How a Sewing Machine Can Travel
Wondering what piece of the puzzle you can be? Read between the following lines and ponder the possibilities.
Swazi ladies may live in huts without running water or electricity. They may have several young children to feed and to clothe. But after carrying a child for nine months, giving birth creates joy when a child is healthy and sorrow when a baby is not.
TLC opportunities to minster to these new mothers are frequent and touching.
HIV takes its toll in the Manzini maternity ward of Raleigh-Fitkin Memorial Hospital, where 30 to 40 babies are born every day.
Some die; others are so small and so sick that their lives are measured in hours or days or weeks. Mothers live with their tiny babies in the premature ward, until they are big enough to go home or, more likely, until they go to heaven.
These new mothers never turn down prayers, simple SiSwati words, or smiles from Luke Commission team members. New mothers gratefully accept Bibles or New Testaments with open hands and a slight curtsey.
Handmade blankets, wraps, diapers, and new baby clothes demonstrate love from faraway Americans and Canadians. Women in the hospital cannot believe these gifts are free from people they dov not know and who do not know them.
Only Jesus can tend to the Swazis’ needs, as babies are born in the midst of an AIDS pandemic.
The Luke Commission passes out booklets in SiSwati titled “Help from Above.” And truly that’s where all our help originates, as we look up from the puzzles of this earthly life.
Meanwhile, you need not leave your living room or sewing room to reach across the ocean with gifts of compassion.