By grace alone

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Other, Other

By Grace Alone

Some mornings I don’t want to get up. I just want to put my head under the covers and pretend I don’t exist. The morning in this story was one of those. I could see a long tedious day stretching ahead of me, full of things I didn’t want to do starting with the dreaded school lunches and finishing with a mountain range of washing to fold. What’s more, this morning had a dental appointment tucked in between school lunches and learn to swim classes. So it was that, not so promptly, at 8.15 I raced down the stairs and jumped into Suzy.

Suzy is a 32-year-old yellow Suzuki Swift who was loaned to us by friends when they realised we needed a temporary second car. She can be reluctant to start some mornings and she is not as beautiful as she once was as her flooring was ripped out because she leaks and then fills up with water. This particular morning was my first opportunity to drive Suzy and I leapt in with some trepidation. Being unable to adjust the seat forward, I drove off sitting upright like a heroine in a Jane Austen movie dropping the clutch and stalling her every few seconds.

By the time I reached the first traffic light I was killing myself with laughter. But I had managed to move the seat forward and we were off. See Suzy, in spite of her age, drives like a race car. She is incredibly stable when you turn corners and, because she has no floor, you can feel the road beneath you. Driving Suzy just makes me feel real and I can’t help loving her. On this morning, however, Suzy was more than my personal dilapidated race car, she was God’s grace to me, reminding me of the joy in the every day.

It is easy to see life as mundane and to forget that God’s grace is all around us. It’s there in the dreaded school lunches made from grain that grew at the grace of God, in the breeze and the sun that brush my shoulders as I hang out my washing, in the gift of my husband and three beautiful boys. All of these things are precious gifts that I have not earned, that simply come to me from the hands of a Father who loves me. Suzy reminds me that life is good even when I’m driving to the dentist.

But Suzy also reminds me of the way that God’s grace is given to us through the hands of those around us, sometimes those who care for us, sometimes complete strangers. One of the strange, spiky gifts that living on support has given me is an awareness that everything I own, the food I eat, the education for my children, my healthcare is reliant on God’s grace through the kindness of others. But it is not always easy to see this support as God’s grace. More often than not I am tempted to worry. Do I deserve it? Am I working hard enough? What outcomes have I achieved? Sometimes I wish for a simple job where I am paid for what I do, where my finances are in my control.

And yet what a gift it is to remember that we have not earned any of these things. They are gifts that come from the hand of the Father, most often administered through the loving hands of others. Gifts we should use in his service, yes! But gifts none the less. All of us, no matter what we do, exist only by God’s grace. Suzy was a gift of love to us when we needed her and the grace in her brings us joy.

Jesus said, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” Luke 12: 22–24

The author is an Interserve Partner currently on Home Assignment.

Jonahs Tree

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Other, Arab World

Jonah’s tree

I never thought I had much in common with Jonah. The whole running in the wrong direction thing, thrown out of a boat, being vomited up by a big fish. I’m definitely not like Jonah. Anyway, when God called, I went. Right?

Yep. I’m here. Living in an overcrowded grey metropolis, my apartment indistinguishable from the thousands of others that overlook me when I stand on my balcony.

This balcony has always been a favourite place of mine. Though it is just large enough for a single chair, I can get outside, look at the trees, listen to the birds, and enjoy quiet time in the morning shade. There have been two flame trees below the balcony which flash into bloom every year in summer. I look forward to it because it is the prettiest time of year in this beauty-starved concrete city.

Here is a noisy place. Kids, cars, donkeys, horns, calls to prayer. We get used to them all. But I arrived home to an unfamiliar noise last month and went to investigate. I followed it all the way to my balcony, and discovered that I was hearing the noise of a chainsaw doing its work on ‘my’ flame trees. And they were due to bloom in two weeks…

I watched from above with barely controlled dismay as three men chopped down my beautiful trees. Within the hour, the birds were gone, the stump removed and all I could see was a concrete, rubbish-strewn courtyard. The single bit of beauty and colour I could see from my flat – gone in an hour.

I was angry about my tree being chopped down. Every time I looked down at the ugly ground past my washing line, my anger was refuelled. What is wrong with this culture that they would chop down such a beautiful tree when every bit of green should be so precious in this city? I was still moping the next morning when I sat down on the balcony for a quiet time.

