In the same day I met two women who told me they wanted to die. We had gone on a prayer walk around the community surrounding the preschool were we’ve been visiting all month. This community is saturated in drunkenness, witchcraft, and immorality.
Co-co (great grandma) is 94 +/- years old. She had been bed ridden for at least the last 2 years. We had taken her to the hospital, but nothing was found to be causing her pain and suffering. Old age and immobility has caused Co-co’s body to bloat. Her eyes are covered in cataracts, and her body is dotted in massive bedsores. She lies on a mattress in her one room home as the fly’s feed on her open sores. Her daughter-in-law feeds and cleans her. There is no catheter to help the bedridden woman, and the stench filling the room is almost nauseating.
We asked Co-co if she were ready to meet her maker, if she had full assurance of salvation, and if she was trusting in Jesus Christ alone. After she answered in the affirmative to all of those questions she said, “I just want to die”.
My team and I huddled around her and prayed that the Lord would ease her pain and take her home.
Co-co squeezed my hand tight and I was very touched as I prayed that the next face she would see would be her sweet Jesus, and that she would dance on the streets of gold in her new, incorruptible, body!
The older I get the more I long for my new body. Grant it, I am still young and my few pains and aches are mostly self inflicted by sports and hard work. I can’t even begin to imagine how much Co-co, and other people suffering in dieing bodies, long for their new skin. And yet I still do anticipate, with great joy, my own. I dream of the day that I will run a hundred miles and not tire, or fall from a 100 foot tree and not get hurt!
For Co-co a new body must constantly be on her mind, because her current one no longer obeys her will and causes her pain with every slight movement. I’m just amazed by the love of our God that He has a blissful eternity waiting for those that love Him!
1Corinthians 15:54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
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Zandelay is a much sadder case. She is also laid up in bed, but with TB, and at the young age of 23. She is the mother of three (a seven year old, a three year old, and an infant). Zandelay refuses to take her medications, and is grumpy with, and even spits at, her relatives who try to care for her. She has given up on life. When I asked her if she wants to get better, she said NO.
I sat on her bed and began to spoon-feed her the “oatmeal stuff” that was sitting by her pillow. I pep talked her, spoke truth and life into her and made light jokes. She continued to eat, but as I began to give her the pills she hid them under her tongue and later spit them back out. I continued to smooth talk her and explain how her time on earth is not over, her babies need her, and she needs to take the pills to get better. Eventually she began to swallow the pills after I crushed them into each bite.
Unlike Co-co, I do not believe Zandelay is ready to die. Yes, she wants to. Her body is diseased and on the brink of dehydration and starvation. But, Zandelay does not appear to have surrendered her life, her will, and her body, to the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
Zandelay had not put on her parachute, but thinks she’s ready to jump out of the plane. That is the same as passing into eternity without having trusted in (or put on) Jesus Christ!
Galations 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
PS: I’m leaving for Thiland in a few hours =D
Update:
Co-co passed on into glory 4 days after we prayed for her.
Zandelay also died shortly after, and her children are being taken care of by others.
