God's Plans Are Far Bigger Than Ours!

Today I drove with Lizbeth, one of the HOPE carers to our local hospital to visit one of our patients who was admitted on Saturday. Both of us had visited individually prior to this, but it was so good to go together and really have a good chat as well as taking some essentials to A. A is one of our classic patients who is too scared to admit to why she is really sick. This makes it difficult when she is admitted to hospital. This time however, she has suffered a stroke; has TB and pneumonia, all of which has caused her body to swell up, so she has been in quite a bad way.

Today was a wonderful visit. Despite being in the high care ward, she is now surrounded by 4 women half her age, and though they are all very sick, the camaraderie was great! She was therefore in much higher spirits. After chatting for a while, Lizbeth and I prayed with A. We then started to chat to some of the other women and before too long each one had asked for prayer. I particularly wanted to pray for a young woman who looked like a skeleton and was barely conscious. I find this so sad and really asked God to restore her both physically as well as give her hope for the future.

Having done this, another patient came over and we all started chatting. Within 10 minutes she told us that she is HIV+ and has been living positively on ARV's for 3 years now. Her home life is not easy and she has 2 children the same age as ours. My heart went out to her as it is a very brave thing to tell 6 relative strangers all this information. We thanked her and encouraged her to keep going - she looked so wonderfully healthy! - we also told her that being open like she had been was so helpful to others. Lizbeth asked her if she knew God and we were then able to pray for her. How amazing is our God! We thought we were just going for a short visit to 1 person, and He has far greater ideas!!