Blood Transfusions

Blood transfusions are not a very common thing at Hospital Loma de Luz, but do happen sometimes with critical and unstable patients. Got called into the hospital last night about 8:30 by the on call doc to do some labs on a fairly critical patient. The patient was a 16 year old, 6 days postpartum and weak, pale, high fever, chills with high heart rate and trouble breathing. She had delivered at home with a midwife (usually untrained old ladies, sometimes witch doctors) and the midwife just said she was weak and needed to rest, not saying anything about the fact that she had lost an unreasonable amount of blood during and after delivery.
As soon as I drew her blood, I knew it would be a late night. Her hematocrit was 10%, which is about 1/4 of what her blood volume should be and would need blood as quickly as possible. Her blood type is A negative, not a very common type in the states, but here, very rare. None of our missionaries or Honduran staff are this type.
Since our blood bank is the living, walking, breathing people we are around every day, I didn't have much hope to find blood for her. Luckily she had her sister with her who is the same type. I eventually found a brother and uncle to donate for a total of 3 units. I had to type about 30 people to find the 3 that were the same type as our patient. It was a very long night and very long day today trying to type everyone we could find, hoping they would be able to donate.

Drawing a unit from one of our missionaries...this was one done in the middle of the night.

Luckily she is stable and doing well and now she says ready to go home because she wants to be with her newborn son.

The joy of Baptism

Bessy

Today I was privileged to attend a double baptism of two youth from the church. Their names are Edwin (12) and Bessy(14)  and are brother and sister. Two of their brothers were baptized about 8 months ago. Their parents are the most recent of their family to come to faith in Jesus Christ. What a joy to have 2 new young members who have chosen to be obedient to our Lord and be baptized. It was a beautiful day and we had a beautiful outdoor service on the bank of the river before the baptisms.

Edwin

Please pray for a young mom named Arecely who is mourning the loss of her almost 2 year old daughter tonight. She had what we think was a seizure that caused her to go into respiratory arrest and then into cardiac arrest. She was the youngest of her 3 children.

Hospitality

Hospitality is not one of my spiritual gifts, but is a way to show the love of Christ to those around us. I am not good at inviting people to come for dinner or inviting people to stay in the house. God is slowly growing me in this area. This past week, I had the privilege to host a wonderful, godly woman named Laura. She is Costa Rican but lives in Mexico working with Fronteras (Fronteirs) missions. They work at sending Latin Americans to the 1040 window and spreading the gospel to Muslims who have never heard of Christ. I also had the privilege to host 3 other girls Thursday night as well who were here to learn more about Fronteras.

Laura and I right before she left

On Wednesday as I arrived at the hospital, I was notified that a friend, Lauren, had given birth in the night. I spent as much time with her and the baby that day as possible until she was able to go home. She is part of the family I used to live with, so being with her is like being with family. It was such a joy to be a part of. She is the one who lost a 2 day old baby a year and a half ago to what we can tell was just SIDS. I know she is very nervous with this new baby.

Mom (Lauren) and big sister (Melissa) and new baby (Natalia Rebecca)

Prayer needed

Please pray for a friend of mine named Veronica and her two young children (5 and 6). She worked in the lab with me for 2 1/2 years and is a good friend. Her husband was murdered Friday night by machete in San Pedro Sula. No one knows any details...looks like he was alone. It was a big deal to get him from the morgue and they didn't arrive until 8:30pm last night. She wanted me to be there by her side when he arrived. I stayed until around 10pm with her at the vigil.

Veronica and her two children

Funerals here are very different. When someone dies, they have a vigil in the house and are there all night long. They bury the dead very fast usually within 24 hours since there is no way to preserve the body. He will be buried today around noon. There is lots of wailing and fainting which is hard for me to deal with since it is not customary in the states. Please pray for strength for me today and for Veronica and her children.

Update from previous post: Karla has made it to Mauritania. She arrived on the 19th in the early morning. Please continue to pray for her as she is miles from home and already misses her family.

