At 9:30 pm last night, just as I was going to bed, I heard a noise on the front porch. Abby heard it too and called me to say that she thought someone was on the front porch. Sure enough, there stood Mr. Y.Y. leaning against the wall. He pulled up his pant leg to show me his wound - a gash that was about 4 inches long and gaping about 3 inches wide. It was so deep that I could see the layers of skin, fatty tissue, muscle, and even ligaments. Fortunately, I have one suture needle with thread, that I had hoped not to need. Praise God, he provides! I called Roy to help me, cleaned the wound as best I could, slathered it full of antibiotic ointment, and began to stitch it shut. Now, I enjoyed our suture lab in my tropical medicine course, but my little pig foot that I sutured had neat cleanly sliced incisions, with no blood. They were not gaping, and did not complain at the total lack of anesthetic. Poor Mr. Y.Y. had to endure having his painful gaping wound stitched shut without anything to numb it. Roy held his hand and prayed while I stitched by the light of my head lamp in the pitch dark, rainy, night. As I stitched, I kept thinking "they didn't teach us about this in class..." I know that my stitches would not win any prizes. They were not neat and close. I did not bunch the skin up well in order to lessen scarring. I was just desperately trying to keep the wound somewhat closed, and yet at the same time allow for treatment of any potential infection, since I could not clean the wound all that well. I also was trying to make my one and only suture last for the entire wound. I am SO glad God uses the underqualified. He only can make these stitches stay, keep infection out, and allow the muscle to regain it's strength. Please pray for Mr. Y.Y.
Shortly after we went to bed, Roy began to have a bad case of diarrhea and vomiting. I think he was probably up 5 or 6 times in the course of the night with episodes. He began to run a fever, and Abby had been running a fever before bed as well. I am not sure what we are in for here, but I prayed yesterday that God will help me to be willing for HIS plan and not my own. I had realized that so often I tend to come up with good ideas for God to do, and then expectantly wait for Him to carry them out. THAT is NOT submission to God. Submission to God means that I simply obey Him... even if He never uses me for anything... my job is just to OBEY.
Well, here I am...obeying...with God's help...trusting in One who I know is completely able...especially when I am not.

Survivor

Ok... so, I guess I am on a little bit of a reality show theme. Yesterday it was Extreme Home Makeover, today it is Survivor. I have to admit it... I am not a fan of the Survivor shows (gasp... yeah, I know). When the first one was advertised, I thought it would be really cool, until I discovered that it was not so much about making sure to survive as it is about making sure that no one else does. I was bitterly disappointed. I found a version of Survivor on PBS that sent a group of people out to the prairie to survive like in the old pioneer days. Now THAT was an interesting show.
I say all that to say this, I spent the last three days doing the following...
1. Making beef jerky (from still-with-the-hide-on to dried and ready to eat)
2. Making candles using the leftover wax and pouring it into molds of Papaya leaf stems
3. Canning carrots, green beans, and grapefruit
4. Baking bread
5. Walking about 24 miles (divided in three different days), 3 miles of which were with a
broken flip-flop.
So...I have decided to host my own Survivor show. My family is probably the only participants (unless one of you want to come out and join us for a while, in which case you are definitely welcome!) I promise there would be no cutthroat tactics or secret alliances. THIS game is all about team work. Working together and making sure that we all make it to the end is the whole objective.
As I was thinking about all of this, I had a light bulb moment ( of course, there is no electricity here, so actual illumination occurred. Still...) THAT is what we are all about. We are here in Africa and as Christians we ALL are here on this earth to work together so that as many people as possible make it to the final ceremony... the great wedding feast in Heaven. If we play it right, we get to have as many people there as we wish. No limit on team size! We are all in a secret alliance together and the other team is not visible to the naked eye. I refuse to kick anybody off, in fact, we are trying to get as many people to join as possible.
So, let's strategize... I'll take this area since I am already here, you take your neighborhood, and we will tell as many people as we possibly can, as quickly as we can, because we don't know when the whistle will blow for the end of the game (okay, so maybe it's a trumpet, but you get the idea). This mission is not impossible :) (because ALL things are possible with God...) but let me tell you... the finish line is looming and there is much to be done. On your mark... get set...
GO!!!!

Funny Shirt contest

I've got another funny t-shirt for you. I saw one on a young man that said "TY HELPED ME". I can only assume that it is referring to the home makeover show... but the funny thing is that the young man wearing the shirt cannot possibly have any idea about the meaning of the saying. Ironically, we ARE remodeling our kitchen right now... although I doubt that it is anything of which Ty would want to take part. I will try to post a photo.
Laugh, and have a good day.

