If you haven’t seen the movie “the prayer room” stop reading this blog and watch it!
Ministry (still not exactly sure what it is.) We are partnered with an orphanage that isn’t really an orphanage.. but they help orphan children. Our first week we did multiple things such as help at a youth group, run morning devotions and go to village outreaches.
Kindle(the orphanage) helps run a clinic,which we got to work at this week. Yep, untrained, not licensed Americans ran malaria tests, bandaged wounds in the wound care wing, ran registration, counted pills in the pharmacy and helped in the HIV department.
It’s funny all the the things you get to experience on the race when it comes to ministry. One week we are full time teachers teaching about the country’s government system, the next we are wearing latex gloves and a mask cleaning third degree burns.
Tuesday morning
Michalea and I end up in the HIV department. We helped weigh and do paperwork for hiv positive patients. One by one, they came in getting the medicine they needed to prevent from getting aids. One was a mother with a child that had to come back after six weeks to see if the newborn was positive as well.
After some time passed, we asked if we could go to the hiv testing room.
Not the most pleasant room to be in, I felt like we were invading their privacy. What if they got tested and were positive, what would two white girls in a corner in the middle of the bush in Africa, in an hiv testing room do? How would we react?
Holy Spirit of course! We decided that since we couldn’t actually test them ourselves, we could intercede with prayer. The first patient came in, a mother, as she started getting prepped for the test, we started quietly praying. Then right before her finger got pricked, we asked if we could lay hands on her and pray.
It was the longest 3 and half minutes, in that course of time, this whole persons life would changed depending on a little plus sign showing up on the plastic card or not. Time felt like it had paused.
Negative. She was negative. We celebrated and praised God.
A second patient came in, we prayed for her. 3 and half minutes later..
Negative!
Two for two were both negative. We celebrated with them, even the doctor.
I realized that day that the hiv room became my prayer room. I didn’t need a special set up, I just needed faith and God. It’s such a fundamental concept that he hears our prayers no matter what, but sometimes that is easily forgotten. Prayer isn’t a formula of some complicated math problem.
For us, team agape, this week the clinic has been our prayer room.
