Friday, August 14, 2015

Elisabeth

Elisabeth is still hanging in there (wrote last about her here) but she is having a lot of pain, getting quite a bit weaker and is struggling more. Life is hard here no matter who you are but life is really hard when you are 90 years old, have no living family, and advanced cancer. Please be praying for Elisabeth.  She told us she is often lonely and hungry and always in pain.
I've been to visit her twice this week. She reports a bit of relief from the pain at night with the meds which is good. We also brought her a radio to fill her empty hours. Brought food and fire wood too, to try to make a little less work for her but she still needs her water to come from the borehole that is a ways away from her house and she still has to do her own cooking.
A few interesting things we learned while sitting with Elisabeth: She really wanted to be in school but her father took her out to care for the family cows. It was a catholic school because when she was school age Uganda was still a British Commonwealth so all the schools were run by the English Church. She thinks that she remembers that her first born child was about 10 years old when Idi Amin was in power (He is the crazy dictator of the 1970's who is known for insane human rights abuses and the death of upwards of 500,000 people.) One of her children died of illness but the rest were killed in the insurgency of the LRA in the 1980's. I'm in awe of the things she lived through and survived to tell us about. I can not even fathom....
These pictures don't show it well but she is a really joyful lady, laughing and smiling and can't stop telling us how much she appreciates all we are doing for her.

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