Love in any language!

What does it mean to love? What does it feel like to reach out to someone in need of a friend? How much does a smile cost? A hug? What about time? What does it cost someone to spend their time? How do we spend our time? Can we do more? How much is enough? What about the ones that we can not help? What about those we had to turn away? What about the person who cries out to you on the street in hunger? What about the injustice? The pain? The suffering? When does it end?

Questions: raised but unanswered.

I struggle as to what to write and have avoided the blog for too long now. I look around me, I smell the air, I feel the sea breeze and I hear the constant noise around me. But do I see, do I feel.... how can I walk through the streets of Africa and not be crushed by the injustice? How can I say to a hunger man I will not give you money... How can I shake my head to the vender and say I will not buy from you..... eyes plead with you..... voices cry out to you...... you do not go unnoticed... every step you take through the streets of Africa someone notices you.... eyes follow you where ever you go.... many wave happily and give you genuine smiles... others glare at you with accuzing eyes.... many look at you and put out their hands: expecting, requiring, demanding money... some eyes plead with you for mercy, with outstretched hands of need, genuine suffering as they walk on their hands down the streets with what should have been their legs dragging behind them. The blind reach out, somehow knowing you are there.

Where is the end to the suffering? How does one cope in this world that surrounds us? A world of injustice..... a world that believes there is no hope. Just two weeks ago Mercy Ships had a screening that was booked months ago. They thought there would be more spaces for surgery, more doctors and nurses and staff to support them. They told the people to come and be screened for surgery.... since then the beds have been full, the operating rooms booked. They tried to send out word that they would not be able to take more people. The day neared... they asked for staff to come to the screening day. They asked them to come and pray for the people because they would have to say no. They would have to stand there and look a desperate person in the eye and tell them that they will not be able to have surgery. They would have to hold them as that last hope faded away. The chance to be healed stolen from them, possibly their last chance.

The night before, reports came in that there were already people lining the streets near the screening center. People were there to sleep overnight in the streets in hope that they would then have a better chance of getting surgery. They may have traveled for days to be there. There would have been no way for them to hear the news that the answer to their life changing question would be No! One thousand one hundred and fifty people came that day. They lined up for hours and hours. Mercy Ships staff served them water and smiles. How can one smile though? How can one say it will be okay?

Announcements were made and translated in many languages. People were told there was no more room. Yet they stood in line, hoping amongst hope that they would still have a chance. People who came through and were told they would not be able to have surgery even got back in line for hours more in the glaring sun, standing despite their pain, carrying their child, hoping, waiting.... desperate.

How do you say to someone we will not be able to help you? How do you look them in the eye, amongst their pain, their suffering? How do we then go back to our little comfortable world and turn off our eyes, close our minds, silence our hearts to the cries and the tears?

It is hard, harder then I had imagined.... harder than I would ever have thought......

But there is a way.... so simple.... yet not perfect... the tears and the cries will never leave us... and I hope that we do not forget...... but what about the ones we are helping? What about the woman crying out for joy because they are healed? What about the child who walks for the first time? What about the man who's painful tumour is removed and he can stand tall, free from the deadweight of suffering that grasped him for so long? What about the boy who for the first time can speak clearly because a tumour that consumed his face has been removed? What about the mother who will see her baby nurse for the first time because the babies cleft palatte has been repaired?

We shout for joy! We see the smiles! We lift them into our arms and hold them tight! For these people we have made a difference.... we have changed their lives! We have shown them that God does love them and He knows them by name!

Watch a child enter mishapen, shunned by his community, children may run from him, adults turn away from him. He may survive only because of the immense love of his parents. He is blessed to have parents who love and protect him. Many children that are born with cleft pallete's and tumours are shunned by the vodoo community and sometimes cast out because of their beleifs. Left to die, alone. Thrown aside, unwanted and unloved.

We may not be able to help everyone but we have helped so many. People flow through our hospital wards every day. People flow through our dental clinic every day. People flow through our eye clinic every day. We make a difference!

We connect... we love... what more can we do!