A Trip to the Hospital in Swaziland

Trips to the hospital are always unique and always seem to
produce tears and brokenness in my heart. 
Be it America or a third world country the picture of children in pain
and suffering will break you.  You
can’t look at a suffering child and not want to do something about it, or at
least I can’t.  We weren’t allowed
to take pictures on Saturday when we visited the Children’s Ward at the Church
of the Nazerene Hospital in Manzini, Swaziland, but I will try to paint a
picture for you of what we saw. 

We entered the hospital easily with no problems.  Unlike America there aren’t a lot of
policies in third world countries. 
You don’t have to sign in or wear a badge and you don’t have to know the
person to go visit, talk with, or pray for them.  When we arrived, the first room we entered had a girl in a
beautiful white dress.  Unlike the
girl pictured here, she was covered in bandages with wounds all over her face
and arms.  Despite her obvious pain
we were greeted with a HUGE smile as we handed her a bag full of candy and
toys.  Our prayers were wanted and
received.  Next we saw two little
baby boys, one whom’s mother spoke English.  She asked me to pray for her son who was suffering from
nausea, diarrhea, and sores in his mouth. 
It was heartbreaking to watch this one year old suffering.  I continued down the hall and entered a
large room with many children.  I
was stopped immediately by three mom’s of infants all under 5 months.  They were layed out on a table, 5 in a
row hooked up to IV’s and oxygen tanks. 
The mother’s spoke fairly good English so I began to converse with them
about their lives and why their children were in the hospital.  It was encouraging to see the mother’s
there alongside the children, although you could see the exhaustion and
desperation all over their faces. 
One of the mother’s told me she would give me her son to take back to
America so he could get better and have a good life.  It broke my heart that she thought just because I was from
America I had more to offer her son then she did.  I could never love that kid the way his birth mother
could.  It was sad and her
desperation hit me hard.

That wasn’t it though. 
Next I strolled down to the malnutrition unit, which was all
babies.  There are 2 abandoned kids
in that unit.  There charts read
like this:  Child One – No Name;
Child Two – Abandoned.  Imagine
your name being abandoned; I can’t. 
No one deserves that and especially not this precious child.  From there I headed back towards the
exit and encountered an image that will stick with me for the rest of my
life.  In my 30 years of life, I
have never seen someone dying of AIDS, let alone a 13-year-old boy.  We were about to leave the ward, when 60-year-old
grandmother grabbed us in desperation. 
She wanted us to come see her grandson who is dying.  I’m not sure why she thought we may be
able to help, but she dragged us into a room with him lying naked on the
table.  She began to show us his
sores and my eyes welled up with tears. 
Why Lord, I asked.  Why does
this young boy have to suffer like this? 
It is not his fault.  We
began to pray and everything in my flesh was scared to touch this kid.  His eyes pierced me, but I still
couldn’t bring myself to do it…sad, but true.  So instead I began to rub the back of the grandmother who
was sobbing.  As she sobbed and we
prayed the tears came faster and more abundantly.  There was nothing I could do, but cry out to God on his
behalf and return home and tell people what I saw.  So I am telling you, I have no pictures to prove it, but the
image will forever be in my head. 
I’m sure if you are a parent the feeling would be intensified.  Imagine your son or daughter laying
covered in sores and no one helping them or knowing what to do.  It wrecks you.  It causes you to ask questions you have
never even thought about.  And it
leaves you ready to do something. 
I’m ready to do something and I will spread the word about what I saw in
Swaziland to everyone I know.  I’m
so thankful God brought me here to see this.