CMS News
Jenny visits Paskal, who is only too happy to teach her Swahili!
Tutor with students in Murgwanza Hospital, Tanzania. Photo CMS
Tanzania
A day in the life of an assistant hospital chaplain
As Jenny Bennett helps the Murgwanza Hospital chaplain do his rounds, she has ample opportunity to share God’s love with Tanzanian women. She sent the following:
Today is the hospital chaplain’s day off. I will do the hospital round on my own today. I am so grateful for the CMS Guiding Principles, including ‘Begin in a small way’. Murgwanza Hospital has 200 beds and it’s not uncommon for patients to have to share a bed.
I take a verse with me. Today it is Deuteronomy 31:6. One patient’s face beams when Deuteronomy 31:6 is mentioned and, eager to read from the word, she quickly grabs her Bible.
She tells me she is from Kenya but is living here because she has married a Tanzanian, a Muslim. Now they are separated, as she loves Jesus and wants to worship him. So now there’s just her and the smallest of her children – she has no other family nearby, so naturally there’s no one to visit her in hospital or to bring her chai.
I see a woman in labour with bad back pain and stop to give it a rub. Her gratitude is humbling. We Aussie women don’t know how blessed we are having our husbands at times like that! And so it goes on …
Then I run into a couple of young women from England. They are journalists doing a story about the shocking hardships people with albinism face here in Tanzania.
‘What are you doing here?’ they ask.
I tell them briefly, but they ask more and more questions until they have heard the entire story of God’s call to me. I never expected to be witnessing to wazungu (white people) here!
A few more things to do, and then home. Tonight we have power (Yay!) and we’ve invited the other wazungu to join us for a DVD.