The Blind See . . .

This post is re-blogged from my friend Jodie Rothwell's blog.  She lives in the cabin we lived in in Benin and has a daughter Micah's age.  Pray for Jodie before you read any further as she's on her way back to Australia to have cancer on her nose removed, leaving Jessica and hubby Andrew on the ship.  Thanks!

I watched the man with great curiosity. At first he was tentative, as the bandage was removed from his eye. Then he blinked several times while his eye adjusted to the light around him. Then he smiled. His smile grew wider as he realised what was happening. After nineteen years of darkness he was seeing the world for the first time. He grabbed the man next to him, exclaiming loudly in an animated fashion. I couldn't understand what he was saying but I imagine he was saying, "I can see, I can see". He began patting objects in the nearby vicinity and naming them in French, "Stool", "Fan", Seat". Then he held his fingers in front of his eye and stared in wonder, like a child who first discovers their hands. He stood up, took a few steps, the smile never leaving his face, his joy overflowing. He looked over at us and we gave him the thumbs up

I don't know why it has taken me so long to watch the unveiling of the eye patients. It is a miracle to behold. The patients have surgery one day, usually cataract surgery on one eye. Because of the huge needs of the countries we serve in, surgery is offered on one eye only so sight can at least be partially restored. If there is time and the need, the second eye is done. The following day, the patients come back to the ship to have their eye patch removed. The vast array of emotion is unusual and certainly interesting to watch. From wild celebration to stoic disbelief. From quiet, shy smiles to loud, rambunctious laughing and singing. Some stay seated and some get up to hug the nearest individual.

 

However, the results are not always as positive as my friend above. We also witnessed several unsuccessful surgeries. It made me feel like crying. As the patients eye patch was removed and they began to rapidly blink their eyes, I was hopeful but then their eye began to stare blankly at  a fixed point and then I knew. As hard as the surgeons try, sometimes, for whatever reason, things do not work out. How painful it must be for those patients as they slowly realise that they are condemned to a life of darkness, their last hope gone, while the person next to them is celebrating, tugging on their sleeve to share their joy. I can't imagine. But for those whose lives are transformed through a simple surgery we give thanks to God.

 

Follow the pictorial story of Albertine (below), our first cataract patient in The Congo, and 63 year old Celestin who had bi-cataracts.

 

 

Celestin

"....the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor."
Mathew 11:5 NIV

Hero

Nurse Ali Chandra is back after some time in England where her husband Phil received more training for his position on the ship.  I've re-blogged what she wrote for "Five Minute Friday":

We stood in the hallway together, a translator passing our words back and forth between us like an imperfect offering. I was explaining to her that we hadn't done the surgery we'd promised, that her little boy, already so broken, would come back to her with the roof of his mouth gaping just as wide as when she surrendered him into our hands.

Her gaze never faltered, clear and strong and confident, as she took my hand and told me that this, too, must have been God's plan. That if we could understand Him, He wouldn't be God anymore.

A lifetime stretched out in front of her, a lifetime of caring for her child who would never speak, never walk. A child who, I'd just finished telling her, would choke on his food and spit water out his nose forever, as if the rest weren't enough. And she just held my hand there in the hallway outside D Ward, unwavering as she reassured me that everything was going to be okay.

These are the quiet heroes, the mamas who will never have their stories trumpeted from the front page of a newspaper, the ones just going on with their lives in the face of pain and heartbreak that I can't begin to understand. They are everywhere; Nathanael's mama is just one of many that I've met and a myriad more whose paths I will never cross.

They cling to life in the face of a culture that speaks death over their babies, sheltering them from the stares and glares of the ones who would call them worthless. They tie their children to their backs for two or five or fifteen years, trudging through dusty streets to their place in the market where they pray a passerby will buy from them despite the curse they carry on their strong shoulders. They stand in line for days in hopes that we can help, and when we turn them away they hold their heads high so their children can't see their tears.

These are the heroes.

I had to laugh . . .

