Never Give Up

Tuesday, August 2

It was a day of beginnings and endings for us in East London.  On the docket were visits to the Samaritan Care Centre, a palliative care clinic and outreach program supported by Common Global Ministries, and Isiah 58 a school and orphanage.  We split up the group between the two places in the morning, ate lunch at the Samaritan Care Centre then swapped in the afternoon.

I spent the morning with the Samaritan Care Centre.  We toured the building, met the staff and the patients and walked around the neighborhood to see several of the people suffering from HIV/AIDS that the Centre treats.  Such visits are heartrending and hard.  The patients rarely have anything to say.  They are sick!  And, we are strangers.  Plus they live in such horribly foreign conditions to us that it is difficult to stay very long.

In one home that we visited the patient was out doing something.  He was a man of 40 suffering from AIDS.  We spoke with his mother, father and sister and prayed with them.  The caregivers also need much prayer.  This household had already lost one son.  Now, another seemed well on the way.

In the afternoon we visited Isaiah 58.  What a contrast this school and orphanage was to the others that we had seen.  It was established about 30 years ago by Christians with an established mind for how to run a business.  The buildings, all donated by various international service organizations, were in good repair, and the interiors were clean.

The executive director runs a tight ship.  When he speaks the children jump.  Still it is obvious that he adores the children.  We spent nearly two hours playing with the children. They also sang for us.  One of these was the school song, entitled, "We will never give up."  Knowing the poverty and the hardships whence they came, the song was quite moving.

It was hard to leave, but leave we must.  And so, we returned to the hotel, went out to dinner at Guidos again, then back to the hotel and bed.

Blessings,

Rick Cowles