The second day of hospital visits was very similar to the
first. The only difference was I saw even worse things.
I was walking down the hall complaining in my mind about how
my stomach hurt and how my sense of smell seemed to magically become
heightened. “Crap� was my thought, really. Especially when I saw this man
walking the opposite direction with a huge, infected sore on his arm. Though I
do remember thinking, “good he’s not going in the room that we are… I don’t
have to see that thing.�
God had other plans though, and He was still intent on
submerging me into the state of these people. We prayed for this boy who had
just had surgery on his stomach, when I looked up to the next bed and the man
with the sore was sitting, eating lunch with the guy in the bed. “Haha, funny
God,� I said.
We prayed for both guys. The one with the sore was
electrocuted. The sore itself was only about the size of a golf ball, but the
infection was slightly larger than a softball. And you could smell it. As we
prayed for him, all I could do was look at his eyes. And that’s when I learned
one of the 
biggest things from hospital ministry: these are human beings. You
can find and see their humanity and importance in their eyes. If you look at
them as patients and you show them with your face that you pity them, you won’t
be effective.
The rest of the time at the hospital, I saw more and more
wounds that were infected. Also, more and more hopeless people. But with what I
had learned earlier, I was trying to just show them smiles and treat them as
humans. I thought about how I would feel I was in their situation. I know that
I would not want some white person to come through and tell me about Jesus and
that I need to pray and I sure as heck wouldn’t want them to look at me with
pity. So I set out trying to treat these people with dignity. I wanted them to
feel like I cared about them, not their sickness.
It was good
preparation for the next day…
