Door of Hope Hospital Outreach

April 30, 2009

Door of Hope Hospital Outreach

We all had the pleasure of going to Masaka Regional Referral Hospital (Mulago) for an outreach last Thursday afternoon. It was the first experience for all but 4 of the 15 children. Fifteen of the children, Robyn, Uncle Sam and I all took the 45 minute walk over to the hospital. It was a fun walk, as the children talked about the things they expected to see. When we reached the hospital front gate we were all meet by our friend, Dr. Sam. He briefed the children on how to act in the hospital, what they may see and what wards we were going to go to. We broke up the group into smaller groups, two to three children with each of the four adults.

I headed to the children’s ward with Maddy, Barbra, and Shadia. It was my sixth time to the children’s ward, but as many times as I’ve been, I never completely get used to the over flow of the children lying on mattresses outside the ward sections or the smell of the ward. It is hard, but I know God is stretching me when I go and this time I had to be a strong leader for our children.

We headed in and went to the far end of the ward to pray for the babies and children. When we walked in our children, Maddy and Shadia, weren’t hesitant at all to start praying for the babies and children. We went to the first crib and asked the Mother if we could pray for her child. Shadia interrupted for me as I talked to the mother. We found out that she was from a village surrounding Masaka and that she had been at the hospital for 5 days because her daughter, Margaret, had malaria. The daughter was much better after her stay and they were getting ready to go back to their village. We continued through the ward we able to talk to, share stuffed animals & sweeties with and read stories too many mothers and their babies. Most of the babies we prayed for had malaria with complications, like pneumonia, sever diarrhea or meningitis. We had finished showing love and praying in two of the sections and it was time for the group to move onto another ward. As we passed through the corridor congested with babies and parents I saw a tiny little baby on a mattress on the floor. It caught Shadia’s eye too and we all decided to pray for the baby. As we all knelt down we could hear the baby coughing and gasping for air. I could tell it was very, very sick!! We all started praying fervently asking for healing and then the Holy Spirit took over—I began to pray harder and cry. I could hear Shadia crying through her prayer too. It was very moving and amazing moment for all of us!

After praying we meet up with the other groups and we all headed to the women’s ward. Dr. Sam said that many of the ladies in the ward were suffering from complications from HIV and most were in stage 3 or 4 of the disease. Most of the women had pneumonia, herpes, cancer, TB (in another ward), and many gastrointestinal diseases. It was sad to see but praying for them, talking to them and showing them the love of God helps them through their rough life.

Next we were on to the men’s surgical ward. Some of the children didn’t want to go into this ward because of the suffering that they see on the persons faces after surgery. As soon as we entered we saw a man and child from our church. The boy has had several surgeries to repair a problem caused by a malaria IV. I’m not exactly sure what was wrong but we prayed for heal for the boy and for the Lord to provide for all of the financial needs for the medicine and surgeries. As we went through the ward we saw men that were recovering from accidents, panga (machete) injuries, heart and intestinal surgeries. We prayed for many of them and they were very glad to know that people were caring about them.

The last ward we visited was the psychiatric ward or the “mad ward” as the children call it. At first many of the children were very hesitant to even walk down the hill to go on to the grounds of the ward as they could see many of the patients outside walking around, and one boy lying on the ground. As soon some of the adults walked down to the grounds and started talking to the patients, more of the children felt comfortable enough to come down and even walk into the ward. Robert, one of our elder boys, knelt down to the boy on the ground and started praying for him. Others joined in and soon you could hear singing from within the ward. It was our children praising the Lord and praying with the patients inside. It was such an awesome, proud feeling for me! The Lord definitely gave them the strength to move forward in boldness!

After about an hour we all headed out of the hospital. The children were all chatting about their experiences that they had received that day and were asking me if we were all coming back next week! What an awesome day for the Lord and for the children at Door of Hope!!