House Calls!

The last few weeks Ro and I have had the joy of hiking up and up the mountains to check on a few of our patients. The bright BLUE of the skies, the splendor of the mountains, and the fresh breeze is a wonderful stress release after a busy clinic morning. Sometimes we just stop to sit in the sun and drink in the beauty. Cheerful greetings call from here and there, and sometimes we stop to chat with a friend. They run to find us chairs and often bring out sweet coconut candy and bread.

  Blind Madam Jill lives way up in a little cleft in the mountains. She has no family...no husband and no children. She sits all alone on the porch of her little stone house with her walking stick beside her. Naughty children ransack her house and steal everything nice she has. Every time we come around the corner in the path I see her face break into a smile as she hears our voices.

 This grandma sits on a bed in her tiny little room and we go to check her blood pressure and edema...reminding her to get up and walk around once in a while and take her meds.

 Madam Pepe cries out in pain night and day. She has diabetes and hypertension and so much pain...likely from diabetic neuropathy.

 It's always sobering to me to see their happiness with such a small gift of our time. As we care for their physical sicknesses, checking BP and blood sugars and pain levels, I pray we might all the more touch their hearts with Jesus' comfort and love...that as we stoop to go out those dingy doorways we might leave their dark little rooms with a ray of cheer and hope.