Many of you already know we lost Vitumbiku, a freshmen, to cerebral malaria last week. On Sunday, there was a funeral service at the outdoor Academy chapel. As you might expect, malaria is very common here, but ABC has never lost a student to malaria. This is a devastating loss for our community. Malaria is preventable and usually very treatable. Please pray for us as we support the students and also process this sadness.
Vitu was on the volleyball team, and his teammates wore matching black ABC t-shirts in his honor. About a fourth of the students jumped onto the back of flatbed trucks to escort the body from the hospital morgue to the campus. ABC rented his family a small bus, and when the funeral was over, they placed the casket between the seats where his family sat for the 7 hour ride north to Mzuzu,Vitu's home.
We're living in the "already but not yet." Vitu was a believer and is now in the presence of Jesus. We have great comfort in that. Yet we are eager for the day when Christ will make everything new, and death will be no more.
I have been praying for Vitu's family. We have been experiencing the same sadnesses here with the loss of little Deacon.
ReplyDeleteMy brother was once in a church that was on the lower end of the economic scale. Many of the members of this church were experiencing poverty, loss, death, and other deep sadnesses in their lives. He said that at the Easter morning service, people were literally dancing for joy, shouting, and cheering with tears rolling down their cheeks. The sadnesses of this life had given them a real and true sense of the glory of Heaven and the victory of King Jesus over the power of sin and death. That visual picture has been continually brought to my mind by the Holy Spirit lately.
I am praying for unexplainable peace, exuberant joy, and a tangible sense of hope for Vitu's family this Easter season. May we all join Vitu in our praise of King Jesus--for we will see with our eyes one day what Vitu now is experiencing face to face.