journal entry #6~the miracle of the burned baby
gettin' down at church
photo by travis white
johnas at church
women dancing
Today is blowing me away--
Got up and had a great church service with Travis doing an awesome job preaching. I had so much fun dancing and singing with the women...I love the joy they have, and it's even more remarkable in the face of all the suffering they endure. After church we opened the medical clinic. It was SO GREAT today! I assigned one person to be the headache/backache person and dole out Tylenol, another person handed out Tums for stomach pain, etc. This sort of weeded out the people who just wanted something from those who are really sick. Laurie and Paul did wounds and I triaged and saw everyone else. I saw a man with a urostomy, a lady with very bad diarrhea, kids with rashes and conjunctivitis.
laurie and me
paul working in the clinic
We were planning to leave at noon, but at 11:45 someone came to the clinic and said there was a sick woman in her hut who was too weak to walk to the clinic. So Isaac, Tracy and I walked to her hut to see her. She was sitting outside and complained of stomach pain and diarrhea. She had a couple of big hernias and a distended abdomen, but no fever. The only thing I could give her was Tums and Tylenol so I didn't even bother trying to figure out what the problem was...it's kind of like, what's the point if we can't treat it anyway? We prayed for her and I talked to her about trying to stay hydrated. Later we were eating lunch (the slaughtered goat) when someone came to me and said they had seen a baby with a dirty bandage on her face. I went out and found the mother, sitting in the dirt, holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. The baby's face was covered in filthy bandages and there were flies all over her. With Owen's help I asked if I could change the bandage and the mother agreed. Taking the baby, I placed her on a rickety wooden table and unwrapped the blanket. To my surprise, her whole body was covered in bandages. With a knot in my stomach I began to unwrap the dressings, not knowing what to expect but suspecting it was going to be bad. There were severe burns on her legs, chest, arms, and face. Her little arm was burned down to the bone in places, and several of her fingers were missing or else burned to small, shriveled black stumps. I gave her some baby Tylenol and started praying as I cleaned and dressed her wounds. As I did this I had to constantly swat flies off of her. By this time several team members had gathered around and were watching and praying. When I was finished, we laid our hands on her and prayed for healing. I was weeping and praying--it was almost too much to take. I asked Doug if we could take her to a hospital, because I was worried she would develop an infection and probably die without daily medical care. The mother agreed to go.
precious baby
We all climbed into the bus. I saw someone press a bill into the mother's hand--it was 5 kwatcha, or about 5 cents. I sat looking out the window, crying a little, and asking, "why Lord?" Why wouldn't he heal that innocent baby? What a testament that would have been to the entire village! In my head I know that God has reasons for doing things the way He does, and I know I can't always understand them, but I couldn't keep from crying out to Him in despair.
During the ride to the hospital we started to get the whole story from the baby's mother. Here's what she said:
On Monday, 2 nights ago, the family had been sleeping in their hut. There was a fire burning on one end of the room, with the father and mother sleeping next to the fire, and then the baby, and two other children. The parents were situated between the children and the fire. They woke suddenly to the baby screaming, and were horrified to find her in the fire. The family believes that the baby was lifted into the fire by a witchcraft spell (someone in the family was involved in witchcraft--I'm not sure if it was an enemy or what, because the mother was reluctant to talk about this). According to the mother, the baby is too young to crawl or even roll over so they know she didn't accidently go into the fire. (Later I talked to Isaac about this. I was dubious at first, but according to him this is a common occurance in Malawi, and people frequently wake from sleep to find themselves in strange places or falling from a high place. Witchcraft calls upon the powers of darkness, and demons have the ability to do things like this. Isaac also said that many witch doctors teach that if you want to get rich, you must shed the blood of a baby or kill a baby. Now I think it very well could have been a witchcraft spell that lifted the baby into the fire) That morning, the mother borrowed a bicycle and rode for 15 kilometers on a bumpy dirt trail, carrying her baby to the nearest hospital. When she arrived, the doctors wanted to keep the baby there but didn't because the mother wasn't able to pay for treatment. So they just put bandages on her and told her to come back in 2 days. The mother rode home, hopeless and broken, knowing that she couldn't afford to return to the hospital. She was sick with worry about her daughter. That night, she heard about a movie being shown in a nearby village. She and her family went to see the Jesus film that we showed in our first village, and she accepted Jesus that night. But she was still very worried about her baby.
We dropped the rest of the team off at our next village, and then Laurie, Issac and I climbed into the back of the pickup (the one that always has to be push started) and the women and the baby rode in the cab the rest of the way to the hospital. When we got there, Issac suggested Laurie and I stay outside because he thought the price would increase as soon as they saw white people. The doctors wanted to look at the baby before they could estimate a price for her treatment, so we left the women there and went into town to buy some bottled water and petrol for the truck. While we were waiting Laurie and I spotted a telephone bureau--basically a little plywood shack just big enough for two small wooden chairs and a telephone. It was so strange--we couldn't figure out where the telephone was plugged in! But it was a welcome sight, and we pooled our money to pay for each of us to have a 2 minute call to the U.S. It took several tries before we were able to get through, but I finally heard ringing on the other end of the line. It was very early at home, and to my dismay Darin's voicemail greeting came on. I left him a message; it was a surreal experience to be talking to him from a plywood booth in the middle of Africa with 4 Africans leaning in the windows and doors to listen to everything I said. It lifted my spirits so much just to hear his voice on the recording! Laurie got Ollie's voicemail too, but we were giddy anyway. It had been a long day, and that little sound of home was much needed. We laughed about the range of emotions we'd experienced so far in one day...
phone home
isaac and shan
When we returned to the hospital, two men with crucifixes around their necks came out and talked to Isaac. They wanted to keep the baby there for 2 weeks. They said the women could stay there but the hospital wouldn't be able to feed them. We were able to pay for the baby's hospital stay and also gave K1500 to the women so that they could buy food for themselves. The total cost was $30 American. To put this in perspective--if the entire village pooled all their money and sold all their livestock, they would have less than $2 American. Can you imagine how they felt about a group of funny looking pale people showing up (the day after she had accepted Jesus, even) taking them to the hospital (they returned the very day that the doctors had told them to come back) and paying K3000, more money than they have ever or will ever see again? To us, it's not much...but to them, it was a miracle. We went into the hospital where the baby was. She was sleeping peacefully with her mom and grandmother watching over her. We handed them the food money and cautioned them to ration it to buy food. We paid the hospital directly for the medical care. With Isaac's help, we told them that the money was not from us but from God, and that God had worked a miracle for their baby, and that she would be a testament to everyone in that village. We told her to break any ties with witchcraft and reminded her that she belongs to Jesus and the name of Jesus is more powerful than any other. They were so grateful and stunned at all that had happened. We prayed again for healing and blessing for the baby, and then we left.
hospital ward
During the ride home I thought about how God doesn't always work the way we want or expect Him to. Carol T. told me later than God works in the way that will have the optimal impact on the most people possible. Even though He didn't heal her before my eyes, He did do a miracle in that family's life. I'm so grateful He let me have a small role in that. What an awesome God He is!
posted by m c i l r o y f a m i l y | 9:00 PM
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