Candles in the Dark
Checking back with our crew in Nigeria, we find them elbow-deep in the daily challenge of helping too many people with too few resources. The conditions are appalling, but after an adjustment period, Dr. Phil Palmer, his family, and two of our HSU students are beginning to see the resiliency of the human spirit in unexpected places.
Student Eryn Mikel looked up from her rounds in the severely overcrowded Evangel hospital when she heard a small, sweet voice singing. Amid the suffering, stench, and cries of the horribly diseased and injured patients, she saw a young girl singing praises to God in the native language of Hausa. “Here is this young girl, so thin and frail, singing praises to the same God who brought me to Africa. It’s was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard,� said Eryn, “The same God who works in the busy streets all over the world cares for a young girl in Evangel hospitial; it is simply amazing!�
Another student, Jamie Eryn, attended a celebration for women graduating from the hospital’s VVF (Obstetrics Fistula) program which teaches survivors of this severely debilitating condition to survive. The women receive medical care, are educated in a number of health issues, and taught to make crafts they can sell to support themselves. VVF occurs during prolonged childbirth and results in damaged tissue; which later rots away reducing the women to walking corpses. A condition common to those living in poverty, sufferers are frequently kicked out of their homes and disowned by their families. At the graduation, “we arrived to drums, singing, and dancing. The women were praising God for their healing and for his grace. These women have nothing and are going home to nothing, but they still choose to praise God,� she said.
Elayne Palmer worked with a ministry to widows, “In Nigeria, when a husband dies, his family takes everything from the wife except her clothes and possibly her children. This ministry teaches women to sew and then rewards them with their own sewing machines when they complete 6 months of training.�
Elayne sums up the groups experiences so far as, “…a slide show on adrenaline. Pictures flood my mind, and the focal point of each picture is people. The people here are beautiful, with broad, welcoming smiles, but their situations range from comfortable to abject poverty.�
We should hear more from Dr. Palmer and crew over the weekend, so check back.
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