"I will tell them Elizabeth"

I have been home from Nigeria for eight months now and yet still feel very much a part of all that I have left behind. I relate so much to the friendliness and hospitality of the culture, but most of all I relate to the PEOPLE. I miss James, one of my little three-year old HIV kids, and Martha, who is eight and lives in the village. She never spoke more than one word to me, but I know she loved me because when she came to visit she would always want to sit on my lap, and hold my hand. I miss baby Elizabeth (left) who came to us in desperate condition, the AIDS virus had ravished her body. My heart feels a connection to these people in a special way, and I feel like I left a part of my heart there and I won't be okay until I return......so I have decided to go back to Nigeria this May for a two week visit. I pray God will bring confirmation as to where he is calling me. I pray for an amazing joy to serve his people, to love them as Christ did, and to tell all of who our Great God is!

My friend Laura introduced me to a brilliant Christian Australian singer named Brook Fraser, and she wrote a beautiful song called "Albertine." Albertine is one of the young girls she met in Rwanda who touched her heart and changed her life. The song represents her feelings of connection to her experiences in a third world country, and how she is now reconciling the horrific things she saw and experienced with what her life is like now. The chorus goes something like this:

"Now that I have seen, I am responsible, faith without deeds is dead, now that I have held you in my arms I cannot let go....."

That hit me because she is saying how she cannot turn her back now that she knows what it is like for these people who have lived their lives with sorrow upon sorrow and suffer torment we will never grasp. The darkness that Rwandans experience is something we will never understand. How can you forget the desperation of AIDS, and the devastation of being hungry and thirsty for even one drop of water, seeing children eat dirt because of lack of food, and people begging on the streets? Each time she sings that song she remembers the pain of Albertine's life. She wants for others to also see what she has seen, to open people's eyes to the overwhelming poverty and suffering of innocent people who are struggling to survive. Now that I have seen the poverty and suffering of Nigerians I cannot turn my back, and I am responsible. I cannot live life normally here and pretend I don't know what is happening in Nigeria and all over the world. As I write this blog many people are dying in the hospital of AIDS, a baby is being born with HIV, another baby is taking her last breath from AIDS, others who are HIV infected are being treated at Evangel hospital, many children are losing their mothers and fathers at this very moment, to this VIRUS called AIDS. I cannot sit here and do nothing about it. I am compelled because the love of Christ compels me to go. How can I not live my life helping these people? She has perfectly sung how I feel every single day of my life. Her song continues:

"I will tell the world, I will tell them where I have been, I will keep my word, I will tell them Albertine... Rwanda."

Elizabeth was a one-year old baby who I am holding in the above picture. She came to our ministry in such bad shape and very thin. Her body was too sick and she hadn't been eating well for many days. Her mother was also sick with HIV and didn't know she was positive. She found out that day that both her and Elizabeth were sick with HIV. We tried everything to save baby Elizabeth, feeding tubes, IV medicine and other things, but to no avail we lost her about a week later. I was sad when she died and my heart ached. Another innocent life dead and gone, I thought. Another sad situation. When will it end, Lord? When will you come and make things right? When will the suffering stop? Praise God she is now with him in glory. She is the glory baby.

The song of Albertine is also my song, but my song goes something like this: "I will tell the world, I will tell the world where I have been, Nigeria, I will tell them Elizabeth. Now that I have held her dying body in my arms, and seen her frailty, I cannot let her go, but God is calling her. I will tell them Elizabeth. Now that I have seen, I am responsible, I am responsible."

Wherever I go in this life I will tell others about Elizabeth, for she represents the darkness of AIDS in Nigeria, and she is an example of the reality of this devastating virus, but also the hope we cling to. Wherever I go I will tell them Elizabeth....so the world may know, that in the midst of this sorrow there is HOPE in Jesus.