncommon).  Between caring for her four-month-old, managing her disease, and trying to talk to her husband about HIV (a topic he refuses to discuss), her situation was every bit as overwhelming as each of the others.

The brightest spot on a bleak day was the extraordinary witness of Zacchaeus and Jin, the volunteer worker who accompanied us.  Like everyone I’ve met here at Nazareth, their ministry was bigger than their mission.  They treat people, not diseases, and that makes all the difference.  Because of their ministry, two families will have dinner tonight for the first time in days; a woman has bus fare to reach the hospital, and a support group in Kaiwaida will welcome a new member at their next meeting.  Not a victory – tomorrow will be a new set of life-threatening challenges for each of those families – but perhaps a glimpse of one.

by Jim Gates, Associate Pastor for Evangelism at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Smile – Jesus Loves You

Many of us have had the honor of going on home visits with the counselors from the Holy Family Center.  There was one patient that stood out to me while on the visits.  Her name was Susan and she was HIV (+). She is  a young single mother of three children ages 9, 4, & 2 1/2 months. Susan is raising her children alone in a small shack while performing odd jobs for people making less then $2 a day.

We spent about an hour with Susan discussing her children, medicines for her illness, and other psychosocial needs.  As we sat there, in my head I thought, how can I, a young 27-year-old woman from Virginia who has an abundance of resources, relate to this to this woman? What do we really have in common?

The session wrapped up and at the end, I asked Susan if I could pray with her. I grabbed her hand and we prayed together. After the prayer, she looked up at me with a big smile on her face, the first smile I had seen from her all day.  She then told me how much that meant to her and how important her faith was.

As she was talking it finally hit me, a little whisper from God,

“Shelly, you are just like this woman”.

Though I may not know the poverty, brokenness, or sickness, I hold the same hope inside of me that Susan holds. At that moment I was humbled. Though Susan didn’t have many possessions, she was overflowing with hope, displaying the joy and peace needed to trust in the Lord.  I thanked Susan for our time spent together and as we walked out, I couldn’t help but smile knowing how much Jesus loves us all.

by Shelly Anuszkiewicz, a visitor and friend of First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.