Yesterday about six 6 World Racers and a few other people went to visit private hospital that’s part of the Nazarene Church in Manzini
So we get there and meet Marsha, an AIM missionary who has been in Swaziland for about 3 weeks. She gives us the rundown on the hospital and we just go around and try to spend time with the mothers of the sick babies and a few older kids in the hospital. Pretty much all of the mothers stay with their child all the time. They sleep on the hospital floors near the babies and children. They rarely leave the hospital room, the hospital brings them lunch at 1:00, sometimes. So Shawna and Collin went and bought some Juice, Bread, Apples and Bananas and we distributed it to the mothers. They were very appreciative and then we just kept talking to the mothers while praying for their sons and daughters.
I walked out into a hall outside the room and suddenly I heard a terrible scream come from inside. For some reason I didn’t even think to see what happened. So I went back in and talked to a sweet young lady who was watching her sister’s baby. Then the mom came back and I eventually went and talked to the only Father in the ward. Peter’s son had come in on Saturday. He told me that he had kidney failure and he feared he was going to die, but a group of pastors heard about his son and on Sunday they came and prayed for him. The next morning he was doing better. Peter then told me how his wife died two years ago and his oldest daughter had also died in this hospital.
Peter was telling me about Swaziland and how what happens when people get really sick and that there are no real modern facilities in Swaziland, so the government has to send people to S. Africa if they don’t have the equipment to perform the needed operation. He says he saw a child die last night in the bed behind his son. Then he said, all you hear is a scream and you know that the child is dead. I immediately realized that the scream I heard a few minutes before was the sound of a mother reacting to the death of her baby.
Just an hour earlier, while Annie was talking to the Mother I prayed for the baby who had just died. Mallory had spent awhile with the baby. Her and Shawna comforted the Mom and held her and went with her to view the dead baby in a room labeled the Dark Room.
Yesterday death became more real to me. I learned about the fragility of life in an African hospital. I gained a passion to spend the remaining time that I have in Swaziland seeing more of the reality of the situation in this country. The reality is that Swaziland is in desperate need of the Body of Believers to come to its aid and help raise up a generation of Believers because the current generation is dying daily throughout the country of Aids. The country is being ravished with around 50% percent of the country said to have HIV/Aids.
