Going Viral

 

“Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;

Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”

Psalm 13:3 ESV

 

After being dogged by an unidentified illness for the better part of a month or more my symptoms grew more severe—fatigue, weakness, brain fog, but most oddly no fever. In celebration of the new year, I completely lost my senses of smell and taste.  Dear friends almost dragged me to the clinic where I was diagnosed with Malaria and, as a kicker, a dose of the “maladie de la année,” Covid-19. My symptoms continued to grow more acute.

 

One dark night the following week I sat in bed anticipating meeting Jesus. I had never felt so ill as the “sleep of death.” While it would be my joy, not fear that would mark our meeting, I remain uncomfortable with the review of my life that will follow.  Christ bore my sin burden and freed me from the torment of hell, but as King David observed, “my sin is ever before me.”  God has forgiven me more than I have myself.  I was sure that night would be my last.

 

I embraced Psalm 51 in prayer.  I acknowledged that all my sins were against God. I grasped at his steadfast love and abundant mercy. I begged of Him a clean heart and a right spirit. He opened my lips to declare his praise.  I then dozed only to be awakened sometime later by novel sensations at the base of my chest, something like warmth, but not temperature, something like vibration without movement. I dozed some more.

 

That morning I awoke after a peaceful sleep.  I felt renewed as if it were a Saturday morning in spring filled with breeze and birds.  I felt surprisingly better. I savored the first moments of wakefulness and bid God good morning. There was an air of peace and calm in the room.  There was a palpable sense of the numinous—a feeling of the presence of the divine.

 

Each day since then I have felt better.  I still experience a bit of fatigue and some weakness, but the dark night has been replaced by a warm sunrise.  The abundant prayers of so many in the form of the merciful, healing hand of God are obvious.  I owe much to those who have and continue to pray like persistent widows on my behalf and to my wife Janet who has encouraged me and asked for prayers for my healing.  On that very dark night I could feel the effect of your prayers.   I am surprised at the pace of my healing.  The doctors and nurses have expressed pleasure at my vitals such as a pulseox level of 98%-to 99% and total lack of a fever from Malaria or Covid.

 

I am not sure why I have been graced with such an uneventful recovery from two potentially serious illnesses.  I can only think to attribute it to the abundance of prayers of my wife Janet, our many friends, acquaintances, and colleagues and the response of a God who loves me in spite of my very abundant and profound human failings.  Thank you all so very much.

 

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love,

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.”
Psalm 13:5,6 ESV

NEVER NORMAL

Working in one of the poorest sub-Saharan countries of the world, there are things that you get used to like frequent power failures, water cuts, and myriad diseases waiting for the opportunity to knock us or one of our staff members down for days or weeks. There are other things that you want to get used to like the collisions between your home culture and the new culture. 

Then, there are the thing that you never want to get used to, like the 24-ounce, month-old baby staring into your eyes as you try to comfort screams pouring from an empty stomach.  You never want to get used to the one that arrived too late for even the most intensive medical intervention but whose fading, agonized cries echo in your heart.  You never want to get used to that.  Never.

More than one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been chased from their farms, villages, and lives by Islamic terrorists, a history of poverty and malnutrition, rains disrupted by climate change, and a global pandemic forcing the world-wide reallocation of already insufficient resources. Bug-eyed babies arrive at the Oasis of Hope ready to fall from the knife’s edge of existence.  You never want to get used to that.  Never.

We are encountering an increasing number of profoundly malnourished babies and distraught mamas at the Oasis.  There are nearly 80-babies currently in our feeding program and the number continues to grow, now because of twins and a record number of triplets that will force an underfed, nursing mother to make a heartbreaking decision.  Our resources and reserves run low.  We do everything we can to cut expenses to continue to buy costly formula.  We are horrified at the prospect of asking Social Service or the hospitals to not send any more babies to the Oasis.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Him who came that “man no more may die,” we hold each of these blanket-wrapped, tiny bundles and pray over them.  We have no adorned tree, twinkling lights, or colorful papers.  Each family goes home with cans of formula, rice and beans, mosquito repellant, mosquito netting, perhaps a soccer ball for an older child, maybe small bags of roasted peanuts, and a good deal more hope than when they arrived.

“Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth.

Hark the herald angels sing,

‘Glory to the newborn King.’”

 

We pray that each of you will enjoy a most meaningful Christmas and a blessed year filled with renewed hope.

 

“Let all within us Praise His Holy name
Christ is the Lord, O praise His name forever!

His power and glory evermore proclaim.’”

 Waiting for (the) Queen

She was somewhere between limp and dead with eye slits focused on nothing.  Nine years old looking like six, wrought with fever yet cold and clammy, staring eternity in the face and just hours or even minutes from going to be with God.  We rushed mom and her small charge into our truck with dad following on his bicycle. The heavily pock-marked roads lit only by the truck’s headlights forced me to drive painfully slow-- just over walking speed to the local hospital.  Once there, we waited as time crawled by before “Reine” (Queen) was admitted.  And then we waited even more. 

