Imagine that your 6-month-old, 8-pound infant is dying of kidney failure. You live alone at the hospital because your husband is at works hours away, trying desperately to pay the baby’s medical bills. You’ve been at the hospital for over a month, and you spend every night on the cold, hard floor.
The hospital staff has informed you that there is no hope, and that you should just give up, leave the baby to die and return home. You lovingly insist on staying at your child’s side. The hospital has cut out the bottom of a cola bottle and placed it over your baby’s face, with a plastic tube feeding into it from an oxygen tank. The oxygen tank is empty.
Last week, this was reality for a young mother at a hospital in Arequipa, Peru. Today, her child is dead. Two women in our group of short-term volunteers with Extreme Nazarene Ministries were blessed to be able to pray for this woman and her child before he passed, but this is just one of the many, many families who live at the hospital, awaiting death. Some of the
children don’t have families.
Today we visited the hospital to talk with the kids, pray with the families and paint some old cribs. When we arrived, the head nurse informed us that she never received the letter of approval for us to be at the hospital, so we didn’t think we would be able to minister to the kids and their families. There was, in fact, a letter of approval, and everything had been prearranged.
While two people in our group went to talk with hospital administration, we decided to pray that God would work his will in the situation, open the doors of communication, and move in the head nurse’s heart. As we prayed, we began to feel reassurance that everything would work out and that God had a plan for this place and this day. As we neared the end of our prayer, our two negotiators returned to inform us that the hospital administrator was excited to have us there, and couldn’t believe we were doing this for free. The other nurses were also very kind and accommodating.
Short-term volunteers sanded and painted the
hospital's cribs. Photo courtesy Extreme Nazarene
Ministries.
We began by sanding the old paint on the steel cribs. Some of us freshened up the cribs with a coat of periwinkle paint, while others of us went upstairs to the pediatric ward, equipped with balloons, Rico Cuy (the Extreme Peru mascot), prayer cards and heavy hearts. We visited about 35 families and left with 22 prayer requests. As we went from bed to bed, we attempted to communicate through our limited Spanish. We met the kids, gave them balloons, and asked them if we could pray for them.
Rico Cuy, the guinea pig mascot for Extreme Peru, visited
children at an Arequipa hospital. Photo courtesy Extreme
Nazarene Ministries.
As I met with a young family who were eager for prayer for their tightly bundled baby, another mother rushed to my side and insisted that I promptly come to visit her 6-year-old boy. He was so tiny for his age, and was in so much pain. He barely managed to utter his age, and his name was completely inaudible to me. I sat with the parents, and his mother gave him water by the capful; he couldn’t manage much more. As he drank, most of the fluid left his body via a tube draining from his nose. He began coughing, and I turned to another little boy who was tugging on my shirt, begging for a yellow balloon. When I turned back, the little boy’s bed was empty. I hope I will get to see him again.
Ryan met with another little boy, who has been in the hospital for weeks, ill with leukemia. When Lucas first came to the hospital, he was being treated with one pill per day. When we visited him today, they had started him on chemotherapy. The chemo has caused a very distended stomach, and Lucas has much difficulty breathing. The doctors want to transfer him to Lima for better medical care, but his parents can’t afford it. His parents seek comfort and hope in the Lord, and they are eager for your prayers. Please pray that Lucas will receive better medical care, that his family will find comfort and rejuvenation, and that God will heal and alleviate pain, both physical and emotional.
The trip to the pediatric ward pried my eyes wide open and loudly impressed upon me how blessed we are, in so many ways. Sometimes I wonder, though, what the USA would look like if we weren’t billions of dollars in debt. Either way, I can’t help but appreciate that we can walk into a hospital and expect even slight privacy, sterile needles, efficient equipment, and flowing oxygen tanks.
-- Michelle Hamilton and Ryan Maier are short-term volunteers with Extreme Nazarene Ministries' Extreme Peru project. This story first appeared on the Extreme Nazarene Ministries' Web site, www.extremenazarene.org. Visit the ministry's site often to stay updated on this three-year project across Peru.