Home improvements

We moved in 2 years ago - but like all homes - it has taken us some time to get settled.  And the settling process continues.

The Lok Hospital shifted over to the spanking new Bethany Hospital in June 2011.  We as an HIV care team moved in to the 'old Lok Hospital building' a few days later - continuing the Jeevan Sahara Kendra in thes new digs.  But it has taken a long time, a very long time, for us to set up our in-patient centre the way we want it to be.

We are still not there yet fully - but this evening we have invited our dear friends to a prayer time to thank God for the rennovation work which will allow us to run an 11-bedded unit to care for people with HIV who need hospitalisation.

The floors are shiny, the nursing station a real beauty, toilets have been rejigged.  We have taken out some walls and bashed in some windows - so that we will now have a 3 bedded TB ward, a 4 bedded male ward and a 4 bedded female ward.

Oh, but the beds aren't all here yet.  So we will start our newest venture in humble fashion - using the three beds we have already.

Our prayers are not just that the beds we have ordered will come quickly... more importantly, our prayers are that the right people will be helped at our Community Care Centre.

We currently have enough nurses - though we will need another come July.   We currently have 3 sparkling rooms - thanks to the generosity of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society.  We currently have 10 years of experience of caring for people with HIV - and may I say it - led by one of the most loving and yet deeply competent doctors I know - my dear wife Sheba!

But what we need now is the right patients and families to help.  People with HIV who are sick but not so sick that they can only be cared for in an ICU with a ventilator.  People with HIV who need a caring space, where the nurses really love them and treat them with respect, where families are prayed for and counselled.

We have treated people like this over these past two years.  They have come in dribs and drabs.  One here, two there.  The numbers small because of our limited capacity, because of the challenge of retaining nurses, because of the real issues of caring for extremely sick people when they don't have a care-giver or a person willing to take legal responsibility for them.

We at Jeevan Sahara have had to make a number of really heart-breaking decisions not to admit a sick person with HIV - because of a lack of family members.  Or because they are known to have multi-drug resistant TB.

Well, we hope that this will all change.

We want to step forward in faith, to take on new challenges, to allow God to stretch our reach and serve.

At our prayer this evening we will thank God for the past.  For the dear men and women who were cared for so far.  Some of whom are walking around today - able to function again.  While many are already passed on into eternity.  Some were alive when they were brought to us in desperately sick conditions - and were taken out dead.  But all, every one of our dear friends, having been loved.

We are so proud of each of the team members who have helped care so far - and of all who are there now to take on these next challenges - and are hopeful that we will be further strengthened by more nurses.

As we step into our home improvements, two lines from a beautiful hymn come to mind:

We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know...