But my conscience had started to hum and, like a mobile phone on vibrate, I felt urged to look at Jonah. Fast forward past the big fish and Jonah’s sitting on his hill in the sun (Jonah 4:9–11). God’s grace is about to fall upon the entire city of Nineveh, but Jonah is preoccupied with the loss of his shady vine. So God says:

”Do you have good reason to be angry about the tree? You are concerned about the tree for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow. I am concerned about the millions of people in this great city.” (my paraphrasing).

Now I know God cares about the environment. But so much more than that, God longs to pour out his grace upon this city.

And my part in it? Ouch. What a humbling reprimand. Maybe I’m not so different to grumpy old Jonah after all – no big fish required. Am I more concerned about my tree than those who cut it down? In my pride for ‘being here’, have I got this so wrong?

God is definitely reminding me to get back to his priorities. This is something I’ve asked before but I so quickly get distracted. And not just by trees.

Forgive me Lord. Thanks that your grace extends to me and my failures too. Break my heart with what breaks yours, Lord. And help me truly live a life worthy of the calling I’ve received. Amen.

The author is a Partner in the Arab world

The lost song

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Other

The lost song

Restless and sweating, we woke to the screeching cry of our local cow man as he took his turn ‘calling’ from the mosque situated just 50 metres from our house. It was the day of the annual feast of sacrifice and, although we had no electricity, the generator at the mosque was obviously in fine form. It was going to be a big day of celebration in our 99% Muslim city, so we were up and awake before first light, as were most of the people in our city.

Many people who live in Muslim countries have told us that they enjoy hearing the calls to prayer and we can also occasionally listen without distress to music or plaintive, earnest calls to prayer. However, over the past two years our mosque had changed, as had many in the city. ‘Plaintive’ had insidiously turned to screeching and often the cries were angry and hostile. On occasions we (foreign women) were also ordered out of our beds at 3.30am to cook breakfast for our husbands during the fasting month. This is normal for Muslim women but is totally not normal for foreign non-Muslim women and, in fact, was a breach of local Sharia law.

Eventually this exposure to noise of up to 80–85 decibels (the levels of a hairdryer and sometimes a jackhammer) took its toll. Two months before home leave, we and one of our neighbours ‘hit a wall’, finding it difficult to concentrate and suffering sleep deprivation.

For months I had been living two lives. Three months earlier my father, who was normally active and well, was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic disorder (leukaemia) and his life expectancy was weeks rather than months. I flew back to Australia and had three weeks with my dad before he suddenly developed pneumonia and septicaemia and died just five days later. My husband joined me at short notice. We had just seven days to help organise the funeral and pack up my dad’s property, situated on 3.5 hectares of land, prepare it for sale and place it on the market.

When we returned to the field, our reliable internet access, which we loved, became a source of great stress as the journey of problem solving from overseas for the sale of my dad’s house by auction began. At this time activities in our field role were at peak level with impending annual leaders’ retreats and visiting teams coming from three countries for various events. Between managing local logistics in our host country and organising survey reports and dealing with solicitors, agents and estate matters in Australia, my emotional and physical health began to suffer. A younger brother was slowly dying from cancer in Australia; he had been a recluse for decades, but he had finally let me close. Bridging both worlds, I was contacting him weekly to walk alongside him in this difficult journey.

Somewhere, in all of this, I had ‘lost my song’. While not a good singer (I sometimes declare I can sing in one key only), it had been common for many years for me to sing – whether preparing food, driving in the car or reflecting. Singing came readily from a heart of worship, but somewhere, somehow I had stopped singing and I knew that a great healing needed to take place to restore my soul.

Can you believe that during the time mentioned at the beginning of this story, with no electricity and in the midst of loud, screeching noise from the mosque, I found myself singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord’? Tears came to my eyes as I realised that my ‘lost song’ had been restored, and this had happened in the most unlikely of situations. How often such surprises of joy come to us when we make choices, such as to praise when everything is uncomfortable or distressing. This was my choice that early morning and God’s Spirit began to restore my soul. This healing has continued, despite the death in July of my brother and also a close member of my husband’s family.

