Heart Healing

This is Glory - just back from Johannesburg. He attends the cardiology clinic I run in Queens. We referred him 18 months ago for repair of his congenital heart disease... and 3 weeks ago he went, courtesy of the Government of Malawi. He's a lucky boy - in another year or 2 his heart would have been irreparable and he would have died of heart failure in his early teens. Now, with his heart healed in the Walter Sisulu Paediatric Cardiology Centre, his life expectancy is normal. Only 4 or 5 children a year from our clinic get a chance like this.

According to the Bible, healing a heart (i.e the core of our spiritual being) is also a tricky business - "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9. We tend to reject the urgent healing we need from Jesus - "This people's hearts have become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they...might understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them" Matthew 13:5. But if only we have the humility to ask Him, He can make our hearts new - "Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew a right spirit within me" Psalm 51:10.

Barcelona!

Phone call from UNICEF offices on Monday, 0730: “Neil can you fit in a visit from the director of Barcelona Football Club on Wednesday afternoon? He wants to visit the Blantyre Child Protection Team”
Neil (thinking shirts signed by Messi, tickets for the Nou Camp etc): “I think I could squeeze it in...”

Turned out to be the director of ‘la Fundació’ – the charity set up by Barca supporting projects all over the world. Rather than take money from sponsors, the team wear shirts with ‘UNICEF’ on the front of them. Profits from the shirt sales go mainly to HIV/AIDS and children’s work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr Marta Segú had heard about what was happening in Blantyre and asked for a visit.

The picture shows members of the Child Protection Team (Including a magistrate, social workers, 2 community child protection workers, a police victim support officer and me, together with some of the UNICEF staff team). We didn’t get any shirts, but we did get a pendant to hang in the office of the new ‘One-stop centre’ when it’s built in Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital!

For more details on the work of the foundation follow:

http://www.fcbarcelona.cat/web/Fundacio/english/nacions_unides/convenis/unicef/index.html

Partnership to Protect Children

In January a group of experts in child protection from New York spent 2 weeks in Malawi helping us to examine the (many!) gaps in the existing system. Below is a photo of us all meeting with the UNICEF country representative. Malawi has no functional child protection system as we would recognise it in the West. But the need is enormous. We see at least 10 girls a month coming to us because they have been raped. It’s estimated that one in four of all girls in Malawi have unwanted sex by the age of 16.

Over the last year we’ve started a multi-disciplinary team in Blantyre, linking social workers, police and medics together to support the children we see. During the visit of the team, we met with colleagues in Lilongwe and Zomba to encourage them to start doing the same thing. The problems to solve are legion – not enough fuel for social workers to visit a home, not enough phone credit for regular communication between the agencies, inadequate laws, magistrates and prosecutors who don’t understand the typical pattern of sexual abuse, doctors who don’t know how to interpret medical evidence correctly etc etc.
But the team’s visit was a good reminder of just how far we’ve come. I now know Dominic (the director of social services in Blantyre) and Emmanuel (the Police victim support officer) and Edward (the Supreme Court judge) as colleagues. We’ve had great support from UNICEF. We talk to each other, plan services for victims together and little by little, things change.

God calls us to be salt and light in a rotten and dark world – pray we’d be faithful to that calling!

Thoughts on Red Ribbons

Tomorrow, the first of December is World AIDS day. What will I be thinking about when I wear my red ribbon tomorrow...?

...the 11% of Malawi's population who are HIV positive?

...the 90,000 HIV positive children?

...the 1 million orphans?

...or about Tisungane, Kelvin, Chisomo, Save, Mphatso, and the many more I have known who have died because of AIDS.

On Sunday in church we stood in silence to remember them. There were large red ribbons on the columns in St Micheal's in Blantyre that framed the stained glass image of Christ on the cross. We read the story of the Widow of Nain (Luke 7:7-17) and prayed "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"

So much has been done, so much more to be done...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbOD9fbRnX0&feature=related

Prosperity Ringtones

"You will be blessed in your body! You will be blessed in your finances!"

It's annoying when your registrar's phone goes off in the middle of clinic, but I was intrigued by his ringtone. It was a snippit of a sermon by Nigerian 'apostle', a well-known proponent of prosperity gospel theology. The basic idea is that if you come to Jesus, you will be blessed - materially as well as spiritually. God wants to bless you - you should expect wealth, happiness, health as part of the normal Christian experience. Of course, you should then share that wealth with the one who preached to you...

This sort of teaching is pervasive in Malawi; I've heard the 'You will be blessed' ringtone on lots of other people's phones! It creeps into the teaching of many denominations - Catholic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian.

Even a passing glance at the teaching of Jesus (Luke 9:22-24) or the lives of his followers (2 Cor 11: 24-29) reveals the lie within prosperity teaching. But in a poor country, it is very attractive. It promises an instant end to the drudgery of poverty.

But at it's heart is an evil lie that robs Christians of their assurance, confuses them when they experience suffering and leads many to give their scanty resources to charlatans. And worse, it leads people to worship the gifts, not the giver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s

Pray for ministers and preachers in Malawi that they will not 'distort the word of God' but 'On the contrary set forth the truth plainly' (2 Cor 4:2)

Seeing and Hearing

"You are the God who sees me" Gen 16:13

We don't know how they did it. There never seemed to be much in the way of organisation, but somehow it did happen. On Saturday 10th, 40 students descended on our house for a leaving do / party for the final years organised by CMDF. The chairs and brai turned up. An army of cooks took over the kitchen, and a college vehicle was commandeered to get everyone to Smythe Rd. The food was good - as the photo shows, food is always a good draw for students! Events included an interview panel with 7 of the finalists. This was in turns embarrassing (previous relationships, unrequited love etc!), funny (tales of strange goings on in the back of lecture theatres) and poignant (friendships forged, support from CMF).

I found out an hour before the event I was to speak at it (I suppose there was some organisation). We looked together at the great verbs used to describe the Lord in Genesis and Exodus - how he hears and sees those who are in trouble; in particular, how he hears and sees the most unexpected or 'unimportant' people - Hagar, Ishmael, Leah, Rachel, the Israelites in Egypt e.g. Gen 21:17. Likewise he sees us in our work, hears our cries for our patients, hears their cries for healing and comfort, sees the poorest when the wealthy and powerful ignore them. It's great to know that our seeing and hearing God goes with us each day onto the wards!

New doctors

The class of 2004-2009 take their final exams in a few weeks - if they pass they'll be doctors by Christmas! On Saturday 10th, the Christian Medical Fellowship is hosting a lunch for all final years at our house. Many of the Christian students struggle to make the transition to the world of work with their faith intact.Please pray for students like Roderick (pictured here with one of the kids on the oncology ward) - entering a time of real change in his life.