Gratitude Monday: Saving the world, and stickers

Saturday and yesterday were Compassion Weekend around the Valley They Call Silicon—that’s when a number of local charitable organizations engage in outreach to engage people (individuals, families, groups) in specific projects for a few hours. Habitat for Humanity, shelters, school support groups—it’s a whole range, as are the projects.

Initially I was going to spend half of Saturday helping set up libraries in schools in East Palo Alto, but the web interface for sign-up wasn’t working, and I got no response from my email to the person who was supposed to provide information. So instead I signed on to help pack Ebola caregiver kits that are going to West Africa. The overseeing charity was World Vision.

Here’s the challenge: healthcare facilities in areas hit by the epidemic are just overwhelmed, and they’re turning away Ebola victims, telling them to go home. But the deal is that the disease is so communicable that even touching a patient puts you in high danger of contracting it yourself.

(A couple of months ago I listened to a story on NPR about the shattering experience of nurses treating infants and small children who were dying of Ebola; and they could not pick them up and hold them to comfort them. Now picture any family member charged with tending a loved one, unable even to hold a hand or caress a cheek. Picture yourself in this position—either the caregiver or the patient. Yes.)

So here’s what we packed on Saturday morning:

One box of latex gloves

One box of face masks

One face shield (plastic over the eyes to protect against spewing bodily fluids)

Three small boxes of powdered chlorine bleach

Five small bars of soap

One bottle of acetaminophen

One plastic biohazard waste bag

Five packets of oral rehydration salts

A protective gown for wearing over the caregiver’s clothes

A spray bottle for applying diluted bleach over the protective gown to disinfect it (as well as other surfaces)

An instruction sheet for how to use all the materials

A prayer card—printed with the logo of the particular church where this happened, and “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40

And we were told to write our own thoughts/prayers onto these cards and include one with each kit. In fact, if the carton-packers came across a kit without a prayer card, they held it out until someone brought one for it.

There were tables set up with stacks of cards, a couple of Bibles, colored pens, pencils and crayons, and stickers.

Well—I had not come prepared for this prayer-writing thing. Yes, the instructional email had said there’d be cards, but I thought the adding of a personal note was optional, not mandatory. I mean:

“A very important part of the kit build is each prayer card that goes into each kit, and there will be plenty of time for you and your family to send a personal note of encouragement and prayer to them. They do keep these cards with them over a lifetime.”

Well, I was wrong. And there I was, at a round table with cards, stickers and crayons. What to do? I considered bribing one or more of the kids to give me some of their output, but they all seemed to be accompanied by some sort of responsible adult. So in the end, I fell back on the one part of the Bible to which I can claim any kind of acquaintance, Psalm 121.

I reckon that—whether or not the recipient has Christian beliefs (and I hope to God that World Vision does not make that the price of admission)—the hope and promise of that particular Psalm are pretty much applicable to us all. So I alternatively wrote two of the verses on each of the eight cards I ended up making.

“The Lord watches over you—

  the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day,

  nor the moon by night.”

“The Lord will keep you from all harm—

  he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going

  both now and forevermore.”

And I slapped stickers on them.

As an aside, why has no one ever told me about stickers? They were wonderful—butterflies, hearts, flowers, animals; glittery ones, plain ones, delicate and robust ones. I’d have put nothing but stickers all over my cards, except I thought I might look a little greedy to all those little kids.

(I mentioned this to one of the supply volunteers as I was going through the line packing one of the kits. “You should have hit more heavily on those stickers in your publicity; you’d get way more volunteers.”  The young girl in line next to me—maybe 11-12—immediately came up with just the right tagline: “You get to save the world; and use stickers.”)

Anyhow—I thought about the eight people who’d receive my kits, hoping that indeed the Lord will watch over their lives, and the lives of those for whom they’re caring. That the protective gear will allow them to hold their loved-ones in comfort and support. That the knowledge that a bunch of mostly middle-class people in an exceptionally privileged area of this country are sending tangible and intangible support gives them strength and hope.

And I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be part of that.