May I encourage you also, as the Scriptures say, to know that sorrow endures for a night (or a season) but joy will come in the morning for those who are faithful. If we have learned one thing from the past decade of our lives, it is this: that a full life consists not of an abundance of possessions but of a God-directed mix of heartache and sorrow and indescribable joy and compassion, expressed to us and through us as we live as ambassadors of the Kingdom.

The author is a Partner in Asia

God give you strength

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Other

God give you strength

I look at myself in the mirror, in the bathroom at the refugee centre where I help out. I’ve come in here to hide away a little, to step out of the fluster and hustle for a moment. As I dab at my sweat-smeared makeup, I think to myself that anger is a funny emotion.

We arrived this morning to an overwhelming scene of about 60 (mostly Syrian) women crowding the courtyard, all manner of children in tow. I am one of only two English–Arabic speakers on team today and after a morning of translating with my very limited Arabic, and repeatedly saying “I’m very sorry, but we can’t help you with anything else”, I’m quite a variety of angries.

I’m angry with the crowd for making me so overwhelmed. I’m angry with myself for getting flustered; for having money but not being able to hand it out to one and all. I’m frustrated with my limited Arabic, which drops in capacity the more stressed I become. I’m annoyed that all I’m thinking right now is how much I hate disappointing people … How is this suddenly about me?!

Sometimes I’d be caught in a sea of hands, tapping me on the shoulder or tugging on my arm, while I try to answer questions about when they might be seen, or whether we can provide more assistance, or would I please tell the manager about their seven children, and husband in prison in Syria? On this crazy first Monday of a month (the busiest day when new registrations are taken), the women crowd around the registration table, determined to be heard. “Please, sit down!”, the other translator urges, as eager faces lean in, wanting to make sure they are all getting fair treatment.

By the end of four or five hours I don’t want to talk to anyone, preferring to sit in a corner with my eyes tight shut. The last of the women have been assisted, as far as possible. When I got home later I spent a little while in the foetal position, then unwound over language homework and TV. And despite all of the flusters and splutters of the day, the thought I return to is not about anger, frustration, injustice or exhaustion. It’s about the sacredness in Arabic greetings.

Syrians in particular are a very polite people. At the end of virtually every interview with a refugee who was asking for assistance we couldn’t provide, they would stand and say “Thank you” or “Peace be with you”. And as they left, with frustration fading from their eyes, they would simply say, “God give you strength”. It’s a frequently used line, but each time it is said the words make the normal sacred and remind us both of the bigger picture. And as I respond with the set reply, the words teach us to offer grace to each other.

Some, understandably, will still leave angry or hopeless. But I’m comforted to remember that it’s God who gives strength, and God who loves more than I ever could. And I am humbled that these most vulnerable of people are the ones reminding me.

Hannah* is a recently-returned On Tracker who served in West Asia.
*Names have been changed.

UMN Earthquake response

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Community Development

Everyone who was in Nepal on 25 April 2015 will remember that feeling – the horror of the solid ground beneath you rolling like surf, cries of fear, buildings crumbling, clouds of choking dust, the shock and the confusion that followed.

For villagers near the epicentre, the experience was even more deadly. In some communities, most of the houses were reduced to rubble, the few possessions of families already very poor buried and destroyed, food stocks and precious animals lost, and in some cases, family members lost too.

The United Mission to Nepal has been working in Dhading, one of the most affected districts, for more than 20 years. We have strong relationships there, competent local partners, and a track record of working with the poorest and most disadvantaged. So it made sense to focus our relief activities there, in three Village Development Committee areas (VDCs) in the south and four in the rugged, mountainous north.

The challenges were many. The northern VDCs have little or no road access at the best of times – just narrow walking trails snaking through the Himalayas, crossing steep gullies via sinuous suspension bridges. Landslides and rockfalls made the trails virtually impassable, and broke or damaged the bridges. Getting relief to the villages in the north meant negotiating access to scarce helicopter transport, or long, dangerous road journeys to drop-off points to which affected families walked, sometimes for days. UMN and its partners managed to distribute comprehensive relief packages to more than 12,000 desperate families.

Now the work of reconstruction is beginning. Over the next two years, UMN will be providing training and assistance to communities so that the new houses built will be more earthquake resistant; we'll be providing temporary buildings for schools, repairing damaged water systems and toilets, restoring livelihoods through seed and tool distributions and replacement livestock, training people in disaster preparedness, and helping deal with the psycho-social impacts through trauma counseling groups.

