Hope Zimbabwe

Rivers of Healing and Hope

Zimbabwe January 2007

By Nadia Fretze

My name is Nadia Fretze. I am from Newcastle University in Australia and was blessed to spend a month in January 2007 in fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Zimbabwe. In that time I did an elective in the Parirenyatwa hospital, Harare, staying with a local Christian family. This is an account of how God lead me to go there, what I saw and experienced whilst there in the unshakeable faith, hope and love of the Christians, what I learnt from my patients and how the adventure drew me closer to God. My prayer, is that in reading this you will be encouraged to take up those opportunities that our Father puts in front of you and be obedient to the callings He has placed deeply within you.

It was by God’s grace that the door was opened for me to go to Zimbabwe. Whilst attending the ICMDA World Congress in the Blue Mountains and Sydney 2006, I met the group of Christian Medical Students from Zimbabwe and built a friendship with a girl named Rumbi Kainga from the group. After the student conference she gave me a pair of earrings from Zimbabwe and said that these should remind me that one day I should come visit them. Also, during the conference I had a conversation with an older doctor where I discussed feeling a little desensitised and uncaring about AIDS causing so much sorrow in our world. She told me that it would not be until I actually built a relationship with someone who suffers from AIDS that I would be able to have genuine compassion and love.

A few months after the congress I wrote to Rumbi asking whether it really was possible to come to her country after a few months of trying to resist God’s gentle but persistent urgings to trust Him and follow Him to Zimbabwe.

Although we hear horrible stories on the news of the oppressive times at present in Zimbabwe, I met brothers and sisters in Christ whose faith, hope and love have roots in the unfailing spring of living hope. The family I stayed with warmly welcomed me into their house and treated me as a daughter. They were a family whom worshipped together passionately and desired to see God lifted high as the One who is mighty to save Zimbabwe. The father of the house, Gibson, the faithful spiritual leader of the house, had decided that his family were going through the troubled waters, being led by the Sovereign hand of God and that they weren’t stopping and being drowned by the situation in their country. There hope was not in the powers or structures of man, but in the greatness of their God. As a loving father he wanted stability and safety for his children. The mother, Gwen desired her children to grow up with a strong, unshakable faith. The children, from little Tade who was 6 years old, to Rumbi who was 21 had grown up being surrounded by the message that the most important thing they should desire is to know God. They also wanted to go to school, to learn, do sport and spend time with friends and family like any other children. Rumbi, whom I became very close to, desired to walk in God’s will and not be intimidated by the situation in her country at present. She was praying for the strength to stay in Zimbabwe after she graduated medical school and be used by God in the health sector in Zimbabwe if God opened this door for her.

From the left: Zandi, Kuzi, Gwen, Tade, Rumbi and Gibson

I was also deeply blessed by the unity and passionate joy of the Christian Medical Student group. They were very excited to have an Australian sister in Christ with them. Every lunchtime we had fellowship together of some sort- prayer; bible studies; ward visits where we’d share the good news of the Lord Jesus with the patients and children’s ministry. They stayed united by the power of the Holy Spirit and shared together in suffering and sorrow, but also were filled with vibrant joy and stories of the great works that God in His grace was doing.

Zimbabwe Christian Medical outreach team

I was under the mentorship of a mighty warrior in the faith and very humble man, Dr Reid, who has spent the last 13 yeras in Zimbabwe sharing the love of the Lord Jesus as a humble servant, bringing the healing hand of Christ to the nation. He is a faithful and humble brother in Christ, who allowed me to follow him as he followed Christ. He shared with me in action and truth what God had taught him, through the equipping of his pastors Tom and Bonnie Deuschle, in ministering to those who were sick and afflicted, as he has spent much time serving those with AIDS. Dr Reid also exemplified the life of a genuine servant of God- positioned continually under God’s mighty hand, overflowing with the joy of being a companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus Christ. (Revelation 1:9).

Dr Reid and 2 children at the Opportunistic Infection clinic

The grace of our Lord Jesus has been poured richly upon the Christians in Zimbabwe to stand strong and united in the faith. In these challenging times this grace is reaching more and more people and causing thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. The end of 2 Corinthians 4 teaches us that because of this overflowing grace we “…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Without fixing their eyes on what is eternal, the believers knew they would be fast overcome by the ever-increasing evil. They knew they needed purely to stay standing in the grace of the Lord Jesus.

Some of the biggest lessons I learnt was from the patients. I will share of the lesson I learnt from two patients, Mildred and Lillian.

Mildred was a lady whose hand I held as we attempted to insert a nasogastric tube in attempt to feed her as she was gradually wasting away, not able to eat for a reason we did not yet know. The insertion of the tube caused her excruciating pain that was horrendous to observe. At that time we did not know that she had a tumour obstructing the whole diameter of her oesophagus. She was completely helpless in her unimaginable suffering. I wrote the following words in my journal that night, “I have never seen such suffering and anguish before in a human body…What could I do? I had a hand, a smile and a Sovereign God to pray to. Father be with Mildred now.”

