“Let the Little Children Come To Me”

Looking into the wide, innocent, and playful eyes of a child, there is no choice but to feel the purest sense of joy. Imagine being surrounded by them, with two attempting to braid your hair, three sitting on your lap, one playing with your face, and many others running around the room singing songs and releasing their over-abundance of energy in various ways. There is nothing like the genuine nature of a child’s affection, unbiased and uncorrupted by the world’s selfishness, hypocrisy, and pride. I got to experience this in the purest sense, and of course children are not perfect, they can be dirty, snotty, exhausting, and unrelenting in their desire for attention, but I fell in love with the children I got to work with at the Ethembeni Family Center this week. They reminded me that innocence is beautiful, curiosity is productive, and joy is a way of life.

Over the course of the last couple weeks I have gotten to spend my clinical days in a variety of ways. I spent one day at Caprisa, which is an HIV/AIDS clinic funded by PEPFAR (the U.S. “President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief”). Two of my other clinical days I served at Ethembeni, a ministry that serves as a hospice with four beds, as well as having a home care ministry and a family center which takes care of children from child-headed households. Another clinical day was spent carrying out a teaching project at a local high school. Many exciting experiences to say the least! The more time I spend in clinics, the more I learn about HIV/AIDS and the way it is treated and dealt with in various patients, the more my heart is broken for these people and the suffering they endure so bravely. It is certainly incredible to see the availability of treatment to those whose condition is severe enough, and that it is provided freely. Although there are many issues within the system and difficulty with compliance regarding the medication regimen, lives are being touched and care is being provided to so many who would not be able to receive it otherwise.

The time I got to spend at Ethembeni in the past few weeks was mostly spent doing home visits. Teams of two are sent out, with one care worker from Ethembeni and one member from a local church, and each group visits four homes. Overall there are 65 families being served through this ministry, and the criteria for those who receive these home visits mostly have to do with positive HIV status and lack of income. Mpophomeni, the town where Ethembeni is located, has an 80% unemployment rate, and a staggering amount of HIV/AIDS. During the home visits I was able to attend, we would bring a significant amount of food for the family, talk about how the individual was doing physically, emotionally, and spiritually, read a passage from the Bible, and then pray together. This focus on spirituality and the lack of actual medical care was definitely an adjustment, but something that is helping to teach me the balance needed when providing holistic care between every aspect of the person. Besides these home visits however, like I mentioned earlier, one day I was able to go to the Family Center and spend time with the children there. Most of these are children who are either orphaned, are living with a grandparent, or are running the household, taking care of their younger siblings. The Family Center provides a place for the children to go during the day, while also giving them a hearty lunch, and packing meals for them to take home for dinner and for breakfast the next morning. There is a large age-range, with the younger children there all day and the older children coming later in the day once they have finished with school. Once again, there was not necessarily a lot of medical care provided in this setting, but these children certainly touched my heart, and I was blessed to be able to show them some love in the limited time I was there.

The other very exciting clinical day was spent at Ethembeni High School when we all presented the teaching projects we had prepared in the states. We were broken up into four groups whose topics were basic hygiene, dental health, communicable diseases, and menstruation. We went around to five different classes of either graders throughout the day and spoke on these subjects to each class. I was a part of the communicable disease group, and I was presenting on respiratory infection, with the other girls in my group presenting on diarrheal disease and HIV/AIDS. The presentations went incredibly well, the students were attentive, interactive, and for the most part seemed to soak up what we had to say. This project not only educated the students we were with, but it boosted our confidence as well and taught us more about how to assess an situation and present information in an appropriate way based on setting and audience. Education is such an essential aspect of community health, and this experience certainly enhanced my understanding of that fact and my own ability to present the information.

Besides clinical, another exciting event that took place last weekend was a trip we all got to go on to see some of the battlefields we have been studying about in our History and Culture of South Africa class. Leaving Friday morning, first we drove for about three hours to visit The Battle of Blood River. I’m not going to go into all the historical details, even though they are quite fascinating, but I will simply say it was a wonderful experience, I learned a ton (especially about the reconciliation that has taken place between blacks and whites over the years), and we had an incredible older man named Tony, who was basically a guru in South African history, teaching us as we went. We then stayed overnight in the most adorable little Bed & Breakfast and woke up early the next morning to visit two more battlefield sites which each had their own amazing stories. When we had finished we drove the three hours back, arriving slightly exhausted and having thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, but also having quite a lot of homework and not a lot of time to accomplish it. Therefore, I skipped church for the first time last Sunday, but that is not something I am going to make a habit of! In fact, this weekend our “excursion” was canceled due to uncooperative weather, so I have been able to get a little caught up on work and am looking forward to getting back to church tomorrow!

On one final note, I have to say that I experienced God this week in one of the most incredible ways I have ever experienced Him. It is difficult to explain because I cannot go into details about the situation, but to put it simply, I literally saw the hand of God in my life. I feel like in this life God is constantly working, and we are mostly unaware…but there are those moments, those times when everything makes sense, and it is so blatantly clear that God has orchestrated the occurrences of your life so perfectly, so beautifully, and with such intentionality that there is no explanation outside of Him. I feel that those moments are His blessing to us, His way of proving once again that He is God, and He is good, and He has a plan and a purpose that is beyond our understanding. I know this all must sound quite vague, but I was beyond blessed this week, and I just pray that I will continue to rest and rejoice in the Author of my life…whether I can see his hand at work or not.

Be blessed this week! Choose joy!