We are spoiled by western triage and urgent care.  Here it’s mostly first come, first served.  One learns to wait with prayer if not with grace.  Culturally short-circuited frustration is always lurking in hospital waiting rooms.  It’s too easy to imagine the worst when it is the worst that you most often encounter.  We waited and waited some more.  Drenched in sweat, I began to wonder when someone would turn on the fans that dotted the steaming hospital hallway lined with benches of those waiting to be seen and the anguished faces who waited with them.

We filled Reine’s prescriptions at the hospital pharmacy.  The shotgun shell of medications is normal when tests take longer than the patient may have to live. Often multiple IV antibiotics, saline solution or Ringer’s lactate, calcium and vitamins begin to stir life.  The next morning with more targeted treatment, Reine could almost sit up with her back against the hospital wall and her mom cradling her head.  She had dodged eternity and survived an especially severe case of malaria,* for now.  She will likely make the same dance many times throughout her life.

Days earlier, Janet and I were still moving to our smaller home located between the local garbage dump and the nearby “nonlotit” (unofficial) warren of one-room, tin-roofed homes of brick and blocks made with cement and the local red dirt.  We need to cut our expenses to pay for increasingly larger orders of imported baby formula. As we prepared to bring another load of belongings into our smaller home we encountered Reine’s father.  We knew him from months before when he and his wife brought twins, one suffering from acute protein malnutrition called Kwashiorkor--a ruddy, bloated boy who cried his way through a couple of weeks in a local hospital before a gracious and loving God called him home. The family was now our neighbor living only a couple of hundred meters away and with a limp, unblinking daughter who was close to joining her brother.

We returned to the hospital two days later to visit the family and to pay their hospital bills.  Reine was standing and walking albeit shakily.  Her parents thanked us repeatedly as we walked to the truck to bring them to the home they shared with at least four other families. Reine was greeted by the others, hugging her like a local celebrity.  They thanked us in at least four languages.  We told them that all that was done for Reine was a gift from God.  Now whenever we drive past their home, someone sitting beneath the sprawling acacia tree is sure to smile and offer a wave and a warm greeting.

Last week, Rein and mom knocked on our door to share their joy with us.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a child’s smile is worth billions.

We encountered God between a garbage dump and a hovel where the ubiquitous plastic bags fly about and inhabit the sparse trees, goat-chewn cartons blow in the smoky breeze, and hope can be as rare as rain.

And that’s exactly why He sent us here.

Dieu est grand tout le temps. (God is great all the time.)

*We have started a new program to distribute insect repellant, mosquito nets, fumigant, and Malaria medications free of charge.  If you would like to support this unbudgeted project, please go to the Sheltering Wings website at: sheltering-wings.org.  On the home page, scroll down to “Be the Hands” and click on “Donate Today.”  In the “Donation Center” go to “Don and Janet Guizzetti West Africa Projects” and click on “Donate.”  Scroll down to “Emergency Medical Fund” to make your most needed and appreciated donation to help with the most urgent, life-threatening needs.  Thank you and may God bless you abundantly.

Urgent Medical Appeal

Hundreds of children, many with critical medical needs have passed through our baby feeding program.  We have used individual appeals for the funds to provide critical surgeries  This slows vital medical treatment.  Jihadist warfare has displaced hundreds of thousands and has disrupted and overburdened services.  We now have a Critical Needs fund with which to provide immediate treatment.


A tiny baby girl just returned from open heart surgery in Kenya to close a large hole between the ventricles of her heart.  She would have certainly died otherwise.


Two babies are awaiting surgery.  One baby boy entangled with his twin had both legs broken during delivery—he weighed less than two pounds. At five months he contracted meningitis.  He recovered but then developed hydrocephaly.  Emergency surgery has drained some fluid from his brain, but a shunt is needed to continuously drain fluid from his brain.


A baby boy had a blocked urethra that keeps his bladder from emptying.  Emergency surgery made a temporary drain from his bladder through the wall of the abdomen.  Constant contact with urine burns his skin and results in frequent urinary infections.


Critical surgeries range from a few hundred dollars to more than $5,000.  Please consider contributing to Sheltering Wings/ Guizzetti Emergency Medical Fund.  Anything helps.  Thank you.







If you would like to become a ministry partner, tax-deductible donations may be made online at:  
http://sheltering-wings.org/our-missionaries/#don

Or you can make checks payable to Sheltering Wings and attach a note that it is for "Guizzetti" and mail to:
Sheltering Wings, 5104 Old 66, Leasburg, MO  65535.  (314) 635-6316.

