To: Fellowship Chapel
Subject: Email from the Mathews - glad news, sad news
Glad news, Thanks to the Lord, and to you who were praying!!! Lizby has her passport and visa and is packed and ready to come home. She does have some overweight luggage which will become even more overweight when she gets to the domestic ticket over here. Please continue to pray for her but thank the Lord for his answers!
On a Sad Note:
I'm writing about today. It just became sad.
Pakomban, the smiling boy from next door, has died. His father has been dead for a while, and his mother is in the village. Pakomban is being taken care of by his uncle who lives next door.
This boy has played a number of times in our back yard. We have a play area that you kids used when you were young. We've thought about taking the play yard down. It needs paint and other maintenance. But the local kids are glad to play there. They also like to pick guavas from our trees for a snack.
We're sad.
A few minutes ago we heard a bunch of people in our garden. Who's in the garden? When we checked, we found some of the families from next door. There are a number of families living in the group of houses next door and this is where Pakomban lived.
We learned that the boy had fallen out of the tree last Thursday there in our garden and they needed to take the branch that had broken and hurt the boy. We worked to understand what they needed and we let them have the branch.
Wow. In this culture, an uncle often curses a boy when he is not wanted. That is not the case here. But the boy’s mother and family may accuse him. This uncle needs the branch as proof that he did not hurt the boy, but the branch did. The boy didn’t tell his uncle he’d fallen and no one knew that he’d fallen until after he died and a friend admitted that a branch had broken under his weight and landed on his chest when he hit the ground.
We asked if there was anything else we could do. We told them to let us know if something like this happens again. I said we would like to be able to pray. And we really would. Had we known, we would have done what we could to give medical assistance too.
Sometimes life is hard. Di is not licensed as a doctor here, and we usually refer people to a local doctor for care. But maybe if we had known, we could have gotten the boy into the surgery he needed to save his life. The family did not know how bad he was hurt. Di would have recognized the symptoms that told how critical it was to get the boy to the hospital.
Did this boy know Jesus? I only know that many of the families next door go to church on Sundays. And we have shown our love by letting this boy and others play in our back yard. Is that enough?
I struggle with what is really important at times. I spend time with computers and e-mail, and not so much with people. The people will last forever. The stuff will not. Often times at the end of the day, I think I've not spent enough time with people. My language ability is not so good and it scares me sometimes to talk with people when I don't understand some of what they say!
Oh God, can you please use me here? I don't like being afraid to speak. I don't like being misunderstood. Help me overcome my fears, and learn to relate to these people around me. Please love them Father.
Please remember Pakomban's family and relatives. God's timing is always perfect. He works miracles out of misery. He uses death as a stepping stone to wake some of His people to the reality of what is around them. How will my life be different tomorrow as the result of today?
Thanks for praying for us!
Larry and Di
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