The same day I also met Lillian. She was covered with the most horrible ulcerating welts all over her skin. Once in the consultation room, she took off her wig, to reveal that these horrible welts had infested her scalp most severely of all leaving only a few remaining hair follicles. These horrible welts were infested with Tuberculosis, robbing Lillian of her external beauty. As we examined her whole body, I tried to imagine how I would feel with such a condition. The pain was evident in her eyes as she heard the doctor suggest another 9 month course of the toxic drugs used to treat TB was the best solution for calming down the skin infestation. She broke down in tears. This was the third time in around three years she was to do this nine month course of the cocktail of the four TB drugs. I could see that Lillian once was physically a very beautiful woman. I desperately desired to share with her the hope of Jesus Christ in a deep and sincere way. I was searching for just a glimmer of hope and faith in her eyes. As I searched, I was aware that my heart felt so burdened and heavy and everything within me writhed with disgust at what had been stolen from this lady. I searched for the right words to share.

As I started to share the good news of the Lord Jesus I felt the constrictions of her husband beside her who seemed hostile to the message I tried to share. I did not see hope restored in her as she left the consultation room and my heart was troubled by this encounter.

In both these situations I felt helpless and very weak to do anything to help. All I had was Christ, did I believe that this was enough? I learnt that we must be confident when we introduce our patients to Him, that He is so familiar with suffering that He will deeply and intimately understand their pain, a pain that only He can understand, be intimately present in the midst of and perfectly heal. “The head feels the sum total of any and all suffering experienced by the individual members of the body… The essence of love is oneness…He suffers all with us.”¹ I am convinced that without sharing the love of the Lord Jesus we can not genuinely love someone.

If Jesus understands them and if sharing Him is the only way to genuinely love our patients, how do we share this gift in a real and genuine way?

Our faith must express itself as love.

Those sick and afflicted needed people overflowing with the fruits of the spirit to hold their hand, bathe their wounds, pray with them and be with them. They also needed people to speak the full message of the gospel and proclaim the healing power of that is in Christ with gentleness, respect but great boldness. They needed to know that the Lord Jesus died for us so that “… by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”( Hebrews 2:14-15)

As I remember and pray for Mildred and Lillian now, I pray that they have had other harvesters to help them and that the Spirit of Our Lord Jesus has lifted them out from the pit that they are in.

Some of the children whom I met in the hospital, on the streets and at an orphanage were the biggest examples of this glorious message of hope that we have been entrusted with. I walked to the bus stop one day with a young girl, about 8 years old, who had just received news that her Kaposi’s Sarcoma (a bad cancer that is a common complication of AIDS), had regressed and in the course of our conversation I started to ask her about church, “Do you go to church…do you sing at church…can you sing me your favourite song?” She started to teach me the words of her favourite song, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Hope and joy radiating from the face of an Ivordale orphanage boy

During the month in Zimbabwe God drew out of my heart the desire to be a disciple who goes all the way in obedience to His Will-to be given over to death for Jesus’ sake so that the life of Christ might be revealed in my body. As the apostle Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians we are to be living sacrifices, taking up our cross and following Him. We take up our cross neither by human might nor power, but by fellowship with His Spirit that empowers us to daily lay aside our will and accept with joy the circumstances He places us in. God used the relationships that I mentioned above, to teach me that it is the poor, the sick, the orphaned, the widowed and the oppressed that He has called me to serve and lay down my life for and that he would work through such service, unworthy as I am to do it, to produce many seeds for His glory:

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me, must follow me, and where I am, my servant will also be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.”

I was very humbled by our Sovereign God who is Lord of the harvest, who is building His Church. One night I journalled by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “God has used the tears cried in this intense period of suffering to richly moisten the soil in which seeds of eternal life are planted in this harvest field. The harvest field is flourishing, despite the odds, in a way that it can only be God.”

The eternal relationships that I built sewed into me a deeper love for the family that God. I learnt that no matter where you are in the world, in Christ you have family, home for now is wherever the family of God is, but our real home is heaven and that is what we must fix our eyes on.

Most importantly of all I was captivated a fresh by my first love- Jesus, how wide His arms are, how He hears the cries of those oppressed, “He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy he will crush the oppressor.” (Psalm 72) He will forgive all our sins and heal all our diseases, redeem our lives from the pit and crown His children with love and compassion and prosper His people once more. This is His glory. In this hope alone must we trust.

The rainbow at the bottom of Victoria Falls, to me this symbolized the greatest blessing being when we are at our lowest position – being a servant to all.

To pray for our Zimbabwe bros and sisters in Christ:

- Strength in God’s grace to continue to stand firm with the full armour of God on

- Grace to share the gospel to the hungry hearts of those oppressed and afflicted

- God to heal the hearts of those in government and that godly leadership will rise up in the land

- Physical and spiritual food, shelter, clothing and protection in the dark times

- Joy given by the Holy Spirit to persevere and know the hope to which they are called

- Christian Medical Fellowship who are doing many outreaches and praying to start a new hospital

- Unity within all the churches and harvesters to be obedient to God’s call to serve and see lives rebuilt on Christ

1. Hannah Hurnard “Mountains of Spices”