Phoebe's Call

The phone rang and I saw that it was Madame Kambire, so I answered with an enthusiastic "Bonjour!" Madame Kambire is sweet middle-aged woman who helped take care of Phoebe, one of her elderly family members, when we helped her receive a medical intervention. 

To make a long story short, Phoebe had a prolapsed uterus for five years before finally seeking help with social services here in our town back in March of this year. When social services didn't have enough funding to help her, they reached out to our missionary team because they know we help people. 

Since she had a medical reference to go to Bobo, that's where we sent her, even though we know and trust the doctors in Ouaga better. I guess there is a reason for that. She ended up sitting outside the hospital for days and then waiting for weeks to have a surgery. When she was finally admitted, someone broke into her room and stole all of her money, worth about $180. After the surgery, she had a secondary problem when her rectum prolapsed, so this time I organized her travel to Ouaga where she received a quick and successful corrective surgery. 

Now, several months later, Madame Kambire called me to tell me that things still weren't going well. 

"Her uterus has come back out," she told me. 

"I thought they did a hysterectomy in Bobo?" I replied. 

Apparently not. 

Since they live in the village, I asked that they come into our city for a visit, assessment, and to talk about what to do next. 

It was raining the morning that Madame Kambire arrived, and I picked her up at the bakery in town and brought her to our house where we sipped some water and watched the rain fall. I listened to Madame Kambire talk, and more and more of her story unfolded like pulling a giant tapestry out of a tiny plastic package. 

I learned that Madame Kambire has a husband and three children of her own at her house, but she works in a different village where she also takes care of five additional children - two orphans, two abandonned children, and the unwanted child of her sister who was born out of wedlock. She feeds them and send them all to school. Plus taking care of Phoebe in her illness. She considers all this a call from God. 

She grew up Catholic but always felt like it was too habitual - like she was missing something - until she heard a Christian preacher talk about a God who said, "Come to me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." "Weary and burdened, that was me!" she said, "So I got up and ran towards him!" She has placed her faith in Jesus every since.

I learned that Phoebe is actually the daughter of her grandfather's brother, so they relation is actually more distant than I originally thought. I also found out that Phoebe doesn't actually live with Madame Kambire, but rather with her husband and two children in the village of Batiéré. That's the same village that we went to with our short term team just two days before to rehabilitate a well...and we didn't even know that she was in that village! 

Her husband's father is an animist who actually takes leadership by performing a ritualistic ceremony every December and January that includes sacrifices, traditional dress, and dances. His son, her husband, is also highly involved in these animistic ceremonies. "Sometimes he is a perfectly normal person," Madame Kambire said, "and other times he is completely out of his mind like a crazy person. His eyes don't look right and he can't even talk normal." 

"Does Phoebe go to church?" I asked. 

Madame Kambire shook her head with a look in her eyes as if to say, of course not. "Her house is right by the Pentecostal church," she said. "You can hear the singing from her house, but she never goes. She herself has done many sacrifices to help heal her illness, but nothing has worked. In fact, if we hadn't crossed paths with you back in March, she would probably be dead." We had met the leader of the Pentecostal church in Badiéré when we were there this last week. I began to think that God was arranging something behind the scenes. Connecting dots. Us, Batiéré, Phoebe, the church leader...

"Phoebe has suffered a lot," I said and Madame Kambire nodded, "and she is a woman who is very close to darkness. Maybe this desperation is what she needs to realize that Jesus is the only solution." 

"That's what I'm praying for, too." Madame Kambire said. 

Normally, our mission team takes medical cases from people who are already in the church, but this medical case was an exception. We believe that God is drawing Phoebe to himself, and so we are showing her Christ's love to help show her the way. 

"A lot of the young people in my family have turned from animism to be Christians," she added, "but it's the elderly people like Phoebe who are still hanging on." 

Around this time, Phoebe arrived and I did a quick assessment, called the doctor in Ouaga, and got everything read for her transport and consult at the clinic. With a few critical and important moments to spare, we invited Phoebe and Madame Kambire onto our porch to introduce them to the short term team and to gather around them to pray and share Jesus. 

We acknowledged her suffering and explained that Christ is the only solution. We told her that sometimes we have to fall into desperation or hit rock bottom before we realize that God is the only true God. We proclaimed God's love over her, his power accessible in her life, her need to trust him as the only savior, and our desire for her to come to Jesus through all this. We even said that we believed that God had brought us together for a divine purpose today, and that we were helping her so that she could be healed and then give God glory for it. She had to understand that we were helping her because of Christ and for Christ. 

"Do you believe what all these people have been telling you?" Madame Kambire asked Phoebe. She nodded her head, and so we all gathered around her, laid hands on her, and prayed. 

I prayed for her healing in a way that I'm not sure I've prayed for healing before. Because I knew that if she was healed, she might believe. I wonder if that's how Jesus prayed when he prayed for the sick...not just askingfor "feeling better" but for actual miraculous healing so that people would see and believe. I've always thought about it like that, but I'd never really experienced that feeling until this moment. 

When short term teams come, they have a schedule full of activities and planned events. But God always seems to send a surprise opportunity, something not planned, yet something eternally significant. On the terrace on that rainy afternoon, ministry took place. The gospel was shared. A call was given. Hope was offered. All in an unplanned, raw, and real way that felt very much divine. 

It reminds me of what I read in Ezekiel just this morning. God called Ezekiel to speak the words that he gave him, "whether they accept or refuse." Interesting that God doesn't call us to change people; that's his job. He doesn't measure our success on how many people are converted. He just calls us to announce, to warn, to speak. He gave us that chance on this rainy afternoon, and now we trust him to take care of the rest. 

In the meantime, we pray. We rally our praying friends to join us in this prayer: may Phoebe be healed in the name of Jesus for the praise of his glory, and may she come to know Christ as the one true God, the way to the Father, and her personal savior. And for all of us here in Burkina, for missionaries around the world, and for you as you serve in your divinely-appointed location, may God keep bringing us the hungry and thirsty, and may he empower us to proclaim and announce the words he has put in our mouths. Ezekiel's call still awaits a faithful response.