There are huge challenges ahead. Thank you for your prayers and support – they are much needed, and much appreciated!

Lyn Jackson is Communications Director at UMN.

Towards an Unshakeable Kingdom

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Community Development

Towards an Unshakable Kingdom

I am lightly jolted as I kneel at the cupboard in my office in Kathmandu and the earthquake alarm dings briefly. I ignore the aftershock as it is so small but a Nepali colleague starts to yell loudly and rushes outside where she gets on her motor scooter and rides off to her small sons’ school to make sure they are safe. From a nearby college there is a great hubbub as students move outside in response to the slight quake.

It is months since the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated large areas of Nepal on 25 April, and for most people life has now taken on normality, albeit an altered one. However, the emotional scars have not yet healed and some people react badly to even the smallest of the continuing aftershocks, which trigger memories of frightening experiences.

Recently a Nepali man recognised me in the street in Kathmandu and called out. He was someone I had worked with in the hills at Okhaldunga Hospital in 2004. He told me his wife and two daughters had been killed in the earthquake and his 19-year-old son had had both his forearms amputated because of a crush injury. I asked about another man I had worked with at the hospital and whose daughter’s wedding I had attended – he was killed in the earthquake my friend replied. All quite shocking for me.

I work for International Nepal Fellowship (INF) and, although it is not a relief organisation, immediately after the earthquake it quickly formed a disaster response group that organised relief supplies and utilised government and other community contacts to offer medical aid and make distributions of emergency food and shelter to some of the worst hit areas. INF liaised with the Pokhara Christian Community (PCC) and its social welfare arm, Asal Chimekee (meaning ‘good neighbours’). As well as PCC supplying and distributing much aid, it also provided volunteers, mostly from youth groups, who worked tirelessly with INF, packing goods, loading trucks and distributing the relief items. Many local church and para-church organisations were also involved in relief work.

At a feedback meeting in one village, the people told the Asal Chimekee team that they were happy with the quality of food, materials and training that had been given to them. One leader asked if the team were there to convert people to Christianity. The team took the opportunity to explain why they, as Christians, were doing disaster relief and explained how many people around the world loved the villagers and had contributed generously. These misconceptions are not uncommon and it is also frequently assumed that Christian organisations will only help Christians. The media often does not report on what is being achieved by Christian organisations but this does not deter the ongoing work.

The initial relief efforts are over but many in the hilly regions where destruction was worse than in Kathmandu are still suffering badly as whole villages were shattered and the roads needed to bring help are impassable due to landslides and the monsoon rains. A new phase has begun now, one of rebuilding. INF has been allocated an area in Ghorka District by the government to work in; its immediate focus has been the provision of materials for emergency shelters and the building of Temporary Learning Centres to replace the many destroyed schools, as over one million students have not been able to attend school since the earthquake. INF is also working with local churches to respond to community needs.

Likewise, Asal Chimekee is continuing its work and practically providing for people with such things as seed distribution, constructing health posts, schools and toilets and running children’s health camps. It stepped out in faith with $7,000 and God provided one hundred times that in the weeks that followed but future plans require that much again. Please remember the people of Nepal and organisations like INF and Asal Chimekee that are showing Christ’s love under adverse conditions.

Rowan Butler is an Interserve Partner serving with INF's Communications team.

Remembering Mongolia

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Theology / Church

I traced the railway line 30,000 feet below me, two silver hairs lying across the Spring-greening Mongolian steppe. I’d amused myself with this challenge 23 years previously when I first flew to Ulaanbaatar, via Beijing, in 1992. Now I could get a flight from Hong Kong, a new convenience serving those from the South Asia and Pacific context.

I found the railway tracks again, signposts pointing to a city that still echoed its 70 years of socialist planning, but was now subsumed in a speedily growing population, new glass towers, traffic congestion and all the trappings of a financial boom financed by Korean, Chinese, and Japanese investment. I
arrived Thursday 21st May, 2015: there was an air of cautious optimism for the future, for Rio Tinto, the global mining company had signed another contract with the Mongolian government the day before. Mongolia’s wealth had been its grasslands, but in the last 20-odd years, what is under those grasslands – gold and copper, mainly – has been of more interest. Mongolian Christians were cautious, for did not an economic boom result in yet more poor?

