A Soldier Down

Fernando serving soup to a patient in the hospital.

Fernando Joaquim
October 15, 1987 - June 2, 2012

Noemia's call Saturday morning caught me totally off guard. I wasn't sure I heard her right though she was speaking in perfect English. One of our activistas, Fernando, had taken his life.

This was the Fernando who always had a smile for everyone. He worked hard helping those with AIDS out in the bairros. His loyalty to the hospital soup ministry was inspirational for those that worked with him. He helped oversee the renovations of the buildings for the basket ministry, coordinated the expeditions to cut palm leaves and fought the agriculture department monthly for a permit to take a small percentage of foliage from the millions of acres of African bush.

He fought hard to keep his family together after the death of his twin sister and parents. He was mother and father to his younger siblings. It is not easy to take care of a family of growing bodies on $27 a month and provide for their food, clothing, school fees and supplies. His childhood ceased to exist as he was forced to grapple the adult world. He was the poster child of an African AIDS orphan.

Fernando's was one of the first Green Door houses we built. The team that came from our town in Wyoming joyfully helped the Mozambicans put up his cement block house. It was heartening to see these orphans own their own home that no one could take away. Things seemed to be looking up for him as he announced his wedding plans for July. He had found a girl he was crazy in love with and she loved his siblings. It all looked so right. But something was terribly wrong.

We will never know exactly what happened to cause him to make a series of poor choices. One doesn't need to look far to know that Satan is crouching at anyone's doorstep to kill and destroy. In the weariness of the battle, he let his armor slip. With his defenses down, he became a target for the enemy. In the aftermath, we lost one of our soldiers.

We buried him today. It was one of the biggest funerals I have seen here in Mozambique. He had touched the lives of many. The grief of his siblings was overwhelming.

It is customary for Mozambicans to sing many songs together at a funeral. Towards the end of the funeral, as flowers were placed on the mounded burial, impromptu, five young men began singing beautifully together in a cappella harmony while the rest of us just listened. I had never seen them before so I don't know who they were, but it was a beautiful gift to the grieving and an appropriate end to a very difficult day.

(This has been a trying year for the activistas. As they are on the front line of the battlefield, they need protection and strength. We need prayer warriors.)

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This last weekend the president of Mozambique landed right in the housing site that we live in, Lusalite (or now called Eco Cimento). Election year is coming up and he is making the rounds in his country. Dondo spent a lot of time getting ready for him. Things got cleaned up and fixed, pruned and readied for his presence. I couldn't help but wonder....if they knew Jesus was coming....would they be as diligent in getting ready?

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We buried another woman from Project Life last week. She had fought TB and lost. We took another Project Life patient to the hospital in Beira. Her name is Elsa. She is just a skeletal wisp; fighting the end stages of AIDS. We discovered she needed blood and she couldn't afford it. Her husband recently abandoned her so her younger brother was trying valiantly to care for her. We decided we would pay the $53 the blood would cost. Then we discovered the hospital blood bank was dried up. We were told we could give our blood and they could exchange our blood for her type when it came in. We opted to do that but since it was going to take up to five hours and it was already late in the day, we had to come up with another idea. They suggested we find two people we could pay to give blood. It takes two Mozambicans to give a pint of blood because they are not healthy enough for one person to give that much blood. With the help of her brother, we managed to find two people who did not have AIDS willing to give blood for a reasonable amount. We were thankful for that. As we were leaving Elsa, I noticed that in spite of her deathly ill frame and countenance, someone had taken the time that day to paint her nails chartreuse green. My first reaction was wondering why her brother would waste money on nail polish when she needed food to eat, medicine to buy, and a host of other things. My judgmental spirit raised its ugly head until God cut me off at the pass. As we were heading home, my translator quietly said to me, “By the way, did you know it is Elsa's birthday today?”

It gave me a renewed perspective on brotherly love.