His Footsteps

Awakened by the cries of a child, I glanced through the cracks in the hut and realized that the sun was beginning to rise. Mothers would soon be starting their fires and cooking sago, bananas and greens for the morning meal.
After a few minutes, I climbed out of my screen tent and stepped out the door of the hut onto a small covered porch. A few men sat eating around a fire that smoldered on a large clay plate in the floor. On the ground below, mothers and children squatted around a fire content to eat what little was left.
That day we examined many patients. Two bone-thin ladies had symptoms of malaria and pneumonia or possibly tuberculosis. A pair of year-old twins showed signs of malaria. A woman complained of recurring seizures. Everywhere we went, little naked children ran around with distended stomachs, a sign of malnutrition.
This was our first trip to Ama, and we were not prepared to treat patients. But finding such great need there, we felt we must do what we could with our small supply of personal medication.
Many people long to travel to Nazareth, Capernaum, Bethany or Jerusalem in order to walk in the steps of Jesus. But, “We shall find His footprints beside the sickbed, in the hovels of poverty, in the crowded alleys of the great city and in every place where there are human hearts in need of consolation” (The Desire of Ages, p. 640). —John Lello