Sister Cyd James - Notes From The Homefront

News From The Home Front - December     This month one of our mission families got real sick with Malaria. The whole family ended up getting it and the son became so dehydrated he had to stay overnight in the hospital. Sometimes Malaria causes gastric problems and in this climate it is easy to dehydrate. A visit to the government hospital is always sobering to us because of the lack of cleanliness and overcrowded conditions. Plus, the weather is sweltering and there are no air conditioners there. And last, the bathrooms are few and far between. The thing that we had forgotten though is if a patient doesn’t bring their own plate, then they don’t get the rice they serve for the meal twice a day. Usually the relatives of a hospitalized person bring them their food and supply them their bedding. Another thing is the medical facilities here rarely give out pain medicine and most people who live in the settlements and bush villages cannot afford to buy it. Therefore, one of the needs we try to help with is pain medicine.
    Another lady we know from the highlands came to Port Moresby to have surgery last June. She has cancer of her female organs. She has been staying here in the city with her relatives while she gets her strength back. She was attending services with the mission, but when we came back from the USA in November she was no longer attending. (Her husband is one of the ones who quit worshipping with us because of our stand against the Lord’s churches taking money from the government.) I asked one of her relatives, who is a mission member, how she was doing. She told me she wasn’t doing well because she was still in a lot of pain and not getting her strength back, as she should. I told the relative that I would bring some pain medicine to church the next week and she could give it to her then. However, that night and the next day I couldn’t get her off my mind. Frank told me that he and Brother Norman would go ahead and go on to the settlement where she was living and check on her and give her the pain
medicine. When they walked up to their house, the mission member and this lady came out to greet them and were quite surprised by their visit. They both had been crying. They told Frank that they were praying and crying over the trials that are now going on in our midst. They also told him that this lady had taken her last pain pill the night before and didn’t have money to buy anymore. She was embarrassed to come ask us for help because of her husband’s opposition against us. The Lord worked things out as only He can. Frank was able to tell her that we still care about her and her family no matter what stand the mission has to make against wrongdoing. The doctor this lady is seeing isn’t able to help her any further at this time. Things like chemotherapy and radiation are not commonly available. So, she is going back to the highlands to be with her family there. We’ve known her for seven years and she has a good Christian testimony. I’m sure she would appreciate your prayers for her to get well, if it is the Lord’s will, so that she can take care of her five children who are still at home.
    These are just two stories of hardships, but there are many stories of human suffering both here and elsewhere in the world. When I was younger and would see news clips of people’s sad lives in places like Ethiopia, I would think about it a minute and then forget about it because I wasn’t directly involved. However, now that the Lord has seen fit to put me in a third-world country where I look in people’s eyes and see their suffering, I can’t just forget about it. There are so many people here who suffer from a lack of basic healthcare and from poverty in general that it is overwhelming. I realize that the most important thing anyone needs in this life is to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but we also pray by God’s grace to help relieve any suffering that we can in those whom the Lord brings into our lives.
    A young man who is a member of one of the churches in the highlands just moved to Port Moresby to live. He left school for a couple of years due to some problems but now wants to continue his education. He was told that if he finished grade 10 by correspondence, he could enroll in grade 11. He asked if I would help tutor him with the English grammar part of his course. Last week, our discussion involved what a proverb, adage, and idiom were. Since we were discussing different English sayings, he got a serious look on his face and wanted to know what the saying, "catch you later" meant. He said some girls had been saying that to him and he didn’t understand it. I told him it was an idiom that meant, "see you later." Idioms make learning a second language more difficult because they don’t follow the dictionary meaning. It was a little funny to me later though that this nice, single, young guy was a bit concerned about some girls, "catching him later."
    Our friends who manage the missionary guesthouse here in Port Moresby went to go see their family during the holidays and asked us to watch the place for two weeks. The guesthouse has a corrugated iron roof with no insulation and no air conditioning, so the place is extra hot and humid right now in our summertime. I got in a routine real quickly of coming over to our apartment in the afternoon (where there is air conditioning) to do our laundry and all our computer work. Frank stuck it out over there and tended to the guests. At times like this, I’m more than happy to admit I’m the weaker vessel.
    A friend in Christ,
    Sis. Cyd James