Prayer is the Work

She hobbled over towards me as I heard the story of her situation. She had suffered from diarrhea for five days and looked as thought there was not a drop of water left in her body. She lives just down the road and her name is Gertrude. Her respirations were severely labored, and I was afraid she might not make it through the night.

We could have taken her to the hospital, but I was afraid she would not receive the care that she needed. They might not even start an IV because she was not technically vomiting, so they would say she can tolerate oral fluids. In that moment, I wanted so badly to have a medical clinic where I could give her a room, treat her with dignity and compassion, give her fluids and oxygen, and stay with her through the night. 

But those were not our options, so we called a trustworthy nurse who gave her a prescription, got her medicines from the pharmacy, and told her to wait it out through the night. And we prayed. 

That same evening, Namwin Bonna Youor (God Knows Her Name) spiked a fever of 102 after receiving her first vaccinations that morning. Although a slight fever after vaccinations is considered normal, I was still nervous for our premature baby with such a high fever. So I gave her infant Tylenol, and I prayed. 

The next morning, I went out to a village along with some of our team members to visit a family in need. This family was brought to our attention by Action Social, the government's social work agency in Burkina, who begged us to intervene on behalf of this family. The mother died spontaneously in a field while she was pregnant with their fifth child. The father was blinded four years ago and can no longer work. The oldest son also had an eye infection three years ago that was treated with traditional medicine and ruined completely. So he is now blind in one eye and has an infection in his other eye, too. The family owns a field to grow crops for them to eat, but last year some shepherds put their animals in the field, and the animals ate all the plants without them knowing it, leaving the family with no harvest and hungry for the entire following year. Their house is falling down and has cracks in the ceiling so they all get soaking wet and cold when it rains. Only one of the children goes to school. 

How do you even begin to help? We sat on benches under the shade of a tree, asking them questions and hearing their story, our hearts breaking. We didn't know what to do, so we gathered around them and prayed. 

Right after this event, we went to the home Rebeca's mother to share a traditional meal and show my mother how a woman her age in Burkina Faso lives. After a pleasant afternoon shared between two families untied in Christ, we held hands and prayed a blessing over her, her family, and her home. 

On the way back home, we stopped in to visit one of our night guards who works for us at our house. His wife just gave birth to twins, and we heard that they weren't thriving, so we went to pay a visit. Indeed we found the babies very small and falling quickly into malnutrition, and so we gathered around them. And we prayed. 

Sometimes I feel like life in Burkina Faso is about two things: visiting and praying. Yes, we have projects and programs with our missionhere, but the way we spend most of our time is just with people. One on one. Visiting people and their families. Or they come to visit us and seek our help. And so often, we don't really know at first exactly what to do to help them, so we fall back on what we know to be the most important and influential thing. Prayer. 

Prayer is the work. Not the programs. Not the projects. Not our plans. The strategy of our mission is to pray, for its God who does the work after all. I believe in prayer more at this time in my life than ever before. We face troubles everyday, and when I say "face", I mean we look people in their faces and in their eyes. We see their hard work, their pain, and their heart ache. We see their desperation and their need. We see their physical and spiritual anxieties and fears. And we hardly ever know what to do because there is just so much we want to fix, but we can't do it all. 

So we pray, not because it's the last resort but because God is the only answer. When you see so much pain and hurt and poverty and need on a daily basis, you have to run to Jesus because he is the only one strong enough, wise enough, and loving enough to do something about it. 

Gertrude made it through the night. In fact, I saw her riding her bicycle down the road by her house just yesterday. Namwin Bonna Youor's fever is gone, and her eyes are more wide open and alert than ever before. We are starting to dream about how to help that family out on the village by fixing their roof and contacting an eye specialist in a nearby city. The malnourished twins are receiving their first bottle of milk supplementation and health/hygiene training today, even at the exact same time that I write this. 

None of this would have happened or even been possible if it wasn't for prayer. We prayed first, and now we see that God answers our prayers. I hope and pray that the people whom we help see it, too. May they see that God is the one we run to first; it is him we speak to first. May they know with assurance that it's not because of our efforts but because of his grace that we all are helped and saved.