On Friday afternoon while our team was meeting with the HIV/AIDS positive living support group at VOC a man crawled through the church doors and collapsed on the ground. He had bad wounds (to the bone) on each ankle as well as a big gash in one of his fingers. The wounds had been poorly stitched at one point in time, but had come apart and were now open and clearly infected. His name was Atim Tony and apparently he had been beaten by a man who found out Tony was sleeping with his wife. Mary, Marissa, (they are going to be top notch nurses) and I took Tony to the hospital in the church pickup truck (wearing gloves and being careful – a doctor told us 70% of the patients at this hospital have HIV). Hospital care is technically provided at no cost by the government, but in order to sleep on a matress you need to by a plastic sheet cover and you must also provide your own food, pay for certain types of bandages, and pay for antibiotics or other pills. Since Tony had no one to care for him and didn't know the phone number of any relatives we set him up for the first day and promised we would come back and check in on him. On Sunday when we visited him again his finger hadn't been treated at all and was now severely swollen and pussing. (Imagine a hot dog that was cooked too long so the skin burst open) I think a new bandage had been put on one leg, however, the other leg still had the same gauze from a first aid kit that Mary put on his leg on Friday. We asked the nurse why none of his wounds had been taken care of and her response was that he kept leaving his area when it was time for treatment and was being violent/non-cooperative when they tried to treat him. We visited again on Monday and on Tuesday when we arrived they were preparing to discharge him – We found out that he had taken a week's worth of antibiotics in one day (I don't think he understood or was told how to take them) and while his ankles were finally looking properly bandadged, his finger still hadn't gotten any treatment at all. I can sympathize somewhat with overworked doctors and nurses not wanting to deal with a man who gets violent when they try to treat him (the ward is full of other people who don't get enough care either that they would rather spend their time on, burn victims, broken legs, etc.) but it is still hard for me to fathom the idea that they were going to discharge someone who had been in the hospital for 4-5 days without ever treating his hand. (basically everything about this hospital wouldn't fly in the U.S.) Anyway Mary talked to the doctor on hand at the time (who was really nice) and basically got him to take care of the finger (and he even let nurse Mary do some work on him while we watched!). During the whole ordeal we were able to talk and pray a lot with Tony and share the gospel with him. He says he really does want to change his life and I hope he genuinely means it – you can pray for him. I'm not sure if we can trust everything he says, but I think we did our job as Christians to care for someone and show them love regardless of their actions and reputation. I think we were probably the first people in a long while to show him persistant compassion. He was supposed to be going back to his village today where he said his father won't take him back into the house because he has a reputation for being a bad person. We invited him to come meet us at the church any of the days we are working there if he is able. I'll keep you posted.
prayer requests:
For God to continue to soften my heart toward the people here and let me love them as he does. Last week I was hardened towards some people because everyone I was interacting with kept asking for money just because I'm white and people who were consistently being late or disorganized were starting to wear me down. I've had more patience/a better attitude about it recently, but I'd appreciate continued prayers.
Happy late birthday to my sister, Lindsay – she's my favorite!
