Our Friend Went Home

Our Friend Went Home
Originally uploaded by Derek & Sarah Grant.

I can picture him very clearly in my mind. He would always run up, salute us like a soldier and then run away. We would ask him
"Bodanimena, what are you doing?" He would just say, I don't know, I saw a guy from the city do it one time."

As I looked at this picture this morning, it speaks to me of hope. Had our friend died last year, he would have gone to hell. As
far as we know, he had trusted that Jesus died for and threw all his sins away and then rose again. This picture was taken a couple
months ago, when he was baptized.

Bodani had been living in Kodop (about 2-3 hrs hike from here.) For about 2 weeks the people had told me that he was really sick,
and going to die. They always say that when someone is sick. However I didn't go to him, but for the past 2 days I was hiking to
another location "KegaTabo", where another friend was very sick. Today the heli brought some medicine that I had ordered for
Bonani. As far as I could tell, he had dysentery, I don't know. My plan was, after getting the medicine today, to hike down to
Kodop and see him on Monday, but I was too late.

My heart broke this morning when I heard the wailing. I knew that someone had died. When they told us it was Bonanimena, all we
could do was sit in the mud and cry with our friends.

Tommorow we will hike down to Kodop and Bodanimena will be buried on Monday.

We will look forward to meeting our smiley friend one day, as now we have a hope that he is with his Saviour.

It's kind of funny. We came to these people to tell them about the Lord, and now Bodani knows much more about Him than we do.