Sabbath of living dead offers insight

Editor's note: Cape Girardeau resident Stratton Tingle is writing letters to the Southeast Missourian while spending a year as a missionary in Africa.

Here's a little story of what we did last Sabbath:

I met a zombie today. Her name is Emily, and she lives in Kafue, just about 10 miles from Riverside Farm. She's around 35 years old, has three children, and has been in the state of the living dead for the last year.

It all started when she came down with malaria about a year ago. Usually, she would take the medicine and get over it within a week, but this time, the headache, fever and vomiting wouldn't leave.

She struggled and struggled with it for three weeks before help came from some of the lifestyle/health students from the farm. The weeks of hydrotherapy treatment, diet change and garlic bombardment finally killed the parasites, but Emily was left a skeleton of her old self. This was the beginning of a general downturn in health for Emily that got worse by the day.

She had to quit work during that first bout with malaria, and she found that she couldn't go back because she was constantly sick. When she began to get a normal, everyday runny nose, it would turn into a full-blown sinus infection, and a simple cold would take her out for weeks. The lifestyle students see this much too often. When they asked where her husband was, she told them that he'd died of tuberculosis. People don't die from tuberculosis unless AIDS is involved.

So Emily did some research, and found that her husband was unfaithful throughout their marriage, and had to confront the fact that she probably has AIDS.

She resisted for months, denying the truth, but when she came down with malaria again, nobody expected her to live. In fact, the people at the hospital told her to "just go home and die, lady." She went home, and finally faced the facts. She was going to die. With help from the students, she got her life straight with God, and, for the first time in her life, gave herself to Jesus. She was finally ready to go. Someone wasn't ready for her, though, because she didn't go.

Miraculously, she got over that second bout with malaria.

By now, she was an invalid, but mentally the dark clouds of a death with no hope were rolling away, and the bright sun of God's love began to shine through. She talked freely about spiritual things, and asked forgiveness from each and every person that she'd ever wronged. Her two oldest children, boys of 11 and 15, served as her messengers and nurses. An open sore had begun to develop on the left side of her chest, and required constant attention from one of them, keeping it clean and applying charcoal poultices. As her mind and emotions began to heal, her health became a bit better and the wound began to heal up. During the month of March, when the lifestyle students were away, Emily contracted a cold, neglected to take care of the wound and stopped eating properly.

Her health plummeted at an alarming rate, and, when we went to see her today, she was basically dead. The wound made a hole that went straight through her body from her chest to her back, just below the left shoulder. Her right arm and leg were swollen to at least 10 times their normal size, while the rest of her body was nothing but bone. She was so dehydrated that when you pinched her skin, rather than snapping back, it stayed in the same place. Every movement was accompanied with excruciating pain that revealed itself through her grimacing facial expressions. It was all that I could do to keep my stomach down; I'd never witnessed pain and disease of that caliber before, and it made me sick.

She didn't say much to us as we sang some songs, presented the bananas, avocados and cornmeal to her, but she finally piped up at the very end of our visit. "I don't have an appetite for bananas now, but we will eat in heaven."

I don't know who will provide the money for her funeral. I don't know who will sell her house when she dies. I don't know where her children will go.

The only thing I know is that, one of the first things I'll do in heaven is get the lifestyle students, visit the banana patch where Emily will be waiting and have a party.