EGYPT
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Sandy “P
lease, come quickly, Mrs. Peggy!” The call came just as my fellow student missionaries and I were sitting down to dinner at Mrs. Peggy’s home, as we did each Friday evening. Mrs. Peggy, our campus nurse practitioner, was still holding the phone when several students burst through her door. “Mrs. Peggy, please come to the dorm right away to see Sandy!” Mrs. Peggy and I rushed to the girls’ dormitory, where we found Sandy in critical condition. We did everything we could to save her life, but in the end, we lost her to unknown causes. Sandy was 17 and admired by her classmates for her friendliness, leadership, integrity, and relationship with Jesus. School was canceled for the next week, providing me with an opportunity to reflect and spend time with the other missionaries. We were still grieving a bus accident that had killed one of our students and injured several others. For me, Sandy’s death was the straw that broke the camel’s back. O n e d a y t h a t we e k we watched the movie Cast Away about a man whose plane crashes, leaving him stranded on an island for several years. While parts of the movie are emotive and thought provoking, I’d have never called it sob-worthy. But as I watched it, emotions welled up within me, and the floodgates could not have opened wider in a room full of dry-eyed, confused friends. I tried to explain that there were several reasons I was crying, but really it was because 30
things aren’t as they’re supposed to be. Romans 8 speaks of all creation groaning and laboring with birth pangs, waiting to b e d e l i v ered from the bondage of corruption. I had become aware of the bondage all around me. It was in the empty bags and trash being blown by the Sandy at 17. wind. It was in the emaciated stray dogs scoping out piles of burning garbage for food. It was in the woman sitting under the stairs of an overpass in the middle of the night, rocking an infant on understood? Until the water is her lap while her two other children pure and the air is fresh? Until slept nearby. She was selling packthe last tear falls? How long until ets of tissues for the equivalent of Sandy is raised to meet her best US$0.07. People limped up and Friend in the clouds of glory? down the aisles of the train selling I long for that day when we’ll pens or passing out tracts, hoping begin to spend eternity experiencfor a donation. Others sat barefoot ing life the way God intended it on the ground, begging for money. to be from the beginning. Come, These things were not new to me, Lord Jesus! nor had I been unaffected by them before. But I had had enough. How far all this was from what God had Sara Reichert served wanted for us! as a volunteer nurse I ached for the broken heart and teacher for of God, knowing that I had seen two years at Nile the least of His pain. How long, Union Academy O Lord, until all things are made in Egypt. She and right again? How long until evher husband, Jordan, ery person and animal has food currently live in Indiana, United States, where she works as a and shelter? How long until we nurse in an intensive care unit of a are no longer afraid? Until no local hospital. one is lonely and everyone is
