Cutting Bandages for Africa

Our church has supported a missionary named Mary Jean Robertson for many years. She is a nurse that has devoted her life to bringing the word of God and better health care to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has had supplies shipped in from churches in the United States and Canada. She has also helped with getting hospitals and schools build in this country. She has visited our church many times sharing the good news of the mission work with the people in the Republic of Congo. Recently we learned that one way our church could help was to cut bandages. Mary Jean explained that she could use bandages made of sheets. We just had to launder them, cut them in six inch strips and roll them up. They would use all colors and designs. A woman in our church began a drive to collect sheets. Members of our small church found old sheets, neighbor's sheets, and sheets from family and friends. Last Saturday we held our first Bandage Day to prepare the bandages to go to Mary Jean in Africa. It was a fun day of fellowship with the other women in the church and what a worthwhile cause!
We are gathering next Saturday to cut more bandages. I think these bandages will brighten up any health facility they end up at.

Celebrating National Poetry Month: #15

An Afternoon in the Stacks

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

-William Stafford