I woke up this morning to the beginnings of a death wail. In this culture, people do not supress or hold back their grief. In fact, if news comes that someone has died, the family members will wail loudly for quite some time, and can be heard 1/4 mile away, sometimes farther. It isn't such a bad thing, really... and is probably more healthy than our western approach to grief. At any rate, it is difficult to wake up to. I jumped out of bed as Abby came running in to tell me that a bunch of women, carrying a child, were coming to the veranda. YIKES! That'll get the cobwebs out!!! I dressed as fast as I could and went running out the door. It turns out that little Mohammed (less than 2 yrs) had woken up with a high fever, to the point that he had a febrile seizure. After a quick assessment, I mashed an adult tab of Motrin (thanks again Bible Study Ladies), dosed it for his approximate size, got him to take it (he was sick enough not to spit it out) and sent him to the hospital for a quinine injection. I think that he had malaria as no other problems had presented themselves. I felt so bad for the mother... but here is the neat thing... he isn't actually her child. She had a daughter and about 3 months later her sister had a son. Her sister had complications from birth, almost died, and consequently spent several months in the hospital recovering from surgery. In the interim, her breastmilk dried up, so Kunku, her sister, started nursing little Mohammed for her. This would be the equivalent of breastfeeding twins... and here they breast feed up until about 2 yrs of age. Would you do that for someone elses child? To meet them, you would never know that one of them was not her child, and when he had a seizure, she began to wail as if it were her own. WOW!

MK Boot Camp

Homeschool today was a minilecture series. Guestspeaker: Yours Truly. Subject: When In Rome... DON'T! We spent some time discussing the difference between right vs. wrong type issues and cultural issues. Biblical values ought to be our measuring stick for any culture, and beyond that, different is exactly that... different. We discussed the benefit of knowing two different ways of living, because it gives you the option to choose which one best fits the present need, but that if the difference is truly against bible teaching, you DON'T do as the Romans do... no matter where you are. :) I am trying to get my kids to see the strength that they have in God's principles and the benefits they have in being caught between two worlds. I can't help but think of Dave Polluck, whose passion it was to help missionary kids adjust to bi-cultural living. It is a hard thing in some ways, but has a great deal of blessing as well, if it is handled right. I just hope I am handling it right. My kids seem to understand, but our illustration to help them understand is a little funny. We have to sift all of our flour here, not to make it nice and smooth, but to get all of the bugs and foreign objects out. Roy explained to them that they need to sift everything through the filter of God's word so that they can pull out all of the "bugs" (things that are actually wrong to do) and then the flour can be used in whichever way they wish. (Funny, even our illustrations have changed!)
Dave Polluck, up in heaven, thank you for investing your life so that this MK and her MK kids, could benefit. Thank you too, to Ruth Van Reken for her life work.

MK = Missionary Kid

Dave Polluck and Ruth Van Reken co-authored the book "Third Culture Kids"

Simple pleasures

I found a jar of bubbles in Freetown this last trip.  Yesterday, I took it out and started blowing bubbles for the kids.  They were amazed and thought it was wonderful.  In fact, withing about 2 minutes I had 10 kids jumping at every bubble, trying to catch it.  Sometimes it is just the simple little things in life that bring the most pleasure.  It was so much fun!  I wish I could have gotten a picture of their faces as they jumped and ran after the bubbles with total joy.  Blow some bubbles today and think of how lucky we are to have the simple pleasures in life! :)

The "non-drivers side"

On one of my many trips to the nursing registrars office, I had a unique experience. As many of you know, parts of the world drive on the left-hand side of the road and in those countries, the cars have the steering wheel on the right side. Many of those vehicles end up in Sierra Leone. We drive on the right-hand side of the road here, but there are left-hand and right-hand vehicles throughout the country. My taxi on this particular trip was a right-hand drive car and I ended up in the front passenger seat. Now, I am not generally a back seat driver, nor am I one to have a white-knuckled grip on the door handle and a foot through the floor...BUT... riding in the left-hand front passenger seat on the right-hand side of the road is a truly disconcerting experience. Your entire body is screaming at you that you are the driver, but there is no steering wheel and no brakes. On top of that, imagine the craziest driver you have ever known.... well, suffice it to say that traffic laws are more of a suggestion here. It was definitely... um... an adventure.
Let me switch tracks for a minute. I have my nursing license now after 9 months of waiting and multiple trips to Freetown. I am so excited... and TERRIFIED. Suddenly I realize how utterly inept I am and how little I know. It would be so much easier to just not do it, then there is no risk of getting it wrong, making a mistake, misdiagnosing someone, or having to watch someone die simply because the needed procedure or medicine is not available. According to me, at this point, anyone could do it better.
So often in scripture we see that God uses the little guy, like David, the one is who is not qualified and the least expected. We comfort ourselves with this thought, that God can still use us even though we are not the most likely candidate. But many of us, once God actually calls on us to do something big, act more like Moses. We say, "but, God I am really not so good at speaking in front of people..." The very thing that we find comforting when we want to be used, becomes terrifying when He actually starts to use us... a lot like the left front passenger seat on a right sided road... God is driving, but we would be a lot more comfortable if it were all in OUR control... and more in our comfort zone, if there were not so many risks and so much at stake.

