A SAD WEEK OF LOSS

I've had a rough week as our neighbor/friend who was 23 was having complications/sickness in pregnancy and was not doing well. She was ready to deliver, I think, but started being weak/in pain/not eating about a week ago - she just didn't look good. The doctors and hospitals here just arent good and she went to the hospital on Monday. Today, our sweet neighbor died, with her precious baby in her tummy. I felt so helpless and powerless, which I am not good at handling. This is the dear one who rented our servants quarters and has braided Lydia's hair frequently, spoils Lydia, and is Lydia' very favorite little family. She had prayed for her at every meal for a week. She and her husband had been married 3 years and this was their first baby. You never know how helpless you are until you are confronted with a true medical problem in a developing country...the resources just aren't there. This afternoon I waited for our friends from England, the physician who had been here 3 months, to get here and headed over to the hospital to check on her and get his feedback but she was already gone - her sobbing father outside. Tomorrow morning they will have her funeral procession/service with mourning. When someone dies here, they immediately take the body home to prepare it for burial. They blow a horn made from an animal's horn several times throughout the day or night following their death, to let others know they are grieving and mourning. Then the next morning they have the service at the church followed by a day of mourning in a tent outside their home. This was sobering for me - and as Steve said, "you want to blame the poor Ethiopian infrastructure or the doctors but the reality is, it was God's timing for and her sweet baby to go. In America, we rely too much on the provisions around us - good clean water, nice fancy hospitals, the latest medical procedures...we even put our faith in them and feel that they can save us. But here, as Steve said, with the bad medical care and wierd illness floating around in the water and air, and the crazy mad cars that don't yield to pedestrians....we are really forced to put our hope only in God to save us. So helplessness can be a good thing, too, I guess. As long as it points us to the One who provides the only real help there is. Pray that God will use this in the lives of our neighbors, with whom I start a Bible discussion this Sunday.