For our next Bush experience, we headed out to this village somewhere in the middle of Mozambique. We stayed there for 4 days.
When we arrived the pastor arranged for us to do a church program, which was a service all day long day every day while being there and to play with the orphans there.
So for our first day, we preached all day long, ate about 6 times, and watched the goat we ate get slaughtered in front of us. It was quite traumatizing and the meat wasn’t even that good! Anyways, later that evening, I went to go sit next to the orphans at the fire. We started playing Simon Says kind of and we ended the game yelling ‘QUAKE QUAKE QUAKE” while clapping like as in the Mighty Ducks. So that was fun.
The next day we went to the local clinic/hospital to go visit people. While we were there, I started walking around the hospital and I saw this girl from a distance lying on the cold concrete hallway floor. At first glance I thought she was disabled because of the way her body was twisted up on the floor, but I came to realize that she wasn’t. As I walked closer, I realized that she suffering from severe severe SEVERE starvation. I have never seen anyone like that before in my life other than on TV. Granted I have seen starved people before in Africa, but this tops the cake. She seriously was skin and bones. I could see every bone in her body protruding. No joke! So I sat down right next to her waiting for my translator to come so I could talk with her. When he came, I came to find out that her name was Sandra and that she had been like this for weeks. She told me that her whole family was dead and that she was alone.
Whenever she talked her voice was very raspy and you could tell she was really straining to make words come out of her mouth. So I didn’t keep her talking for long, but I felt led to sit by her. As I looked into her young maybe 20 aged face, I started wondering when the last time she was gently touched. So I began to gently rub her head, which was covered by a beanie. I just sat there for an hour rubbing her head and back and hoping that she would know that she was loved.
After a while, we had to leave, but my heart broke because I knew that would be the last time I would see her again. I said good bye and I told her to come find me when we are in heaven together.
Since we have left Mozambique, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Sandra. My hope is to find a way to get her out of there. So that’s my goal for the next couple of weeks.
