They Come in Threes

You know the saying about how bad things come in threes? Well, I wouldn't consider myself a particularly superstitious person; however, I'm pretty much convinced that saying is true, just based on my own experience. And this past week has been another example of that.

Friday morning I woke up to the news that the mother of one of our school guards passed away fairly suddenly on Thursday night. One.

Within an hour of hearing that news, our high school secretary got a call from a family member saying that her mother had just died and she needed to come home from work. Two.

That felt overwhelming - having two deaths in our small community within 18 hours of each other. I wondered what the third thing would be. We were hosting a basketball tournament all weekend, and I just kept praying that no students would get seriously injured on our watch. The tournament ended on Sunday with no trips to the ER (a successful tournament in my book).

Monday brought number three. Right as I had almost forgotten about it...

Years ago, when our school built our current music room, it was constructed in such a way that a second floor could be added. We are in need of better art facilities, so we are currently in the process of adding on that second floor to be used as an art room. Construction began in December.

Yesterday, one of the construction workers fell off that second story and landed on his head on a tree stump below. Three.

The construction workers are outside hires - I've seen them around campus, but I don't know any of them personally. Throughout the day today, more details kept emerging, and the more I hear, the more heartbroken I feel for this family. The worker who fell is named Widodo. He is 19 years old - the same age as some of my students. He's an only child working to support his aging parents. His family lives in the village in a house with dirt floors and no furniture. The fall caused one side of his head to cave in.

Right now he's in the public hospital here in town, which is one of the worst places I can imagine being with an injury like that. He is in the ICU which is a basically an open air pavilion that anyone can come and go from. Doctors already performed one operation to remove skull fragments from his brain. They say that if he makes it five days, they will be able to make a prognosis, but right now, they aren't hopeful that he will survive that long. He goes through periods of semi-consciousness where he is in so much pain that he begins thrashing, so doctors have tied him to his bed.

One small grace in all of this is that there was no school on Monday when the accident happened. We had the day off since the entire staff had worked all weekend long hosting the tournament. The construction site is adjacent to the lower elementary playground, and the fall happened during lunch time  - when that play ground would have been full of 4-8 year old children. Our kids were thankfully protected from the trauma of seeing that happen, and based on stories I heard from some of our other workers, it was gruesome.

Please pray though. Pray for this family that is hurting and unsure of what tomorrow - or even the next hour - will bring. Please pray that the doctors will know what to do to help him and not to worsen the situation. Our local public hospital is ill equipped to handle routine health issues, much less emergencies such as this. Please pray for provision for this family. They have so very little. Please pray that they will know Peace and Love, because right now, they do not. Please pray for us as a community, that we will know how to bring love and light and encouragement and that we would have eyes to see the needs that we can meet.