This is re-blogged from Krissy's blog - I haven't met her yet but we've e-mailed.  She just got back to the ship from Duluth (Minnesota!) and what she wrote just made me laugh - it's so Africa!  Enjoy!

Let me tell you about my morning.

It started off with me hitting the snooze button one too many times, which is dangerous with roommates and the morning getting-ready dance is pretty well orchestrated so as everyone gets enough bathroom time.  

The bathroom started to flood during my shower. This is not an uncommon occurrence, as we have a vacuum system for drainage (think airplane toilets complete with the very loud suctioning noise) and during peak shower times it just can’t keep up. 

Breakfast was disappointing… though I will not ever publicly complain about the food, I do miss being able to stock my own kitchen with whatever I want and being able to eat whatever in the mornings.

I had a meeting in town at 10am with a local rather-important-person.  I had made this appointment several days ago and spent quite some time typing up a full page of topics that needed discussing during this meeting.  I also booked out my car early (we have a set number of ships vehicles that can be reserved for business or personal use) so as to make sure I got one of the Toyotas.

Let me interject my morning story by telling you a bit about the cars. We have a fleet that can be categorized into four different levels.  The old Land Rovers are many, many years old, little to no AC, they are usually the dirtiest and just feel the clunkiest, the clutch is very stiff and the engine runs very loudly glub-glub-glubing down the street.  Then we have the newer Landies which are easier to shift, the AC usually works, and they are mildly more comfortable.  Then we have the new Toyotas which were just purchased less than a year ago, they purr like a kitten when you start them up and the clutch and gear shifts are so smooth it’s almost like driving a car, and the AC always works amazingly well.  VIP – there are two really nice Toyotas reserved for VIP and manager use but they are wider than the rest of the vehicles and I’m pretty frightened of putting a big scratch down the side so try to avoid them.

Okay, so now that the car explanation is out of the way, you can probably see why I sign out Toyotas early – they are the easiest to drive and the AC works!  Well, this morning, it was not to be. I got to reception only to find out that my reserved car had been taken out of service and I got stuck with one of the oldest Landies.  Swell. (Yes, I groaned and moaned and made a face, then told myself to suck it up and move on.)

Well, such is life, so I get into my old Landie with my translator (who I don’t really need but kind of like having around. His name is Francis and he’s like my little brother, he shows me shortcuts through traffic, corrects my French mistakes, and got me out of a sticky situation with a police officer one time… so he’s a good guy to have around).  Traffic seems exceptionally bad but I think to myself every time I’m stuck it seems exceptionally bad so maybe it isn’t exceptional and I should just start calling it usual… but I digress.  Sitting in Pointe Noire traffic with no air flow and no air conditioning isn’t fun.

We made it to our destination at exactly 10am.  This would never happen in the States as back there I am always at least fifteen minutes early to any meeting. Neurotic maybe. But here, it’s okay, because I’m guaranteed to have to wait in the outer office of this person for at least twenty minutes.   Its normal here, it’s cultural, and I’m totally prepared to sit in that office for about twenty minutes before seeing the person I’ve come to see.

An hour and forty-five minutes later I am still sitting in the outer office, and I’m fuming mad.  But not mad enough to leave because I don’t want to repeat this charade the next day and this meeting is actually really important.  And not really mad enough to throw a fit, because it’s at least a hundred and ten degrees where we are sitting and I’m about to pass out.  This is when I remembered with a cynical chuckle the happy pretty how-I-love-this-life blog post yesterday and I found myself thinking about how much I dislike this place, this cultural thing that makes it okay to make someone wait on an appointment for over an hour, this heat, this lack of a proper bathroom to at least try and mop up some of the sweat pooling in various and somewhat unfortunate places… this misery I’ve willingly chosen to participate in.

The meeting went fine once we finally got in but by this time I’m absolutely starving and need a bathroom and thought I would have long since been back on the ship, so I was likely a bit less sunshine-and-roses than my usual self. I was also really really glad to have a translator with me because my French began to fail me… blame the heat, I guess.

