In 1996 a young woman, Ntombi, who is mentally handicapped stepped into the fire, burning her foot, while her family was out working in the fields. Slowly that burn healed on her foot but a small spot the size of a dime remained unhealed. For many years it grew more and more infected, but what could her family do? They barely have enough to live on much less carry her all the way down the mountain, pay for transport and spend a whole day at the hospital.


   In 2011 Erica Zeiler went with her team to visit families in that area and saw her infected foot. By this time it had started rotting and maggots filled it. With great compassion and love, Erica went up every week to clean and bandage Ntombi’s foot. Then, after Erica went home, for another year her foot went unnoticed and she went unloved, up in the mountains.


   In spring of 2012 Erica came back to stay and in her first week here, the Lord reminded her of Ntombi and back up the mountain she went to check on her. The wound had again become badly infected and had spread to more area in her foot. Again, overflowing with compassion, Erica cleaned out her foot once a week and left bandages for her father to re-apply. However, it still got worse and worse, so in June Erica took her up to the hospital were they took some flesh to run tests on it, but the results would not be ready for three months. It has been almost four months since the tests and still no answer. So Erica and the Discipleship team have been faithfully driving thirty minutes up into the mountains to bring her and her father down to the clinic three times a week to clean it out and put more bandages on it. For the last 16 years her father has shown his great love for her by carrying her on his back down the long path to the car, holding her hand while her foot is cleaned and then carrying her back up the path to their small house.

 
   Last week I was privileged to go with two members of the D-team to bring down and take back Ntombi and watch as they re-bandaged her foot. On the way back down the mountain after we took Ntombi home I noticed this beautiful flower, rather out of place among the thorn bushes and rocks. It gave me such an amazing picture of how the Lord used one woman through many years to bring a ray of hope to this family, how in Ntombi’s pain filled life, someone has cared enough for her to wash her maggot infested foot and to tell her she is loved not only by her earthly father, but by her Father in heaven.