We invite you to share real-time in our day-to-day experiences:
Friend us on Facebook:    Don and Janet in Africa, Don Guizzetti, and Janet Guizzetti

Smoking Ants

It was one of those languid, midsummer days when dungaree pockets were made for skate keys, big, fat pieces of colored chalk, and  a couple of pieces of Bazooka Bubble Gum.  Kids spun in Hula Hoops, fat Robins hopped and paused in the small patches of New York City grass that passed for front lawns, and the smell of red ribbons of caps in Roy Rogers pistols wafted through the air.  Dads mowed lawns, moms hung wash on clotheslines to dry, and the droning hum of a distant Piper Cub dodging woolen clouds in the blue sky set countless imaginations soaring.   Baseball cards clipped on with clothes pins made countless Schwinn’s sound like motorcycles.

Billy MacAfee was the “old man” of our gang—at least a year older than we six-year-olds.  Matches were forbidden us, so Billy held an enthralled court when he made dry leaves smoke with a large, round magnifying glass.  “Hey! Watch this,” said Billy as he turned to face an anthill of soil where workers were busily laboring to push sand grain boulders to the edges of the growing Lilliputian pile.  Billy focused the needle beam of sunlight on one hapless ant that instantly made a small puff of smoke and curled into something resembling a poppy seed.  A chorus of “Wows” rose as the magnifying glass was passed around.  We each took turns frying a half-dozen or so ants before passing the magnifying glass on.


No one noticed my mom, still in her laundry apron leaning down and watching us wreak havoc with the newly arrived soldier ants searching for an unseen attacker picking off the workers.  “What are you all doing?” came the voice that froze us into a huddle.  Billy almost boastfully replied that we were “smoking ants.”  I knew well enough to hope that Billy would continue to draw fire. 

My mom, who I already suspected was a closet Buddhist-Lutheran bent down and picked up the remains of one of the ants.  She took my hand and turned it over.
  

“Take this.” She said as she put the seed-like remains of one of the ants in my palm and closed my hand over it. 

I looked at her. 

“Make it live again.”  Open mouthed, I scanned my small cadre with questioning eyes. 

“I can’t,” I replied. 

“Try,” said mom. 

“I don’t know how.  It’s impossible.” 

“Remember that,” smiled mom as she turned back to hanging bed sheets on the clothesline.

Three decades later, I was driving an old pickup truck through the alpine heights of Colorado with the carcasses of a half-dozen field-dressed Pronghorns partially covered by a tarp.  One of them was mine, my first big game kill.  I had my bead on a young buck, aiming just behind his right ear.  That would kill him instantly.  Suddenly he had turned and appeared to put one big, brown eye directly against mine through the scope. I gulped and jerked the rifle just a tad to the left and knocked the still breathing buck to the ground. I wished I had missed.


I drove the 150-yards to the hyperventilating buck who sat motionless regarding me with two huge, round eyes.  “I’m sorry that I shot you, but I will eat you,” I whispered as I fired another round behind his right ear.  After field dressing my buck, I loaded him in the truck with the others bagged that day in the sage perfumed plains of Wyoming, just outside of Lander and headed for the ranch near Granby, Colorado.


As the truck wound its way though the heavy forest of pines, I cranked up the music on the radio, still pumped with lingering “dear fever.”  The words of the next song crept into my consciousness as the familiar tune tapped on my head.  “…Bless the beasts and the children; Give them shelter from the storm; keep them safe; keep them warm.”  The song continued in Karen Carpenter’s lilting voice and dulcet tones.  The image of somebody’s buck filled the rear-view mirror.  I apologized to my buck repeatedly as I drove deflated to the ranch.  I looked into my buck’s eyes as I hoisted his carcass into the outside shed where the animals would await their trip to the processor.  I apologized once more. I ate a good part of the animal, my first and only hunt.


Now two decades after that, I started raising laying hens in Africa to nurture moms too malnourished themselves to nurse their babies.  Last week a hen died from a broken shell in her oviduct.  The African vet said nothing could be done as she suffered.  Shortly after that she died.  About the same time, another hen somehow injured a leg.  We could not find any injury or broken bone.  She could only eat and drink.  


Here you don’t spend more than a chicken cost to heal it.  After spending a few days watching her eat, drink, and hobble a little, I decided to give her to one of our guards who never seems to have enough to eat.  Knowing her looming fate that night, I recalled the advice of a farmer friend—you don’t name animals you’re going to butcher.  I should have remembered that when we bought the flock with “Baby.”


I was six-years old again.

IN THIS CORNER

The past few years here in Burkina Faso have been emotionally schizophrenic. With many the same symptoms, we struggle with the competing emotions of fear of  jihadist violence and love for the people whom we live among.  We revel in the joy of too skinny babies becoming plump and jolly bundles squirming on their mothers’ backs and the grief and anxiety of reading near daily body counts from the latest attacks in the countryside.  

