Each scream tore strait through me, they sank to the deepest places of my heart. My hands, covered in this infants tears, were holding the back of his head and his tiny ears as he restlessly laid in Lori’s lap and Shelly, our nurse, scraped loads of infection from his open wounds. He had been severely burned. How could I be calm when the cries of this baby boy could be heard halfway up the mountain? How could I hide my tears while his mother buried her face in her hands because she couldn’t take the sight of her child in explosive agony. How could I be put in this situation?

I was not a good fit for this. I have no medical training. Maybe some CPR and First Aid but this was on a different scale. I know how to pray, so I did. I know how to put my arm around someone when they hurt, so I did. And the truth is, if we hadn’t been there when we were to care for the wounds, that baby would have had very little chance at living much longer.

I shared with the group that night what God had been showing me through all this. He has called me to a task, and the road ahead isn’t always going to be clear, and it will certainly not always be easy. In fact, just the opposite. I may not always be a good fit, but neither was Moses or David. God makes Himself known through our weakness.

That night Shelly came to talk to me. She reminded me of a story she had told me before, but I could understand a bit better now. She told me of a man who had been burned all over his body in a fire, and each day, nurses had to scrape his wounds to get rid of infection. And although it was possibly the worst pain he had ever felt, he looked at those nurses as if they were angels, and he is alive today because of them.

The next day, a man came to the clinic with part of his chest missing. The wounds were full of infection. I held his hand as the nurse scraped them, but they were too deep to take all of the infection out. There was a sadness in his eyes, and he told us later that he was able to visit a hospital, where they told him it was cancer. Treatment for something like cancer is not a real possibility for those that live in Onaville. So he walked away with some medicine and bandages from us, and has to live with a death sentence.

Running medical clinics in areas of poverty is always too tough for words. We cling to prayer.

We had other projects happening which made for a very productive week. Our Haitian brothers started digging a water well on property we purchased for a super kitchen. A huge thanks to all of our bench makers, concrete mixers, bucket carriers, kid tossers, human jungle Jims :) <—- Like the pun there?? photographers, fake bus drivers, ducks and gooses… What an awesome week.

Remember, take your eyes off of A truth, and focus on THE truth. We treated a man with a death sentence. That’s a truth. But THE truth is he has seen the love of Christ through the church in Onaville, and we will see him again one day, and there will be no wounds, and no infections. That is the hope we have in Christ, and that is THE TRUTH.

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