What is trust?

What is trust? Can I count the unknown for these people, many of whom have walked from remote villages or come long distances with only the hope of change? We are a different color, a different language. The ship is different and the food is strange. There are lights that turn on and off, toilets that flush, showers that spray. We distill complex medical procedures down into simply "tomorrow they will give you medicine to make you sleepy, and fix your leg so it is straight."

As I continue in this vein, I get solemn nods from 4-year old Kwabena in my lap. "You will not be able to walk on your leg for a little while, and it will be in a long hard cast." I point to the boy in the bed next to him, legs already in bilateral casts, Kwabena nods. "We will tickle your toes to make sure that you can feel them, and ask you to wiggle them, and give you medicine if it hurts." Nod. "We will listen to your heart and check your breathing...would you like to hear your heart?" Nod...and an ever so shy smile of wonder as he listens to the steady beat of his own heart. The doctor has already discussed basics of surgery with mom, it is my job to explain pre- and post-surgical basics. She nods and smiles, no questions. Diagnoses of genu varus and a treatment plan of tibial osteotomy mean nothing to her. Jesus brought us here, tomorrow the doctor will fix her little boy's leg, and that's all she needs to know. Bored with the serious talk, Kwabena hops up and runs off on crooked little legs to resume his lively soccer game through the ward with another nurse and dimpled little boy.

"Will you let me carry you?" The elevator had broken again yesterday and was working slowly today, bringing our kids up to deck 7 and out into the sunshine. Two days of enforced bedrest had turned two of our lively and cheerful little girls into screaming, fighting, and bored out of their minds. Two-year-old Grace stared back at me out of her nest of pillows. Pigtails stood up everywhere and casts jutting out in the air. Earlier today she had tried to bite me, angry and in pain, and scared. Our translator had gone with the first crew after inviting mom to come up as well. Limping herself, mom is in no shape to carry her little girl up and down 4 flights of stairs.

I point at myself and Grace, make a carrying motion with my arms, then point to the ceiling. "Grace, I know I'm tall and white and smell funny...will you let me carry you outside?" Mom nods and smiles. I pick up the tense little body, one arm cradling the stiff white casts. "Evo, evo Grace," I murmur, "everything will be all right." She peeks a few times over my shoulder, checking that mom is following up the stairs, then curls her little arm around mine and looks up at me. The other fist is clutching tightly to her large pink balloon.

Upstairs on deck there are people everywhere. Patients with tumors and ones that used to have them, heads no longer wrapped in shame. Children in casts are on laps and chairs, batting around their balloons. A boy in a flowered patient gown races wildly along the deck and into my leg, looks up and giggles. Soon no one will be able to tell that there used to be a hole where his upper lip should have been.

As we prepare to go back down for dinner, I hear "sssss Afua, sister!" Grace is crying as a translator tries to pick her up, mama calling me over. "You take her, Afua," mama tells me. And just like that she is in my arms, one chubby arm hanging on tight to mine, and head resting against my shoulder. "Can I carry you, Grace?" She grins up at me, pats my white cheek, then snuggles down again in trust.

So many of the staff here have left jobs and settled lives and friends at come to come, if only for a little while. To come and serve in obedience. To make some small difference in a life, of two, or a thousand. To be Jesus to a child in need.

It's not an easy thing to leave the known. To boldly step out into something completely and wildly new. I know for myself, in taking this one small step, I have been allowed a glimpse into what life could be...a life of trust.