Since Sue and Dad visited Maua in 2007, there is a story they tell. An important story. And upon our visit, when Sue told it again when we were on the hospital grounds- it was more clear and more poignant than ever before.

Dad went in with a group to various hospital wards to pray and visit. When Dad asked if he could say a prayer in the HIV ward, a woman stood up right in front of Dad. She dropped her hospital gown on the floor. She was covered in sores. She did a complete slow, 360, and said something in Swahili. She then laid back in the bed.

Dad said the prayer and the group walked out of the room. When they walked out, he asked their tour guide what the woman had said.

She said, “Tell people I lived.”

 The woman’s name was Elizabeth and she was a single woman with AIDS. She knew that she was going to die and that her family would not come for her body. She would be put in the hospital’s underground vault. She wanted him to tell his American friends that she lived. She didn’t want to be forgotten.

Everyone who has been told this story has not forgotten. In fact, a church in Ashland, Oregon planted a tree in her honor called Elizabeth’s Tree.

We too, shall never forget Elizabeth.