week 1

Week one of construction is done on the nurses station addition. It is looking great and going up so fast...just a few more lines to go and we will have all the walls.

Day 5 of construction

We had the privilege of welcoming twins into the world on Monday. The twins were born by C-section at about 35 weeks because they didn't want the mom going into labor on her own. They have known for a while that these twins might be a problem because one was twice the size of the other...what I am told they call disproportionate twins. One weighed in at 2.5lbs and the other close to 5lbs. This is only the second case I have seen like that here after another case back in October where all 3 almost died. Because of their situation, right after birth, the pediatrician ordered blood work to see where they were at. It's not easy getting blood on a 2lb baby. Thankfully they were doing better than she thought.

Left-5lb, Right 2.5lb
Cute little fleeces someone donated are helping them maintain body temp.

Got to go to a birthday party yesterday at lunchtime. My Honduran family had invited me to a special lunch for a little girl who was turning 3. They would be doing the pinata later in the day, and I wouldn't be able to go, so we just took pictures with it. Melissa was so in love with her pinata of Minnie Mouse. She was too cute giving her big hugs.

Melissa and her pinata

Nurses station addition

Over the next month, I will do several updates on the nurses station addition to Hospital Loma de Luz. I have a team coming down on April 6th from Word of God Lutheran Church in Peachtree city, Ga. They have generously provided the hospital with the finances in order to make this building project a reality.

Our current nurses station

As you can see our current nurses station is small, but adequate. The addition being built on right through those windows will provide a break room for our nurses. Right now, the nurses have to go about halfway across the hospital to eat lunches, heat up meals for patients, heat up bottles for babies, etc. Having this break room built on, will give them much closer access to their patients when there are critical patients on the floor. They will not have to leave them to go use the microwave and can be close at hand. It is a huge blessing to our nurses and to our patients that this vision is finally coming to fruition. 

Day 2 of construction

Construction was started yesterday, March 4th, with one month of building before the team arrives.

english class

Delmy (left) and Lindy (right)

I enjoy English class twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays since there is no clinic) with 2 wonderful Christian ladies. They are so much fun. We have class at the Honduran house I used to live at. It gives me a good excuse to go and visit with them as well.

Please pray for Karla, the missionary from Honduras that is in Mauritania. Her sister passed away this week from cancer. Since she is out of the country, she is not able to be with her family or daughter during this time of grief. She seems to be doing well, but please keep her in your prayers.
This is one of the hardest things for me being away from family and friends...you can't be there for everything that happens with family and close friends. Life goes on without you there. God is in control and is always good even though sometimes we may not understand His ways.
So, please pray for Karla during this difficult time away from her family.

new home

me in front of my house

Kitchen

Well, tried to post this blog earlier in the week and on the last picture upload, it deleted everything...so here goes again.
So here are a few pictures of my new house. I am so excited to finally have a place to call mine for a time and to have a place to invite people to.

living room

one of the bedrooms

Fiesta

We use any excuse to party here in Honduras and it always involves food. I think we get that from the Honduran culture we live in. We as missionaries, don't dress up very much, so any occasion to do so is something very special. Saturday night, we had a fun fiesta (party) night to celebrate one of the missionary kid's Sweet 16. They rented out the restaurant of a hotel on the way into La Ceiba for the party. It was a blast with dancing, food, and great fellowship.

Me and Mariah...the birthday girl

New lab baby!!!

One of my employees, Irina, had her second child on Tuesday, a beautiful, healthy baby girl. I was very overjoyed to hear that the two nurses staying with me were able to help deliver her. So, the newest lab baby was born at 2:05am weighing 7lbs. I was able to go see her first thing Tuesday to visit and bring her the baby blanket I had made her. 

me and baby

This baby girl is like many here that are born as recien nacido (newborn) and don't have a name yet. She hopefully will have a name by her 8 day check-up.

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.