Friendly visit

Had a super busy week with my friend Deyni staying with me. She is in medical school in Tegucigalpa (the capital) and wanted to see lab and some other areas of the hospital as much as she could during her break. She stayed with me at the house where I am house sitting. She got to see how busy my life really is. We didn't have a free night Monday - Friday and we had a busy Saturday too.

Deyni and I at a friend's house Tuesday night for dinner.

Irina's baby shower

Today we went to throw a small surprise baby shower for Irina...one of my lab employees. She was overjoyed to see all of us and put us to work reorganizing her house too in preparation for baby in a couple of weeks. 

Commissioning service

Last night I was privileged enough to be able to attend a commissioning service for a Honduran woman named Karla who leaves for Mauritania January 16th. It was such a blessing to see her church send her out in a culture that doesn't see missions as important. Many churches here are not very supportive of missions however when asking the people in the church, many have been directly affected by missionaries.

Karla has a 6 year old daughter from a relationship before she became a Christian and she will leave her here with her mother and sisters to watch for the 3 months she is gone. She was the first in her family to accept Christ 4-5 years ago. Now her entire family follows Christ. About 2 years ago, one of our missionaries arrived at her church and said who wants to go...who wants to go to the ends of the earth to share the love of Christ. She said "I will". She is a blessing in her Garifuna (African sub-culture of Honduras) community as a teacher and leader in her church. She will be in Mauritania for 3 months working mostly with Muslims. Less than 1% of the nation of more than 3 million are Christians. Wow, that's astounding.

Last night was a very emotional night for Karla and her family. Many of you who saw me or other missionaries sent out know the bittersweetness of the mission calling. It is very exciting to go knowing that it where God is calling you. It is also very sad leaving behind your family, friends, church, coworkers, and everything you know. But Karla has said " Yes". Please pray for her these last few days as she prepares for her 2 day journey to Mauritania on the Northwest corner of Africa.

These will be hard days for her as she makes her last preparations, as she talks to her family for the last time for three months. They will only be communicating through email over the next 3 months.

Taking the nations for Christ

This is so exciting for us to see as missionaries. Missionaries being sent out from where we are serving. God has really been opening my eyes to see how big His calling is. In the last 3 years, I have met missionaries from Guatemala, Mexico, Germany, Norway, Scotland, and Italy. Some have come here to the hospital for some time and some are full time missionaries in other countries. How exciting that God's calling people from all over the world to GO...and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Please pray for Karla. She gave me her email, so if I get any updates from her while she is there, I will pass them on.

Month's worth of update

church picnic

About a month ago, we had a church picnic. Everyone helped cook the beef and chicken for the barbarq. The kids played several games of futbol, tag and frisbee waiting on the food to be done. It was an enjoyable time getting to know people better. We always find when we do stuff together like that, the members of the church work together so well and grow closer as a body.

Game to win a Bible, took about 15 mins
 to put together a 25 piece kids puzzle

We went up the mountain about two weeks ago to a village called Las Balles. There is no established evangelical church there and the youth group from our church have gone up a couple of times to evangelize. I went up one day with the youth group to do a service in the school. We went up by car because walking is about 3-4 hours. Anael, a young man in the church, has gotten 80 Proclaimers donated from the Bible Society in La Ceiba. This was our first time taking the Proclaimers up to the mountains. The mountain people are very uneducated and many cannot read. Proclaimers is the recorded Word of God that they can listen to. They were super excited about it.

Anael sharing about the Proclaimers

I just got back on Monday night from a Christians in Action Conference in San Salvador, El Salvador. Christians in Action International has a conference once a year for Latin American church leaders. I went with two other leaders from the church, Anael and Jose. It was about a 15 hour journey on the bus. I had a few problems getting into El Salvador because of arriving by plane and leaving the country by bus. God is sovereign and He gave me grace with immigration and I was able to attend the conference.

Us with leaders of the conference

We had 2 days of lectures and then church on Sunday. Sunday afternoon we went to the mountains with a small group from San Salvador that has a ministry about and hour and a half from the city. They go up once a week to share Jesus with a small community. It was a blessing to see their ministry. It was a blessing to get to know some of our brothers and sisters in Christ that are serving in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Ministry in the mountains