It was for the Mongolian Christians that I had returned to Mongolia, not to celebrate Mongolia’s new-found wealth, but to reflect again on being Christian in their particular and unique context. My wife, Karen, and I along with our children, had lived in Ulaanbaatar from August 1992 to July 1996, as Interserve Partners seconded to JCS International, then an infant umbrella organisation through which several mission agencies accessed Mongolia. I had returned five times from 1996 to 2002 – a sort of non-residential commuting consultant missionary – teaching at the Bible School, and advising Mongolia Theological Education by Extension (MTEE). But now the gap had been 13 years!

On Saturday 23rd May, 2015, MTEE held its 20th anniversary celebrations. This was the reason I had returned. I had founded the MTEE in 1995. TEE, by using a tried and educationally sound methodology of workbook and well-trained tutor, was a proven way of training Christians in discipleship, Bible knowledge, Christian leadership, and ministry formation, all in the students’ contexts of home and church. Now I was the guest of honour – invited back by MTEE’s Director, Naranbaatar, and the Mongolian leadership team – and I was to experience a deeply moving two days of celebrations.

On being picked up at the airport, I was taken immediately to a tutor training event that was in full progress. Because many tutors were going to be in Ulaanbaatar for the big celebrations on 23rd May, an ‘added value’ training had been arranged for them. Fifty-five of the best tutors from all over the country – some now with 20 years of experience in leading dozens of TEE groups – were gathered around tables, practising their leadership of small groups, encouraging and critiquing, praying, worshipping and learning together. They were being introduced to a new course on the book of Proverbs, as well as hearing reports from TEE movements around the world.

“Do you remember me?” asked one woman. With some prompting, I did. “I am Urnaa. I was in the very first field trial group of the very first course, in the summer of 1996. The course was Abundant Life. I have been tutoring TEE groups ever since.”

Mongolia is an event-orientated culture, so I took my watch off. Also, I had mistakenly left my camera battery charging back at the flat. The only thing I could do then was to soak up the event, not distracted by time or picture. The 20th anniversary celebrations were a typically Mongolian moment: a banquet with traditional music (one of the pastors is a skilled musician of traditional Mongolian genres), a big worship service with speeches and entertainment (including more traditional Mongolian music, a Korean worship dance, and Cossack dancing). About 200 attended: the founding employees, current employees, board members, tutors, past students, local pastors, teachers from the Bible College. Testimonies were told and vision was shared. I was simply overwhelmed by what God had done over those 20 years, and what the ongoing hopes and dreams were for the future.

MTEE had been set up originally as a joint project between JCS International and a donor agency. Current JCS and donor agency leaders were able to attend the celebrations. The celebrations were a true salad bowl of all those who had given so much to developing the programme over 20 years. As I looked out over this assembly when I had to make my speech, I was overcome with emotion: a simple seed of an idea in 1995 had grown to become a dynamic movement extending to the remotest nomad family in Mongolia’s farthest provinces, equipping disciples throughout Mongolia’s cities, and even penetrating into Mongolia’s prisons. Today, at any given time, there are about 600 TEE students throughout Mongolia, studying at foundation, certificate and diploma level. The Asia Theological Association has accredited the four-year Certificate in Christian Ministry programme, and this has inspired and cross-pollinated with TEE projects in other Asian countries. We give credit to our God, and also to the hard- working employees of the project over the years, and the current team under director Naranbaatar’s leadership!

As part of the celebrations, the MTEE hosted an academic symposium at which five academics presented papers on various aspects of Mongolian Christian history. During our residence in Mongolia, I had come to understand that Mongolians were passionate about their history; I myself had made it a project to research and publish for them. At this symposium I discovered a movement had started. Others now – all Mongolian – were researching uniquely Christian history of Mongolia. And MTEE was seen to be able to move amongst the academics of Mongolia, something that will give MTEE credibility and kudos for its ongoing legitimacy as both a methodology and a Christian training programme.

After the 20th anniversary celebrations, I stayed another week, co-leading the Langham Preaching partnership training of 29 pastors in Biblical preaching. I remember a good number of these pastors as teenagers, 22 years ago. I had baptised several of them.

