It was a quiet Sunday morning; we arrived at camp and began our briefing. “Who wants to take the main gate?” my shift manager asks.
I raise my hand. “It should be slow today,” he tells me. “Everything is closed, so most people won’t be coming through.”
Great, I think. This should be easy.
I get to my gate, and just as they said, things are slow. No one is coming in or out. It’s a cool, calm morning, and I begin to reflect on all that we have experienced in the last week.
I hear some chatter on the radio and think nothing of it. Next, I see my shift manager running down the hill.
We don’t run at camp; it creates unrest among the refugees. In that moment, I know something serious must be going on.
I turn my head to observe my shift manager as he runs through the gate. I recognize the tall, broad-shouldered blond man in my peripheral vision and know that my teammate Payden is passing by in the main street.
Turning to me, my shift manager asks if anyone on our team has medical experience.
“Payden was an EMT,” I answer. I turn, open the gate, and raise my voice to call his name. He holds up a finger as I speak, gesturing me to wait, and I see that a family is beside him.
Payden speaks to the man, and they all begin to come through my gate. As the father turns toward me, I see a little girl bundled in his arms. She is pale and limp, and with each step her father takes forward, her legs flail about over his strong arms. As he draws closer I look down upon the barren face and the stiff eyes of a small child around the age of 3.
In that moment, something in me is certain that the tiny body before me is lifeless.
Even though I know what I have seen, I am holding onto to the smallest bit of hope as I watch people rush around to get blankets and send a radio message for the translator.
Maybe she is just on the verge of death, I think. Maybe she will be okay, I think.
When the translator arrives, I walk him into the room and take in the tragic scene. My teammate Payden is hunched over, performing CPR with extreme force on her small body. Bethany stands, her hands on the blankets that are wrapped around the girl’s thin legs. The police stand in the corner, backs turned to the chaos as if it’s just an ordinary day. I walk out, not wanting to be another body in that small room. What I have just seen only confirms my first thought: that little girl is gone. But my teammate still stands there trying to resuscitate a lifeless body.
I go back to the gate to let the ambulance in and watch as they carry a pile of blankets out of the room. What others do not know, I saw. I knew that within the heap of blankets lay an innocent child that had departed this world.
Nothing can prepare you for a sight as tragic as this.
Movies do not do it justice.
Books do not describe it well.
It changes a person.
But it’s up to me to decide how it changes my mindset.
I would be lying to you if I told you I didn’t struggle to find the hope. To be honest with all of you, I was a wreck that day. Even after we found out that a CT scan at the hospital revealed that she had a cancerous brain tumor. Even after I knew there was nothing we could have done to save her. I was still a wreck because it didn’t take away from the heartbreak of what I saw or what my teammates experienced. I went home early from my shift and cleaned our entire apartment because that is how I cope; I keep myself busy and in control of something, even if it is just the dirty dishes.
But in that same day the Lord graciously provided me with wise words from a dear friend: among the many things they said, they reminded me that God is good. All the time.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I had a gracious response to that word of truth. Honestly, I didn’t. I said something to the effect of, “I know that in my head, but I don’t feel that right now.”
I can’t account for that little girl’s soul, and sometimes that makes me question His goodness, but He is good. John 10:10 says that Satan has come to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus has come that we may have life and have it abundantly. I am making a choice to not let Satan bring any more death and destruction through this tragic occurrence. Instead, I will shift my focus.
That same dear friend mentioned that I could let this experience be something that spurs me on toward my mission of sharing the gospel. Seeing death gives me an urgency that I didn’t quite have before.
So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to have an urgency to share the gospel. For the rest of this month, I am going to keep going back to camp and helping as many people as I can there. For the three months after that, I will go to Asia and share the gospel there, next to Africa, and after that the Caribbean, each with the same mission I had before, but this time with that sweet little girl’s face in the back of my mind.
Her life was not meaningless. The Lord is already using her legacy to impact the lives of others. My hope and prayer is that as you sit there and read this blog post you will allow her story to change you as well. To give you an urgency to share the gospel with those around you. Her legacy is one of hope, because even in the most tragic places, our Father is there and He is good. All the time.
