"Change your baby's diaper, please!"

This story, though told in my words, is not mine. It comes from Faithful, an African missionary woman, who shared it with many groups that she spoke with last week. Though all the description is mine, parts of the dialogue are taken from her testimony.

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The aisle, once made up of smooth, symmetrical terra cotta tiles, now consisted of mere fragments. Its color had long ago faded from too many bodies, and too many feet having crossed its surface. Like every major hospital in the country, it bulged with people. Weary-eyed, drawn-lipped, leather-skinned people. Some, patients. Others, visitors. Toddlers dressed only in simple clothing or wearing thin cotton gowns dodged between the legs of elders. For their misplaced energy, they caught a half-hearted smack or scolding, or were left to run the length of the aisle if no one noticed them. Long-sleeved shirts and thin, colorful blankets covered arms and hung at the wrists of many.Some torn and other ill-fitting pants cropped displayed ankles. Women wore layered, colorful dresses. Feet shuffled in flip-flops or nothing at all. People lay, sat, stood—all waiting--for or in various stages of care. Family members helped comfort and care for the sick. A light antiseptic smell wafted through the wing from time to time. It mingled with the sweat of so many bodies in such little space. Once in awhile, a brisk nurse would sweep through the ward, and call someone’s name or shout to a patient inside an open door.

The woman stood alone, as if an island to herself, though she, too, made up the crowd inside the hall. She had been in this environment many times, and as such, was accustomed to the long waits. Thin and able-bodied, her kind eyes focused on the bundle she held in her arms. She rocked it and murmured in her dialect, willing the sickly baby to breathe. “Come on, baby, come on...” She waited, and rocked, and waited some more. Looking down, she noticed the skin that surrounded the tiny lips of her precious charge had whitened. This cannot be something good. This baby cannot die! She began to pace, and pray. Her voice grew more agitated as she willed life into this limp form. I cannot lose another one. No! Not one more of my orphans!

She reached out to the ward-weary pediatrician who appeared in the hallway, “Doctor, you must look to this baby!” As she explained about the baby's condition, the doctor peered into the infant’s tiny face. From the doctor’s shuttered eyelids and the set of his lips, she understood what the doctor now knew. Am I going to cry? I am going to cry! And then what am I going to say? As Faithful was processing her thoughts the doctor reached for the baby, “Give her to me. It's too late. She is dead.”

“No! I will not give her to you! I have lost seventeen babies this year. I am not going to lose the eighteenth!”

She began to pray as she paced back and forth the length of the hall. She begged God. She poured herself into this petition for one precious life.”

I don’t know how much time passed. At a certain point, the doctor again instructed her to hand the baby over to him.

“No,” Faithful buried her face in the blanket, “I will go with you but I will not give this baby up!” Her voice brooked no refute; she stubbornly refused to give up her charge. The doctor sighed and began to write the time of death on the certificate. Faithful continued her petition, “You are life itself, Abba Father. I praise you for the love you have for me -- and for this baby. You are my Jehova Jairah! I cannot endure to lose even one more baby. Please give this child life again..”

The doctor took the baby from her. He held the baby in one arm and the death certificate in the other. His startled voice cut through to her weeping, “Change your baby’s diaper, please.”

Slowly she raised her tear-stained face, as understanding flooded through to her anxious mind. Only live babies diapers needed to be changed! This baby was alive! She felt the infant's diaper and found it wet! This baby is a miracle given back to me by my Father who has heard my cry.

The young woman took the orphan into her arms and pressed her face against the one in the blanket. She carried the baby out of the doctor’s office, and called out to the crowd still waiting in long corridor, “This baby’s diaper needs to be changed!” Faithful then went on to proclaim the miracle her heavenly father granted her as she prayed..

Not one doubted God’s miracle of the baby whose diaper suddenly needed changing in that hospital last summer – neither doctor nor nurse, patient nor guest. The once-weary multitude all bore witness to this miracle.

Building a People of Faith

All eyes riveted to the speaker as she shared story after story of miracles that she had witnessed and intertwined them with people of faith in the Bible. How her words resonated in the sanctuary! She went by one name: "Faithful." This young, slender, very poised African woman knew the God she was speaking about personally. Faithful's God was not a character that lived within the pages of a book: someone good to have on your side. He wasn't a remote hero. No, Faithful's God was a responsive father who walked down a gut-wrenching dirt road with you, who breathed life out of death in hospital rooms that had seen too much sorrow, who provided food when it should have been gone long ago. This was a father who comforted at the deepest level, a father who wrapped you in his arms and shared your pain. This Father (notice the capital F?) was a lifeline. "Hold onto him. No matter what. Hold on. Doesn't matter what happens. Hold on. Hold on." She spoke with authority and we believed.

"I have seen miracles. Let me tell you a story. I'm going to make a very long story short here. There was a woman in her fifth month of pregnancy. The woman went to the doctor. The baby did not have a heart beat. It didn't move. He sadly advised her to terminate it. This mother refused to believe him and wouldn't let him take her baby. She went back home. She continued to pray and visited the doctor a few times. There was still no heart beat or movement but her body responded as if she were pregnant. The doctor said it was psychosomatic. At nine months she went back to the doctor. But the doctor had washed his hands of her. 'I will have to deliver this dead baby and take all of your womb out. You will not be able to have any more children. You should have let me do this when it happened.' So, the woman went to another doctor and he delivered her baby. This baby came out smiling. It had a heart beat. It was alive! This baby is me. I am a miracle. God knew that one day I would grow up and become a missionary in my country. "

She paused for the words to sink in, and then went on. "People tell me I don't have to share every example that I know, that it might upset people if it doesn't happen that way for them. But every miracle that happens should be shared because it happened for a purpose."

She talked about a camp they set up every year in December. (It was not clear who "they" were but it must have been members of her ministry). "There were about five hundred people this year. People worried there would not be nearly enough food." They were serving soup. "I told them, 'Just keep dipping the ladle in. As long as it comes out full, dip it in again. Just dip it. Dip it again.' And you know what, it only ran out after people had come for seconds. This is the God I know."

But Faithful did not come to simply share testimonies. She came to share a few words from God himself. "Do you have your Bibles with you? Let me see you open them." She waited, and spoke about herself in the third person, "Do you know what Faithful says when you don't have your Bible? You have come without clothes. Some of you have come naked today." She pressed her point amid the laughter. She spoke about the woman who touched the hem of Jesus's robe. "She had purposed in her heart to believe. No matter what. She had purposed."

Faithful also asked us something very real, "Do you have people who steal your hope away?" As she spoke of yet another example, I was amazed at how she could bring such words from the Bible to life, how she could contextualize them for us. Sometimes she was so eager to share a scripture, she tripped on the words, and laughed at herself. "You know what I mean. Look it up for yourself."She never lost her composure.

And so Faithful continued with her stories. Her humor carried us through some sad ones and in others her unshakable faith brought us to our knees in spirit. Faithful came to raise money but I do not believe she arrived with that singular objective. She purposed to uplift us; though her ministry may have been "in want," her soul was not. She seemed to be the "giver."I envisioned her as one tree in the midst of a growing forest. As she spoke, it seemed she was selecting some trees, both saplings and the more mature, carved with God's loving initials. She then offered them to us to build faith in our hearts.

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In my next posting I will relay a story that Faithful shared, another that touched my heart so much. A heart that, at times, still mourns for three babies that I wasn't ready to give up. Believe me, it will be worth your time to read it! Please join me.