Ecclesiastes 7:2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.
It began as a normal Sunday; going to church, being prepared for a workshop afterwards. But it didn’t stay normal for long.
I was approached by one of my students, Lavinia, before the service started. She obviously had a heavy cold, but was still ready to teach Sunday school (as trained by Alisan). She wanted help – financial help. She had been sick and had used up all her money in hospital. Slowly, I gleaned more details in my pathetic Oshiwambo. She has ‘the disease’, and has used up all her money buying ARVs at the hospital (Lavinia is unemployed, and lives by herself in a tin shack in Ondangwa.) So she had no money for food.
‘Would I help her?’
I had just had a nice filling breakfast … I could not refuse.
This is a lady who is doing AIDS home-based care herself, praying, counselling, Sunday school teaching, and has just preached her first sermon .
She participated in the workshop, but started fading at the end, saying ‘I feel bad’.
So we concluded and, at the end of the usual circuitous ‘drop-off’ route, I was tired and ready to head home.
‘Wait!’ – says Aune, another student. ‘Come and see my house that burned down.’ I went to see. Two ‘eenduda’ (huts/rooms) had been demolished in the blaze – food, pots, beds, clothes of children, clothes of old people, children’s school things, ID certificates, all had been totally consumed. The cause? Two of her children had been playing with fire just outside one of the huts, with its low thatching ...
‘Would I help her?’
How could I refuse? ….. with my ample wardrobe, and nice bedding waiting for me at home. Alisan was able to arrange some clothes and things to take down.
Finally, with the demands of the day seemingly over, safe in our nice house, we settled down to quiet evening. Then there was someone at the gate, someone from the neighbour’s house. There was a problem. But he seemed a bit incoherent (“perhaps he is drunk?”). He persisted, saying ‘the lady just fell over’. We went over, to see our neighbour, Selena, lying on the floor…
Check pulse. Nothing.
Breathing? Nothing.
Quick!!!! GET THE AMBULANCE!!!! I must do CPR.
BLOOOWWW.
One, two three four, five, BLOOOWWW, one two three four five ….
Nothing.
Dead.
It seems she must have had a heart attack and just ‘keeled over’. Martin, her ‘de facto’, was in a bit of shock. But he was very moved by what I did. You see, Selena and Martin are ‘coloured’ (meaning of mixed racial origin). Martin would never have expected a ‘white’ person to put their mouth to a ‘coloured’ person’s mouth … (not here, in ‘greater South Africa’) and make such an effort to save them. ‘You are obviously a different person of high calibre….’
There followed much commotion over the next few days, most of which we missed because we were leaving for some time off. But Martin claims he has changed. He has ‘given his life to the Lord’.
- Please pray for Martin – that this giving is not simply a grief-stricken reaction, but a genuine transfer to the kingdom of light
- for Aune, for God’s provision for her and her family
- and for Lavinia, that God would continue to use her, despite her disease.
God has his own purposes for ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ ...
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