This week, a group of World Racers find themselves in Malawi. Stacey Hume shares the following story from her blog, explaining the needs of the people she’s met thus far in Africa. In particular, she shared the story of one little girl that touched her heart:
I
knew that Africa would be different. I knew from the bus ride, the
dusty landscape, and the few people I had met, that this place would
change me. Three days in, and it has already come true.Covered
in two days of dust, and five sleepless nights, we were crusading on
the top of a mountain range in southern Malawi, in a small village
called Namileme. At the end of our first night of prayer, preaching
and worship, we were asked to pray for the crowd and their illnesses. One by one, they lined up before us in cues. I can honestly say, I did
not know what to expect.
There were all kinds of maladies to
pray for, from headaches, to back pain, fertility, and coughs. There
was numbness and arthritis, broken bones and sores. There were requests
to do better in school or for more intelligence, or for a husband or
wife. And then there was her.She was small, and beautiful. Probably 8 years old, with wide set brown eyes. She wore a stained
gray cotton dress that had turned orange at the bottom edges from the
clay roads. That is all about her physical features I can recall.
She
meekly approached me, head hung low. Wanangwa, one of the pastors
that has been acting as a translator for us, asked her what she needed
prayer for. She responded in Chichewa, their native language, and her
words were so quiet, I couldn’t hear her voice. She leaned in close to
him and whispered as if it were the most special of secrets, her small
hands cupping his earlobe. His nodded his head, and he walked her
slowly by the small of her back to right in front of me.He spoke to
me in bold English something I was not prepared for, “She has a hole in
her throat. When she drinks water, it comes out of her neck and down
her chest.”My brain stopped working for a second, trying to catch up
to the sentence. But there was just no way to comprehend it. He turned
to walk away, but I grabbed him quickly by his right hand. “I’m sorry,
what did you say?” He repeated patiently, “there is a hole, in her
neck. She can not drink water very well.” He pointed to his throat in
case it was his English I wasn’t understanding.
It’s not uncommon for World Racers to encounter situations like this one and not know what to do. Would you know what to do?
This is one of the greatest (and hardest) parts of the World Race — it introduces participants to situations where they are forced to depend on God. When they are incapable of effecting change through their own wisdom or strength, they have no choice but to turn the Lord… and to one another.
This is the place where faith and fellowship are birthed, where walking in the Spirit becomes a necessity.
At the time that we’re posting this, a community is already getting caught up in this story. Let us stand with Stacey and her team in prayer, encouraging them from afar, pleading with God for a miracle. And as she wrote on her blog, “Maybe He brought me her, so I could bring her to you.”
The question is: What will we do with her?
Read the rest of the story: A Hole in Her Neck