It all comes down to trust...

Do I (and you too) trust God enough to be capable of using the weak and underqualified even when the weak and underqualified is me (or you)?
The answer should be yes, and I am praying that God will help my answer to be yes.
Beware...
if you say yes,
you are in for a wild ride and there is not telling what God can do... :)

Got home late yesterday evening from a 5 day trip to Freetown. We had only planned on 3 days, but that's just the way that it goes. I am very happy to report that I have an actual nursing license in my hand - I am now a registered and licensed nurse in Sierra Leone!!! Praise GOD! My license is good for a laugh though. My photo lacks the line-up, deer-in-the-headlights look that is so typical of drivers licenses. However, I have compensated for that by having a "christmas ornament" look... you know the one that occurs when you try to take a head shot from about a foot away. Anyway, I think it still looks enough like me to be recognizable. :)
We were also able to get Roy in to see a Doctor, and his hemoglobin is 10.2. He had been taking iron tablets for a week prior to the lab test, so I shudder to think what his hemoglobin may have been when he was just finishing his bout with malaria. It definitely explains his tiredness. I was fairly certain that the problem was a low hemoglobin, but it was helpful to know for sure that there were no other factors involved. We were able to stock up on groceries and even found CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!! I was SO excited! I also was able to find some more cheese and some applesauce, so we are going to live high on the hog over the next month!
Richard and Paula Miller and their 2 girls, Faith and Grace, graciously allowed us to stay at their home for the days that we were in Freetown. We were so blessed to sit and talk with them. It was a blessing financially that we did not have to pay for a resthouse, but more than that, I found that the fellowship of other missionaries really had been something I was hungry for. It was such a pleasure to laugh together at life and it's mysteries and at the blessings and burdens of ministry. In addition to that, their responses were always that of prayer and scripture, but not in a preachy way, just a down to earth, God-is-big-enough sort of way. One of the things about the body of Christ is that we all have different roles and gifts, which is taught often enough that you are probably saying "well, yeah... duh". But too often, even though we buy into that belief, we are discontented with our own gifts and long to do something bigger or more important. Richard and Paula have a really neat work that they are doing as missionaries, and they are very effective, but even if they weren't... just encouraging and praying for someone else who is in ministry is VERY important. Not only that, but they fed us like kings, making meat for Roy since we had not had any in a month. That is a BIG deal.
So many of you have said to me at different times that you "couldn't do what I am doing" but you shouldn't. I am PROFOUNDLY grateful to those of you who pray for us and support us and encourage us. You faithfully doing what God calls you to do PLUS me doing what God has called me to do EQUALS the body of Christ, working to build His kingdom. One part of the body is not more important or more significant. We tend to think so, but our perspective is skewed just like my nursing license photo. Just because my nose LOOKS excessively large and prominent, doesn't mean that it actually is... thank God! :) In God's accurate view, we are all equal in significance and importance.
We are back in Kabala now, and though I know that things will not be easy (why would they start now?) I have a renewed hope in the fact that I am not alone. I am a part (doesn't matter which part) of a body of believers who are working to build God's kingdom and He is in control. WOW!

I heard a fun story yesterday from my Okada driver (Okadas are a motorcycle version of a taxi service). It turns out that the Kuranko people have a story to explain why goats don't like to go in the water - which is actually true, they DO NOT like to go in water.
At the beginning of the world, God made all the land creatures and then started to make the creatures that live in the water. He told the land creatures that they were to be separate from the water creatures and therefore they needed to cover their eyes while he created the water creatures. The goat decided to be smart and peek between his cloven hooves. So, he watched as God created the alligator, hippopotamus, whale and many other fearsome creatures. Because of that, while other animals will wade in and cross a river, the goat absolutely refuses. He says, "I know what is in there and I don't want to have anything to do with it."
Just an interesting tidbit for the day. Hope it made you smile!