The medical team and a few outreach members headed out to a local church to start our Sunday. One of our doctors had shared the moving story of how he became a Christian there; so when we arrived the pastor of the church acknowledged our group and provided us with translators. We participated in the praise and worship service and the listened to a great message.

Sunday morning service.

After the service our group went to the hospital to visit Bernice. Her parents had prepared a bag to go to Bujumbura; but they either didn’t have time to pack sheets for the beds or didn’t own them so we dropped off some sheets for them as well as some toiletries.

Once we arrived and found Bernice’s room our doctors took a few minutes to casually look her over. She hadn’t woken up since before we saw her at Bubanza; but she was getting the IV that our doctors knew she would need for a few days and her breathing had noticeably improved. Her skin had turned back to it’s normal color. One of the doctors pinched her finger and she responded by pulling her hand away; which wasn’t something she had done the day before.

The medical team after checking on Bernice.

After we had presented our small gifts to the family almost everyone in the team shared a word of encouragement with her parents and aunt.

One team shared that his wife had just spent 4 days in the hospital in a similar situation two months ago with their sick child who needed an IV the entire time to get better. He emphasized that God was in control of Bernice’s situation as well and that He was using this situation to demonstrate His love for them.

The next team member addressed Bernice’s mother and said that she needed to stay thankful for everything that God was doing in this situation because He has a plan for this family; as difficult as things may seem at the moment.

One of our doctors was so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t speak: but our other physician said that God is powerful and that she believed that we would see the child up and running before our team left Burundi on Wednesday.

Another team member was also overcome with emotion but she was wanted to re-emphasize that God was in control of the situation.

We asked the parents if they had any questions for us; and they said that someone, looking down on them, asked them why they were in this room when he knew they couldn’t afford it.

The team responded immediately and said that God had simply chosen to be merciful to this family. In other words, God has chosen to share His blessings with their family even though they hadn’t done anything to deserve it. He simply wanted them to know that He loved them. We all explained that God had been merciful to us in our own lives and had not treated us how we deserved to be treated based on the way we had lived our own lives. That’s how we ourselves all knew that God was being kind to them.

After we spent some time praying for Bernice and her family we decided to sing them a few songs in Kirundi. The team tried it’s best but ended up having to admit that we sounded horrible. However our bad singing did bring a lightheartedness to the situation; Bernice’s family was smiling from ear to ear by the time we left the hospital.

Part of our team posing with Bernice's family.