The morning was bright with a slight chill, the ground wet from the nightly rain we’ve come to expect from our weeks in Malaybalay.
“Well, let’s just get out and try to look American” our host, Mark, said to us. None of us knew whom exactly we were meeting, but we assumed we’d be fairly easy to spot amidst the sea of dark faces filing past us.
We sat on the ground outside the hospital, chatting idly and listening to Adele through the speakers of an iPod, pretending that the windows above weren’t lined with Filipinos trying to catch a glimpse of us, the 12 white Americans.
Finally, thirty minutes later, our host for the morning arrived, smiling as he walked up to us with large containers of food for the feeding.
We prayed together, still cheerful and laughing, anxious to see a living God at work in the lives of these people. Our minds were filled with legends of Racers past, dreaming of clearing out an entire hospital with a single prayer.
We were met with English greetings by nurses in bright white uniforms, accented by power blue stockings. The halls were bright and empty, free from the clutter of both things and people.
And then, we walked upstairs.
The air was thick with the desperation of the sick, of the poor, of the hopeless. The rooms were stuffy and cramped: twelve beds, 18 patients, 25 family members. There was not a single glimpse of the fresh September morning that existed outside of those walls.
Room after room, more of the same. Pediatrics, Post-Operation, Critical Care. A dozen beds, double the amount of people. All of them packed into dark rooms, tiny windows providing the only view outside.
The hospital is one of three in the city – this one is for the poorest of the poor, those completely dependent on the little healthcare that is provided by the government. Patients are required to have a family member present, and the family members are often the ones administering the care – changing bandages, cleaning wounds, wrapping limbs.
A large spoonful of rice is given at each meal to those being treated in the hospital; the family members provide their own food. One of our translators walked ahead of us, announcing that food was available downstairs.
We wandered in and out of the rooms completely unbothered, not a single one of us stopped from going anywhere on the hall. We walked freely into rooms marked “Contagious” and sat with children fresh out of surgery.
Every so often, I walked past one of my fellow Americans in the hall. Each was on their way to another packed room, bringing nothing more than English prayers that no one there really understood.
Up until that morning, our time on the Race had been filled with the smiling faces of orphans. But on that day, all of squadmates’ eyes were glistening with tears, completely broken by the scene before them. Each managed a half smile or a nod, the unspoken message that really meant, “Holy crap. This is really happening.”
In and out of the rooms we went, sometimes in pairs, sometimes alone. Each of us taking a step in faith, asking random Filipinos if we could pray over their babies, their bones, their illnesses. Prayer after prayer, we continued to believe in a God big enough to clear out the entire hospital.
And then, it was time to go. My dear sister Charlene spoke for us all when she looked up and said, “But there are still so many more rooms.”
That doesn’t happen in America. People don’t walk in and out of hospital rooms asking to pray for random strangers in a foreign language. Sickness is healed by doctors and drugs, not through the prayers of 20-something year olds.
But somehow, on that morning, we believed differently. We believed that the stories in the Bible aren’t just history, that God is alive today, and that He is still the ultimate Healer.
No one got up from their hospital bed that morning, suddenly better because of our prayers. No broken bones were supernaturally sewn back together and no baby was suddenly virus-free. Not a single person was healed that day.
…Well, except for maybe all of us.
