We have been away from internet service for awhile, and I have not yet had the opportunity to load the many pictures taken onto my computer. But today I would like to give you a word picture of about 6 hours of my day yesterday.
It was the 2nd time that I have volunteered with the ministry to pregnant women in the slums. This time we split up into a number of groups and visited the women in their homes. "Home" is a small space, maybe 10 x 10, mostly filled with a bed if they are blessed enough to have one, occasionally a plastic chair, but wall to wall with the next tiny hovel, and usually occupied by an entire family and possibly extended family Gutters (around 2 to 3 feet wide) meander through the area, leaving just enough room for one, possibly two, people to walk from place to place (unless one is traveling the broader area where the railroad tracks run through). There were no toilets in the area of the slums that we were walking in.
We sat on the mattress in the first home and listened to a mother tell the story of her tiny daughter, Grace, paralyzed from waist down. The little one, 18 months old but looking more like 6 months, seemed to be in constant distress, crying weakly. Her momma said they had just come from the hospital where she was told Grace had malaria and where they gave her 3 different meds (but nothing for the malaria). The father had left for good long before, and it was only by the current grace of a neighbor that the momma and child had a temporary room to rent and a tiny bit of food. We loved on the mother and prayed for her (with my partner translating my prayer so the mother could understand).
We next made our way to "Mama Carol's", a precious Ugandan lady of the slums who had given her life to Jesus in one of the ministry Bible studies, and who now ministered to other women living around her. Twenty-three women crowded into the small space (perhaps 6 x 10), most of us squashed together on the floor, with the rest leaning in at the door-less entry.
After my first visit to the slums, my heart was broken for the many hurting women, and I prayed that God would give an opportunity to share my story as encouragement to these gentle women whom I had come to love. God answered that prayer yesterday, as I sat on the floor in Carol's tiny home and told the women crowded around me about the journey God had taken my husband and I on, through 3 months of coma, 18 years of caring for my husband with traumatic brain injury, his struggle with "why", and the eventual peace that God filled him with in spite of the worsening situation. We talked about how our relationship with God - as our best friend who was always there - constantly lifted us up and carried us through (see the brochure & video at ssauder.blogspot.com for more info).
Afterwards, the women came forward one by one to tell us their story, and I prayed with them, hugged them, loved them., even as my heart was crying to hear their tragedies. There were requests for safe deliveries, healing for an asthmatic baby we could hear struggling desperately to breathe, and relief from pain, but most of the requests quietly whispered involved their "man" leaving - just walking out one day and never coming back. They are desperate for someone to love them and care for them, but it is an endless search that usually always ends in unhappiness - unless they learn to make God their best friend.
It seems that one of the biggest problems in Uganda is men who have never learned responsibility with a job and how to truly love their children and the mother of their children. That is one of the situations that eMI is trying to address through discipleship. They are seeing Uganden men change little by little, one man at a time, as God works in their hearts through Biblical teaching and modeling.
One of the other teams with us in the slums saw this same kind of miraculous change yesterday in a woman who had been dealing in witchcraft before she came to last week's Bible study (after much prayer by another new Christian). From one week to the next, she became a new woman - beautiful inside and out, calm, peaceful, speaking in her right mind!
And when we stopped by a second time yesterday to check on the little one who was paralyzed, we found her sitting on her mother's lap, still paralyzed but looking around, content, at peace.
What an honor - an honor I don't deserve - to have the joy of listening to and praying for and loving these whom God loves enough to come and die for them.
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