We met in a summer resort village outside of Ulaanbaatar, and it was Spring. The last of the snow had melted and the trees were bursting into leaf. In all these events – academic symposium, MTEE 20th anniversary, Langham Preaching training – there was a recognition from several pastors that “the initial work is complete; the church is well planted. What we need now is consolidation and capacity building.”

*Hugh and Karen Kemp were with Interserve from 1992 to 2002. They both now work at St John’s Theological College, Auckland, where Karen is one of the deans, and Hugh is an adjunct lecturer.*

Extract from GO Magazine (Aotearoa New Zealand) July 2015.

Postcards from the Himalayas

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Medical / Health

Some months back I had the privilege of visiting a leprosy hospital with one of the counsellors, Helen*. I was so moved by meeting these patients that I had to share.

From a Partner in Nepal

Basanta* is a young woman (aged 26) who lives in a very remote part of the hilly western region. She has grossly deformed hands and feet; she had been aware of changes in her limbs for 13 years but did not know where to go for help. She heard on FM radio a description of her disease and a phone number to contact. Not having learned to write, she recorded the number on her phone. When she contacted the number, she learned of a mobile medical camp being held. She was helped to this camp where she was told about leprosy and her need for long-term medication and good care of her limbs to avoid further damage. Leaving her family and all that was familiar, Basanta travelled hours and hours by bus to reach the hospital. That was just a few days ago. Since then, along with medical treatment and care, this beautiful young woman has taken the opportunity to begin to learn to read and write, her pencil held by a stump of a finger. Sometimes a teacher is able to visit the ward. Other times, fellow patients use their spare hours reading to those who cannot read or helping them to learn to write their name and the alphabet. She also is enjoying the fellowship meetings held for patients.

There was another man (aged 53) – I did not catch his name –who also came from a very remote area. He had a below-the-knee amputation due to disease. His three daughters are all married and have left his home; only his wife is waiting for him there. He came seeking help as he realised that although he had only a ‘sore’ on his foot that he continually damaged, it could be leprosy. Even now, in phone calls to his wife explaining that he had an amputation, he did not speak the dreaded word ‘leprosy’ so as to avoid the stigma and exclusion people with this disease still often experience. He smiled gently as he explained that he had some land that he could pay others to work now that he was not able and that he had a hand-turn sewing machine and could earn some income that way. This man’s face beamed as he shared all this with Helen this morning.

Astha* was seated on a wooden stool on wheels from which she was carefully spreading the sheet and folding the quilt as she made her bed. Her leg had been recently amputated below the knee. Wounds and damage, occurred because she had no sensation of pain due to the disease, could not be healed. She was missing her three-year-old daughter, who was being cared for by her sister. How would she cope when she returned to her home in a big town on the plains south of the mountains? It is hot and very wet at this time of monsoon. Her home is a small room and water floods in during storms. Although the family has lived there for a long time, they do not have any paper of ownership. She uses a neighbour’s toilet that is some distance away and the nearest tap is at another neighbour’s. Her husband, also a sufferer of this disease, earns a meagre salary as a rickshaw driver and Astha tends a very small vegetable patch. She related that through all these struggles she has a growing faith in God that gives her great peace. Helen gently placed her hand on the bandaged stump of Astha's leg and prayed for good healing and trust in God to provide for her future.

*Names have been changed

Abis story

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Medical / Health

“Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!” The words came from the small six-year-old girl who had already been sick for four days. What became devastatingly clear was that Abi had dengue haemorrhagic fever, and had now gone into shock. Her parents had been watching her deteriorate but, like so many of their friends and neighbours, they had no familiarity with the early signs of the disease. Knowledge of these symptoms would have told them that this was not the ‘normal fever’ so commonly experienced in this tropical land. Knowing this information can mean the difference between life and death.

Celebrating a rare ‘day off’, my Saturday was interrupted by a desperate call for blood donors for “a six-year-old girl who was dying from dengue”. The phone calls and emails started and donors began giving blood. Others were on standby. Prayer calls went out – to the local community and further afield – as Abi’s condition remained critical.

Who is this little girl? Abi’s family are Christians who moved to our strict Muslim area just two years ago. Her father worked for a car sales company,who tried to get him to do dishonest things. Instead he resigned, and just a month ago he and his wife started a business here in our city. They had limited contact with the broader Christian community in this city governed by sharia law and felt very alone at this terrible time. Far from extended family and familiar home surroundings, they stood watching their little girl slipping away from them.

