Ruthless Trust

I am learning (Ndesambilila) what this is, Trust....I am reading a book that I started over a year ago and then put down unfinished. You know how that goes, God begins something in you, you seek Him until you feel better and then drop the subject without finding healing or a true answer. We are so fickle with God, I wonder how He continues to love us through it all?! So this book, by my favorite author Brennan Manning...I am in pursuit of God, learning to trust His love for me. I really want it to soak in, to be real to me.

I started working this week... I went out on Home Based Care on Monday morning. The project here only goes out in the field twice a week and only for half days on those two days. It is a strange feeling because this is a small area and the people we are visiting are actually my neighbors. There is something comforting about going and helping people that are a bit distant from you. You can go home and convince yourself that it might have all been another world...but here, it is my backyard. I am a little ashamed to say it, but I need to be honest. It is more of a challenge to see your heart, your compassion, when you can't escape as most of us want to do, but we have to face the pain every day. What do I do? What can I give? I was challenged in a big way to evaluate my heart and commitment.

One of the women I actually met on the mini-bus last week. Valerie and Cath were talking to her son and as we got off the bus we saw him help this woman out as she was disabled and needed a wheelchair. I greeted her, Mulishani? and she asked me who I was and what I did. In meeting her I found that she was a client of ours. We went to visit her on Monday and I learned that she is quite the woman. She is actually prostituting herself out, even in her condition. She sells the medications that are given to her...and her children suffer the consequences, the stigma's. She is HIV + but won't admit it although it is written all over her scarred face. I wonder what brings people to this place? How can men knowingly sleep with her? Pay her to infect them with death? It just doesn't make sense!

There is a new dynamic at work here since the men and women are still married, still alive. I sat in a sitting room with a couple, both infected, only enough money for one of them to be on ARV's. I wondered how they decided the husband should be the one to be treated or if there was a conversation at all. She felt hopeless and we read scriptures. I tried to see her face, to see if it was an encouragement or a slap in the face. Where is God when someone is dying, where is God when you have missed out on the selection and the man who infected you is getting a chance at life? There is a need for something big, for the love of God to be so evident this woman can hold onto it for hope, for life. We all need something to live for!

I have one true bodyguard here in Zambia, her name is knowledge and she takes the form of a small black dog. She has fleas and ticks, but she loves me. She sits on my doorstep throughout most of the day and sleep there at night. When I go somewhere she comes along with. I go to the market, knowledge comes along. Sometimes I don't even realize she is there because she hides in the shadows of my feet. She is tricky. I don't even know who's dog she is truly, mine I guess. She came with me to work on Monday, she and two of Jacob and Annie's dogs. I'm not mean enough to convince them to go home when I say "Go". they just look at me with pleading eyes and when I sigh and go on, they come along. :) Another reason for the locals to laugh at the crazy white girl!

My parents are coming out here in less than a month and I can barely contain my excitement...I am ready to see them, to talk too much to them, to have them close to me.