So finally we’re done and we go climb back into the old Landie and glub-glub-glub our way to the gas station, as when the tank gets ½ full we’re required to make the stop and today I drew the short straw.  Normally I don’t mind getting gas but again with the traffic, it took about thirty minutes to go a mile and a half.

Once I got to the gas station we had to wait in line for diesel, and there was of course only one attendant, so we’re sitting in this oven of a vehicle in the blazing noonday sun in the tropics.  Once we finally get up to where we can get our diesel, I can not, for the life of me, get the gas cap off the old Landie. (Incidentally, the Toyota gas caps are very easy to remove).  Usually when this happens I bat my eyelashes at the male attendant and he comes in and saves the day and takes it off for me.  But not today. Today (of course) the attendant was a woman, who looked at it and said, “I’m not doing it, you do it!” Awesome. So after some more finagling, trying to remember what the combination is of turning, pushing in, and pressure is, I get the thing open, only to find my hands suddenly covered in diesel as the pressure is released. 

Awesome. 

We get the fuel we need and carry on, sitting in traffic once again to return to the ship, and realize there is no way we will make it back before lunch is over. 

So at this point, try to imagine with me – I’m not moving in traffic in a Landie that is at least two hundred degrees with no AC, being cursed and honked at by other drivers because (gasp!) I try to drive like a normal sane driver (I can’t even begin to talk about the insanity of driving here) an am nearly hit about four times and frustrated to tears as I creep through an intersection that could easily be assisted by something as simple as a stop sign (and subsequent enforcement of said stop sign).  I’m sitting in a pool of sweat. I’m tired,  I need a bathroom, I’m absolutely ravenous, my mascara is literally melting right off my face, and I smell like diesel fuel.  (And I’m dehydrated and feel a headache coming on – a totally rookie mistake, though, no grace for that one. I know better than to go anywhere without a water bottle…)

Are you surprised I was questioning my calling and my sanity in that moment?  I confess the words “I hate this place” actually went through my head.

But they never escaped my lips, as they aren’t true.  Reality is, this morning isn’t really out of the ordinary, and I would never dream of complaining about these things except for the irony of yesterday’s blog post, and by way of contrast, todays.  Because goodness and joy really can be found in every situation. I really am grateful I have a car to drive and don’t have to take a local taxi, no matter how hot it is it is.  (And two hundred degrees might be a minor exaggeration.)  I’m grateful we even get breakfast and lunch served to us, and my missing lunch gave me a great reason to “have” to take my translator out to lunch, which was an enjoyable experience for us both.  I’m grateful I have running water and cleaning up the flooded bathroom isn’t really that big of a deal, and my roommates are pretty much awesome and we are good about giving grace to each other in bathroom collisions and the like.

So at the end of the day I can look back, roll my eyes and chuckle, and look forward with anticipation to whatever tomorrow brings.  It’s never boring, that’s for sure.

From the mouth of Matt . . .

Matt came in to the kitchen this morning and said, "You know, Mom, it's warmer in our freezer than it is outside.  In fact, it's 50 degrees warmer in our refrigerator than it is outside!"  

And that is the bitter cold truth . . .

A Look at Community . . .

This is re-blogged from my friend Australian nurse Deb Louden's blog, "Deb's Heart in Africa".  Read down a bit to get an update on the young mother she asked us to pray for.

Working in this hospital is very different to working in a hospital at home for several different reasons. I like to stand back and watch things going on in the wards, the interactions between patients and their caregivers, patients and others caregivers and patients and fellow patients. In so many little things I see sweet community at work.

 

Unlike at home, our patients lay in their beds’ side by side, talking about things like how they found Mercy Ships, how they felt about the way they looked before they got to have surgery, how much it would have cost them if Mercy Ships hadn’t turned up, how they became sick and so on. There are always conversations going on and sometimes I ask them what they are discussing- the other day it was Primus, the local beer and one time about the Chinese eating weird things like flies.

A fair number of patients in D ward (the Maxillofacial ward that I work in) each field service stay for an extended period of time, perhaps two to three months. These patients become part of our D ward family and although the patients in the beds beside them may come and go, community is still built amongst them.

