Sad Situation: Please Pray

Please keep in your prayers a specific family in our project. In one of my very first posts, I told of a family that lived near our compound in Kampala. The three older children, 18-year-old twins Jimmy and Carol, and 10-year-old Sheilla, are sponsored through COH. Their mother, Beatrice, is often sick due to HIV/AIDS, but makes jewelry to support her family. She had an additional child, a little boy named Timothy (who was found to be HIV free), about 2 years ago. The family recently moved to a better living place in a different area of town. We received a call from Beatrice at about 1 AM Sunday morning saying that little Timothy had died on Saturday night after choking on a piece of food. There are no ambulances and no 9-1-1 operators to call in Uganda. It seems that they didn’t know what to do and tried to rush him to the hospital on a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi). Timothy was dead by the time they got to the hospital.

The abrupt death has hit the family hard, especially Beatrice. The older children are trying to keep the house running and to console their sick mother. Sheilla is kind of being left in the background, apparently unsure of what to think about her dead brother or her grieving mother. Megan and I were able to spend the day with the family yesterday, and to help with the burial arrangements. The burial was also yesterday.

Pray for the Holy Spirit’s comfort to be upon this family as well as the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. For Beatrice, pray for her health and for her peace of mind. Her constant sickness has already made her physically weak, and I fear that the emotional devastation that comes with losing a child may worsen her health situation. For the children, pray that they can properly mourn the loss of their little brother. Ugandan culture often emphasizes “forgetting” the pain and pushing it down. Pray also that they can feel God’s love and compassion during this time of hardship.