Facing Death…and Life

Death has visited and touched us again in the last week…twice.

On Monday I was in Antigua for a meeting when I received a call telling me that Phil Bergen was being transferred via ambulance to a private Antigua hospital with a suspected heart attack. I immediately headed there and arrived to find that he had been pronounced dead in the very same room where we lost Thania last July.

I would not call Phil a close friend, as we never spent much time together. We were both busy with our respective ministries, so we didn’t really have an opportunity to hang out much. But I did consider him an incredible co-laborer for Christ. He and his wife, Judy, established Amor Guate, a ministry in Jocotenango that runs a soup kitchen and after-school program and works with families. We often take our teams over to work in their program, and we have helped families with children who have special needs that they have encountered through their work. Phil and Judy have impacted thousands of lives through their ministry, both here in Guatemala as well as Canada and the United States. Phil was a man of God who had a way of helping people to see their identity in Jesus. He was quick to laugh and cause others to laugh. And the world is a little dimmer without him.

This is had an impact on us, mainly because Manuel Moran, our Group Home Coordinator, and his wife, Cristina, are very close to the Bergens. They have both worked closely with Phil and Judy, and Phil was a mentor and father-figure to them both. When I arrived at the hospital, I wept with Judy and their staff and with Cristina. Manuel was in the city getting medical treatment for one of the children from our rural village ministry, so I waited for him to arrive. I met him outside and broke the news and hugged him as he wept.

Phil and Judy were expecting a team of 19 to arrive the next evening, so we have stepped up to help with this team so Judy and her family can make funeral arrangements and have time to grieve. Today they spent time in our home, and we will be taking them to Hermano Pedro tomorrow morning.

Please pray for Judy, her children and their entire team of employees and volunteers here in Guatemala. The future is uncertain now, so they need God’s comfort and guidance in the days ahead.

Then this morning I received word that little Elizabeth (Lizzy) had slipped into the arms of Jesus last night. I wrote about Lizzy in my last blog and explained how we had been asked to take a 10 day old baby with hydrocephalus. We had said “No” due to a lack of manpower and overcrowding, but had referred the courts to Village of Hope, which is run by our friends, Todd and Amy Block. Over the last few weeks they have done a fantastic job of loving Lizzy and getting her the best medical care available. Their daughter, Addisyn, was her primary caregiver, and no little girl has every been loved more.

But God chose to permanently heal Lizzy last night, and she is without pain and illness now. But I must admit something that makes me feel very ashamed. When I found out she had passed away, my first thought was an overwhelming feeling of grief for the Blocks, but my second was, “Thank you, God, that she was not with us! I could not have handled losing another one!”

And as my own words rang in my ears I realized how horribly selfish that was. I don’t believe that we were wrong to say “No” to receiving another child. I believe God had planned all along for her to go to Village of Hope. We could not have loved her or cared for her better than the Block family did. But I also realize that my goal should never be to spare myself from pain. Here my friends were hurting at the loss of a little one that was one of their own, and I was breathing a sigh of relief that I was spared from their level of grief. I hate it when I see that ugly, selfish, old Daryl come out, and want him to be dead forever.

So death has visited us twice in the last week, and four times in the last three weeks. Three weeks ago a friend of Manuel was gunned down in the street. Last week we lost Don Jorge, who passed away suddenly. I had just given him a wheelchair the month before, and we are grieving for his widow who now lives alone.

Death seems to somehow be closer here in Guatemala. In the U.S. death appears as a more distant idea. Stateside, even when we lose someone we love, we are usually distanced from death. The body is removed quickly by professionals and you don’t see it again until it has been prepared for viewing. It is kept in a funeral home or church and we bump into it briefly for viewing and funeral.

Here you are involved in the process. When Esperanza died, she stayed with us. We prepared her little body, changed her clothes, placed her in the tiny coffin and kept her in our home until it was time to carry her to the graveyard. When Thania died, I claimed her body (wrapped in a garbage bag) from the morgue. We transported her to the funeral preparation guys who cleaned her, dressed her and placed her in the coffin. We then received the coffin and transported her back to our home for a service and then to her family in Jutiapa. The entire process of dealing with death is very up close and personal.

But that is not all. Death is a very real part of every day here. During my first 43 years of life I lived in the United States and saw death as something that happens to others. Not that I never lost people that I loved. I did. But it was almost always natural death and seemed distant. There always seemed to be the illusion of protection. If I got sick or injured, someone would make it better. America is safety-conscious, so we lived in an airbag-filled world. It just felt as if we were sheltered from death.

That is not the case here. There are violent crimes that fill the headlines. (Two days ago I read that Guatemala has averaged 15 murders a day over the first 100 days of 2015. This, in a country about the size of Ohio.) There are horrible accidents taking lives, and blood filled photographs on the front page of the newspapers to prove it. Many people get sick with treatable illnesses, but are turned away to die by the hospitals because they cannot afford treatment. Or, in some cases, they die because the hospitals don’t have the basic medicines to treat them. People die regularly here because medical personnel don’t have basic training such as CPR. And almost every day children die here of starvation. Death is real and personal here, and very few live with the illusion of protection and safety.

And, as an American, I sometime find myself wanting to run and hide from those realities. I just get sick of seeing death so up-close and personal, and I want to spare myself. And this desire for self-protection increased exponentially after losing two of my children in 2014.

And yet God has called me to this place, not to run from reality, but to show people how to face it…with grace, strength and Jesus Christ. Sometimes we have the privilege of saving lives, but other times our role is to just walk with people through the valley of the shadow of death, helping them not be afraid. And, many days, that is difficult and overwhelming, and I can be quite the coward. It is much easier to face the shadow of my own death than to see the deaths of so many precious children and grieve with the lonely widow.

I have much to share with you regarding our ministry and growth, but that will save for the next post. For today, please join me in praying for Judy Bergen, her children and all who loved Phil. Pray for the Block family as they grieve little Lizzy. And pray that Jesus will be glorified in the midst of this season of loss.

Blessings!

Daryl, Wanda and the Crew