- Part I: Getting Burned
- Part II: Treating the Wounds
- Part III: The Burn Center
- Part IV: Life at the Burn Center, the Surgery
The second day after the surgery was slow. I felt nauseous from all the drugs and fasting and exhausted from the surgery and the red light therapy.
“There’s an American missionary meeting with kids at the hospital,” I heard someone say. I perked up. I had been studying English, mostly children’s songs and poems, and was fascinated by the language and America (we never used “the United States”). With a blissfully uninformed certainty of a child, I decided in that moment that my life was about to change. When Andrew, a tall 30-year old American with a guitar, walked into my hospital room, I forgot all about the pain and the burn.
I said “hello” and smiled. He came in with a young Georgian translator, a pre-med student who spoke fluent English. Both were smiling and unusually cheerful (at least for Georgia in the 90s). I told Andrew I could sing in English. With his limited guitar playing skills and my tone-deaf singing, we sang. The hospital management decided it would be great if we could give a concert for other kids and take some pictures for PR that would, hopefully, lead to an increase in humanitarian aid. They rolled me on a gurney into a bigger room, where other patients, parents, hospital staff, and visitors gathered.
Andrew gave away crayons and toys, and ended up visiting us again before leaving Georgia. Suddenly, I had something to look forward to, and spent days drawing pictures for Andrew. I even knitted a little purse for him. I practiced the few English words and phrases I knew, and asked mom to bring my textbooks from home.
An engineer from Palo Alto, California, Andrew traveled as a missionary on behalf of his local church. My family was suspicious of any religious affiliations, but Andrew seemed so kind and unassuming (and he was an American), that everyone ignored that fact about him. Mom used to pray for my recovery and light candles at a nearby Georgian Orthodox church, but that was the extent of my family’s religious practice. We had a couple of icons at home, didn’t have a Bible, and were rather inconsistent with our observance of religious traditions.
After Andrew left, I decided to learn how to read and write in English, so I could write him letters. I also decided to learn about Jesus.
Moments in Words 