daniel

I've been sitting in front of a blank screen for a while now, wondering how on earth I can type when words are the farthest thing from my mind. It's just a constant loop, running images of his face, while I sit here and wish you could have known him.

Daniel Ossewanou was one of our translators. When I got back to the ship in June, I headed to the wards for my first shift and it wasn't long before I heard the sound of a trumpet and a guitar. Understandably confused, I searched the ward until I found a tall man dressed in African cloth, strumming away. The guitar mystery was solved, but I couldn't find the trumpet. I turned my back and heard it again, and when I looked back, I saw Daniel, a wide grin on his face, clearly enjoying my confusion. He winked, pursed his lips and all of a sudden I was hearing the trumpet accompanying the guitar. Patients forgot their pain and sang along and that's how I met Daniel.

Daniel was married. He celebrated his seven-year anniversary on October first, and he and his wife have two little girls. Yesterday, on his way to his second job, Daniel's motorbike was hit by a truck and he was killed.

We are undone. I'm okay when my patients die; it's expected, sometimes that babies so sick will go back to Jesus. But not Daniel. Not my trumpet-playing friend. He was young and healthy and so much in love with his God and his wife, and it's not fair that his little girls will never get to see their daddy again.

I stood with the rest of the translators yesterday while we broke the news. My friends wept in my arms and I had to be strong for them while my own heart was shattered into a thousand pieces. I watched the men and women I work alongside every single day crumple, folding in on themselves as they understood what we were saying, and with one voice they asked why.

We cried and prayed and read Scripture, and then Mathieu, one of the other translators, lifted his voice, cracked and broken, and began to sing.

Merci, Seigneur. Merci.

All around the room, people added their voices, joining together against the pain.

Thank you, my Lord. Thank you.

Right now, I have nothing else to say but a prayer of thanks to my God. I am so grateful to have met Daniel, to have worked alongside him. I have been so blessed by his love, by his grace and by the music that she shared with us. As much as I wish that my heart wasn't broken right now, I'm so thankful that I knew him.

Please pray for his family, especially his wife and little girls. Pray for the nurses who knew him and for the other translators who worked so closely with him.

And when you see your loved ones tonight, hold them close and tell them that you love them.