We woke up this morning to blissful rain. As we cuddled in our sweatshirts and enjoyed hot coffee in the below 80 degree weather, we thanked the Lord that we are not yet in the grasp of the dreaded El Nino and its promised droughts.
Brant worked with his new language helper for two hours this morning and made great strides in identifying different levels of tone. He was so encouraged he literally was jumping up and down. His excitement was contagious and the boys flew through their schoolwork with great attitudes as I unpacked boxes and cleaned fruits and vegetables sent in on our recent supply flight.
It was a beautiful, cool, peaceful morning…. one you dream about when you envision missionary life in the tribe.
And then…. you knew there had to be an “and then” in this story…. we got word that a woman from a village up river had died in childbirth. Her husband had attempted to take her down to the clinic, but she had lost too much blood and died last night. The plan was to bring her to our village to bury her; we’re still not sure why. We bribed the boys with candy and the iPad and locked them in the house, and Brant and I headed to the village to find out what was going on. We met our co-workers on the path and they went with Brant down to the port to wait for the boat that was supposed to bring her body to our village.
I decided to take advantage of the lull and sit with a few ladies in one of the houses and practice some new vocabulary I have been studying. Not that anyone was very chatty. It was pretty solemn in the hut I went into, but the ladies welcomed me and gave me a spot to sit down. We sat for a few minutes and more people came into the hut. A growing sense of dread started to well up inside me as people in the hut began to weep openly…. a man sitting nearby motioned towards me and said “That is where they are going to put the body” ….at least I thought that’s what he said. But my funeral and dead body vocab isn’t really polished, so I did what every good language learner does when she doesn’t understand something…. I ignored what he said.
I shouldn’t have. Within minutes, the funeral procession was coming inside the door. The wailing and crush of bodies was overwhelming. There must have been 80 or 90 people crammed into that tiny 20 by 20 foot hut - all screaming and wailing and weeping. They carried the body in and placed it right next to me. I tried not to throw up as tears started streaming down my face. They carried in the husband - too overcome with grief to walk. The mother came in and start grabbing at her daughter - yelling at her to wake up and shaking her. She collapsed on the floor - not 5 feet from where I sat. Yes, it was overwhelming. Yes, I am crying as I type this.
They actually did prepare us for such traumatic situations while we were in our missions training. Focus on the physical details. Count the people. Notice the color of their shirts. Distract your mind. Dozens of women crowded around the body, screaming and wailing. The teenage girl I studied language with last week. The woman whose 4 year old son cut his finger with a machete on Sunday that I had helped bandage. A lady who had just given birth to a healthy baby boy. All their faces contorted and stricken with raw, violent, unrestrained grief.
It was hopeless. Dark. Fearful. There was no Hope in that house and as I cried with the women, my heart broke. This woman, too, died too early to hear the Gospel. Her friends and relatives know little of the concept of Heaven and Hell, but they did know that the End was bleak and dark and scary. The Enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy and he had deceived these people yet again. No witch doctor or careful adherence to keeping the taboos had saved her. Hell was in that room.
God was there too. I prayed through my tears and a gentle, cool breeze blew into the room and with it the reminder to my soul that God is already in the process of bringing Hope to these people. We are here. We shine the Light in this darkness. Brant and I and our teammates are not the Hope they need, but we carry the Message of that Hope. God is faithful. He has begun the work here and though it seems agonizingly slow at times - too slow to give this woman a chance to hear - He will complete the work of sending His Word out amongst these people.
Tonight my clothes smell like smoke and my eyes are puffy from too many tears shed. My heart is heavy, yet at peace. There will be more funerals. There will be more death, but we work and we study verbs with as much strength as God gives so that someday soon those deaths will be marked with Hope.