Friends of the family kicked into action and Abi’s parents were astonished as strangers came and went from the hospital, donating blood to a little girl they hadn’t met. They heard of people they didn’t know who were praying for them and their local friends surrounded them and kept vigil with them, coordinating donors and updating information.

On Sunday evening, the fifth day, Abi went into a coma. Her parents asked for her to be transferred to the large provincial hospital where there were more facilities in the Intensive Care Unit. Such a transfer in itself would take a toll on Abi’s failing body and more prayer calls went out to more people unknown to the family. Pray for a safe transfer … pray Abi can make the trip … pray the doctors at her hospital will agree to transfer her … and so it went.

As an acute care nurse, I knew that Abi’s chance of surviving medically were about zero. From information received it seemed she had septicaemia, was in shock and her vital organs were failing. From my experience her chance of surviving would indeed require a miracle.
Well, the miracle happened! I cried as I translated the message on my phone that came through the next morning. Expecting that I would hear Abi was now with Jesus, instead I was reading: “Praise God last night Abi was successfully transferred to [the main provincial] hospital. The transfer went well and her condition has begun to improve. She has been calling for her mother and requested food. This morning there will be a result from an X-ray of her lungs and it is hoped that today she can leave the ICU area”.

My husband and I, with our director, were privileged to visit Abi a few days later and hear in more detail the horror and relief of this family’s journey over the past week. Abi’s mother wept as she explained the depth of their agony, the two times Abi was misdiagnosed and how it was not until she felt Abi’s icy body one morning that she knew her child was dying and the health providers finally realised what was happening and began resuscitation.

Abi herself was awake when we visited but had not walked for 10 days. She was discharged to bed rest at home a week later and finally after three weeks of illness was able to walk and return to school.

Abi remembers our hospital visit and still talks about it, and the family has just recently returned to their home city due to work circumstances. The evening before they left they came to our house to share a meal and to say goodbye and once again to say “thank you”. This whole experience has been a blessing to Abi and her family through her recovery and the sense of belonging to a large community of faith that exists in this city where our faith is actively opposed and believers are often discriminated against and persecuted.

It has also been a joy and blessing to those of us who walk alongside the local church in its varied forms of expression here. Thank you to those of you who prayed for Abi and her family, and for the calls to prayer that we send out from this land. Please be encouraged that your prayers are so often answered, even though you may not always hear the results.

We especially say “thank you” to the One who lovingly gave healing to Abi and who has given us the honour to serve in this amazing place with all its joys and challenges.

The author is an Interserve Partner in South East Asia

Love made complete

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Medical / Health

“This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:11

I met Jesus the other day. He asked me to come with him to see a man who was sick – dying maybe. A man who couldn’t walk anymore, who had pressure sores 12 cm wide across his spine, who people forgot to feed and whom no one wanted.

The room smelt revolting and I hesitated but Jesus walked straight in. He was carrying food for the man and he started by straightening up the room a little and giving the man something to eat. Jesus thought about me too and gave me some surgical gloves and a face mask.

Jesus had invited me because I am an expert with 17 years’ experience working with people with disabilities. But I had never seen anything like this before. Aside from disagreeing with the diagnosis the man had been given, I didn’t know what to do. I was utterly helpless.

But Jesus knew what to do. He began changing the man’s dressings and the man’s sodden bedclothes, something he came every two days to do. He started to clean the man’s wounds, taking away the old skin that had been replaced by new. And in between hisses of pain, the man in the bed asked him questions about the story he had just read in the Bible Jesus had given him. Jesus listened and answered him gently. I couldn’t always follow the answers because my language is sometimes a bit inadequate.

Jesus finished his work with fresh bandages. He asked me if I could do anything and I could see that he loved this man he served. I said I needed time to think and we left.

Of course it wasn’t really Jesus I was with. He was actually a rather short, dumpy 50 year-old with a murky past. I know him and his wife well since they took us, foreigners, under their wing. We laugh a lot together and drink tea. But that day all I could see was Jesus, and that man in the bed could clearly see him too.

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” 1 John 4:12.

The author is an Interserve Partner in Asia.