This precious boy stayed with us from Nov-Jan

Other things in the ward community which are unique are the caregivers sleeping under the bed. When you are walking between patient beds’ you have to be careful that you don’t tred on limbs sticking out from underneath. I was walking between the beds one night shift, taking a patient’s blood pressure when I heard whimpering coming from under that bed. I looked down and saw a small hand under my shoe! Whoops! I quickly lifted my foot and the whimpering stopped and the hand disappeared back under the bed. Needless to say, I was much more careful about where I was walking from then on.

 

These caregivers also make up the community in the ward, caring for others children, showing the new patients how to do things as well as looking after their own relative.

There is practically no privacy in the hospital here. All the doctors’ rounds are in the same room and sometimes when we’re discussing something no so important, if others in the room are interested, they too will come and stand in on the conversation and sometimes give their opinion or their own translation.

Recently we had three patients stay on the ward in beds next to each other for a period of about three weeks. They all had had a similar procedure and all had a similar complication and the same treatment. During the day they all chatted with each other and played games together, treating each other like brother and sister, they teased and laughed together. On rounds one morning when the woman in the centre bed was told she could be discharged, she immediately turned to the guy in the bed next to her telling him that she’d won the competition. There were smiles all around and genuine joy at seeing her discharge and then the others too, one by one were able to discharge. But I will always remember the three of them together, doing what community here does best.

I love to walk into the ward and be welcomed by huge smiles, and joy-filled greetings. It hits me in the deepest part of my heart like a burst of sunshine. We are a family, one big community. We get to care for these people in their most vulnerable moments and we love on them until the minute they walk out of our lives, not just the ward.

That is what it is like to work in D ward.

A quick update on Angelique from my plea We Need Your Help: She's progressing but very slowly. In the last few days she has lost weight and so we are battling the unknown. Her wounds are slowly healing, but  her weight is swinging up and down. Please continue to pray for her. It is lovely to see her still happy, able to get in and out of bed easily and walking the four flights of stairs up to Deck 7 every day for sunshine and fresh air. Here she is with her mother, enjoying some outside time. Thank you for praying, please don't stop yet!!!

 

An Ear-y Tale . . .

The summer of my sixteenth year, I was a wedding waitress and as a thank-you gift to the waitresses, the bride gave us pierced earrings - only I was the only waitress without pierced ears.  That was quickly remedied - after all, I had earrings and I wanted to wear them.  

Fast forward around six years.  I was now the youth pastor at Granite Falls Lutheran when I found this verse:  

"But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever."  Exodus 21:5-6 (ESV)

And I thought, "Wow, that's what I want to be - God's forever" so I added another hole to my ear as a sign of my commitment to God.

It was 1987 when I got my ear pierced again - it's only been the left one after the first time.  I was getting married to Sam and as a sign of my commitment to him, I added another hole.

Twenty-five years later I found myself explaining this all to my daughter who said, "Mom, can I get my ear double-pierced as a sign of my commitment to God?" and I said, "Of course."  And then she said, "Do you want to get yours pierced again?"  And I thought, "Yes."  Only this time, it would not be a commitment, but a reminder.

You see, just before my eighteenth birthday, I was told that I would have at most twelve years of a normal healthy life left.  But I knew even then that I served a Mighty God and His plans were not necessarily the doctor's plans.  Today Micah and I went to Claire's and got our ears pierced because, friends, I am happy to say, 

I'm (almost!) 55 and still alive!

My reminder hurts just a bit, but I am reminded - to God be the glory! 

Maybe . . .

. . . we both shouldn't work at the Y

or maybe we just shouldn't work in the same department!

When school was cancelled last night due to cold

Matt was thrilled until I reminded him he had to work at 3:30 -

in fact, 2:30-3:30 was sort of an open hour that was being covered in house

because Matt couldn't get there any sooner than 3:30 due to school

which had been cancelled.

Our boss was thrilled when I told her that Matt could possibly come in earlier

The person who was staying that extra hour was happy, too, 

because her grandpa had just died . . .

And Matt?

He's the man!  He didn't even complain when he went in to work early!