We grasp for balance as we ride the see-saw of emotions between seeing the transformative love of Jesus change despair to hope and then encounter the reality of the countless thousands of men, women, and children fleeing the swarming insurgents. We have one foot resting securely in the grace and mercy of God and the other in the bloodied shadows of indiscriminate evil.


We find ourselves alternately staring at opposing horizons.  On one we are lifted up by the brightening rays of rising dreams of expanding the Oasis of Hope; feeding more of the countless babies and orphans who have no options left, sharing the gift of literacy for whom it is not even a distant hope, and opening eyes, hearts, and minds to the Scriptures where one finds real purpose and meaning. On the other side, we can see the endless number of refugees, families and individuals who wander to and fro in the fading sun-stained dust of dreamless despair among the poorest of all people. We experience the pendulum swing between joy for the living and sorrow for the perishing.


We covet your prayers for those we live among and those whom we will never know.  We seek prayers not only for all of the Burkinabé, but for the jihadi themselves that their hearts and minds may be opened to the Holy Spirt to hear Christ knocking at their hearts.  

We seek prayers as well for all the unprayed for throughout the world, those who have yet to find an eternity with Almighty God through His son Jesus and who have not even one person to lift them in prayer.

DON'T WASTE (THE REST OF) YOUR LIFE.

During my late tens, my twenties, and my early thirties, I thought myself to be a reasonably good person.  I knew that I wasn’t a saint, but I could rattle off the names of a dozen Hitleresque persons worse than I.  Then I became a man and (mostly) gave up childish ways.  Faced with a nagging desire to know the true Truth, I realized that I was not really all that good. Not nearly.


I got married, bought our first home, climbed the career ladder, and made good money.  I allowed the last two items of the preceding list to become my raisons d’etre—my reasons for being.  Big mistake.  As a then nominal Christian, I stumbled into a wiry, Reformed Baptist preacher who gob smacked me with the possibility of actually wasting one’s life.  The concept left me stunned to my shoes. He disillusioned me of the idea of buying a boat, retiring to Punta Gorda, Florida, playing softball and collecting seashells.


I listened to dozens of his sermons while pedaling my stationary bike.  I started to become annoyed with his insistence that “life” as I knew it was not life at all, that what we often mistake for life is rather a system of unimportant diversions.
  

Note that I wrote “unimportant,” not “inconsequential.”  A lot of unimportant things have consequences.  Passive decisions can have monumental and eternal consequences.  Without warning, life can become a system of passive decisions.  The American dream is such a system of passive decisions.  Almost without the slightest thought, we may embrace the idea that life consists of building a career, making a home, buying stuff, and chasing postcard vacations, like going to Punta Gorda. 


There is nothing wrong with the American Dream if it does not become the primary objective of one’s life.  Food is good, gluttony is not.  Money has a function, but it is a false objective.  Vacations are restorative, but they are an escape.  In fact, everything about the American Dream is an escape made up of unimportant (but consequential) diversions.  Realize it or not, the American Dream is the scenery that flies by as you ride the rails to your final destination.


The sermons I Youtubed while working out became the existential icing on the materializing realization that it is difficult to discover the meaning of “good” while living a life of unimportant diversions.  The American Dream can leave us confused about the main point of our lives and wholly unprepared for what comes after.


I am now in my seventh decade and I am again stunned to my shoes when I consider how close I came to wasting my life.  If not for the love of a relentless God and the people he purposely sprinkled into my life, I would have persisted in the haze that I was a reasonably good person pursuing my slice of the American Dream. I am now able to look back on decades of self-delusion and see clearly the sins for which I now fall weeping at the feet of Jesus. My eyes have been opened to how close I have come to riding the remainder of my life until it flew off the rails and tumbled into the pit of perfected irrelevance and unspeakable aguish.


What we call “life” is a prelude, a dress rehearsal if you will, for eternity.  We pass through a deluge of unimportant diversions.  Some of us are swept away by the current while others find solid footing in a loving God.  In the process, we discover that the American Dream has the potential to become a final, eternal nightmare.  We also discover that while we are capable of conceiving of “my truth” and “your truth,” that there is in the end only one Truth.  While we can also convince ourselves that we are reasonably good, there is really only one good—God.  When our goodness is measured against His goodness, there is no discernable difference between us and the meanest, most horrible person we can imagine.


In the end or nearing the end, I once again see how I have been rescued by a relentless God.  Rather than see my retirement as the opportunity to enjoy life and to find recreation with fewer concerns or responsibilities or to chase after postcards and collecting shells in Punta Gorda, my age is a vantage point from which I can squint eternity as the American Dream and my puny concepts of “truth” and “good” fade into vapors.  It is only in God through His son Jesus Christ where we finally find the real good, the real truth, and that which is consummately more real than any dream.


Don’t waste (the rest of) your life.