Death Sentence

In the last blog, Teresa talked about a young girl we unsuccessfully tried to get to the clinic who has been sick for a very long while at the Ngwane CarePoint. Her name is Nqobile. We went searching for her and found her hiding at the river, but were unable to convince her to go with us. We found out today why. Nqobile’s father is dead, so her mother has to respect or do whatever her brothers tell her. They forbade her to allow us to take Nqobile to the hospital that day. They said “… let her die and we will help with funeral expenses. Take her to the clinic and we will not help you at all with any thing in the future.” Apparently her mother was really there when we went searching for Nqobile, but chose to hide in the forest rather than talk with us. Why would a family dictate such a thing? How could they dictate such a thing? Afraid of shaming the family with an HIV infected member, afraid of exposing incest that infected the child?

What will it take in our own lives to see healing come to the Nqobiles of Swaziland? I keep coming back to 1 Corinthians 4:20: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. What am I missing that the power part seems so unreachable?