By Sarah Carlson who is volunteering with Equip as a medical coordinator for the PHC clinics in Nimba County
I looked out one of the windows in the clinic to see up to 15 panicked women yelling, pushing, and running beside a young women lying in a wheelbarrow, moaning and holding her stomach. Chaos would be a good description of the scene coming to the front door of the rural Equip Duo Clinic. Being an emergency room nurse for the past three years, I knew the importance of staying calm and working fast and efficiently to medically stabilize the patient.
While the nurse aid ran and grabbed supplies to start Intravenous fluids, I tried to get the history from the moaning woman and the mixed emotional group of what had happened. After many questions to both patient, close friends and increasing family members who were arriving after hearing the news of their relative’s condition, we found out that she was pregnant and had chosen to take some “country medicine” two days prior to try to abort her baby. She had told the witch doctor in the community that she was only two months along but it turned out she was four months and was suffering from an incomplete abortion. The “country medicine” she had taken was causing her body to have contractions but her baby, too young to live, was not able to pass through her cervix. We did not have the right tools in the clinic to perform any type of procedure or exam so after I made sure she had two IVs running into her arms we gave her a medication to increase her contractions to try to save the life of the mother who had chosen to kill her baby too young to have a choice.
In spite of angry accusations flying among the crowd gathered, we gave thanks that we serve the One and true God, the God of the impossible. A God who desires peace not chaos and whose love is unconditional. In the middle of the fear, shame, and pain, in that small rural Equip clinic, we gathered around the patient still moaning on the bed and with the family, friends, and the clinic staff we called out to Jesus for His provision, for His healing, for His peace, for His forgiveness, for His love to fill the room and hearts of each one present. The clinic room that was once filled with anger, fear, and commotion felt suddenly calm and peaceful. Pain and uncertainty was still present but everything was placed into its rightful place, the hands of the Lord. As we prayed and continued to feel the presence of God in the room Kuma (not her real name) began to moan less. The argument of her family members began to cease and life was put into perspective. After a few more minutes she tried to sit up and even though she still was feeling pain she had the strength to walk. We cleaned her and talked with the family about finding transportation to the hospital and told them the urgency of getting to the hospital to prevent infection and bleeding that could quickly kill her. The family members pooled their money together to send the woman by car to the hospital. I found out the next week that Kuma had survived the trauma and was resting, and gaining more strength with each day. Please pray for Kuma, that complete healing will reach deep into her soul.
The Lord has crafted us all for a specific purpose and He has equipped each of us with all that we need by His Holy Spirit. Coming to Liberia to volunteer with Equip Liberia was definitely the Lord’s guidance in my life and a step of obedience in which I had to trust the Lord. I know that the Lord has taken my hand and led me to exactly where He wants me now. I have a deep Joy and Peace knowing that all the Lord desires from each of our lives, whether we are in North America or Africa, the city or the bush, is complete obedience and a daily desire to seek the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind, sharing the Love of God and the message of salvation with everyone we meet and in everything we do.
Please continue to pray for the Equip clinics and the patients that we see every day. Pray that as their physical illnesses are assessed, treated, and cured that their spiritual lives would be renewed and they would know the Love their Heavenly Father has for them and that they would put their lives into the Hands of God and fix their eyes on Jesus, throwing away the practices of evil that so often entangle them. We can treat, but the Lord heals.
What we really celebrate on Christmas, is that God, abundant in grace, humbled himself and became a poor man. -Yes, the great God became poor, needy, little and humble, a baby such as Oretha’s, of poor parents, who could not even get accommodation for their new-born and had to place him in a manger. The Three Kings - did not find him in the palace of the rulers, but they found him in a place like Duo, where Christ is drawn to. He was found with those, who have little, those whose eyes are blinded through ignorance, despair and deception like Kuma who destroyed her baby and almost her life.
He came to bring justice to those who were victims of violence like Samuel Kotoh or Wanasaywon.
He came to those who with open hands, eyes and ears really expect all from God and find peace after distruction. I think we battle to truly understand Christmas in our days, because we have forgotten, through our business, to open our hands in readiness to receive His gifts of forgiveness and love, because we have forgotten, through our hurry, to put our eyes on the greatness of the humble God, because we have forgotten, through our cleverness, to meditate on the word made flesh in our hearts, because we have forgotten, through our pride, to entrust ourselves simply to God.
Let us pray that we may become simple again like the shepherds, open, aware of our need to understand Christmas and to rediscover it and to experience it as an event of very personal salvation that calls us to service and intimate friendship with God.
