One night

I wrote this last night after this experience and just thought I would share it with you guys:

Rode my motorcycle up to the overlook point tonight right as the darkness was about to overtake the light. As soon as I arrived, the first thing I noticed was the peachy orange color, the only color still left in the sky that hadn’t been overtaken by the darkness of the night. I stood in awe of the beauty and magnificence of it all. The sky reflected the sun that had said goodnight over the horizon more than 20 minutes before. As I looked out over the jungle and the ocean, it was almost as if the ocean and the sky ran together because they were so dark. However, the light was not giving up so easily and there were streamers of orange and peach woven in and out of the clouds. They stayed this way for a while before giving way to the darkness of night. The ocean looked so calm that I almost couldn’t tell where the ocean stopped and the sky began. As I began to listen instead of just stare in awe, I heard the sound of the waves way down below crashing into the shore. They were faint, off in the distance, and it took effort to hear the beautiful music they were making. I never would have thought that you could hear the waves from that high up the mountain, but it was almost like they were echoing the sound of the ocean and nothing, not even the jungle was going to get in the way of it’s singing unto the Lord. Their echoing was so distinct that it was almost as if I was standing on the beach at night, staring at the darkness listening to the tranquil sound as the waves naturally crested and broke onto the sandy shore. As I took my focus off the waves, I heard the sound of the jungle insects, singing their night song in such harmony. I knew night was here by the symphony that was being played out by the insects, but the sky said otherwise. As I stood there in awe staring into the darkness, listening to the music that creation was playing for the Lord, I began to hear more sounds off in the distance of the monkeys. I heard the very distant sound of the monkeys adding to the music creation was making for the Lord. They were adding their own special effects to the sounds creation was already busy making. “Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them.” Psalms 69:34 Thank you Lord for letting me hear the praises that your creation sings to you.

Mom's visit

Mom had a wonderful visit here at the hosptial. I took her on the motorcycle, up to the water tower, to the beach searching for sand dollars and star fish, showed her around the hospital, took her into balfate, went to a restaurant on the beach out in Rio Esteban. We were able to paint my room, which I have been wanting to do since I arrived...it was an aweful dirty cobalt blue color. We had a wonderful mother/daughter time. I was very glad that she got to see where I am and meet just about all of the full time missionaries that are here that I am working along side.

Mom got to see one of the miracles that sometimes I write about on my blogs...and see that the sign in front of the hosptial...Dios obra aqui (God works here) is true and that he does truely bless us here. There was a baby that came in one night when I was called in about 7 or 8pm. It was the daughter of one of the employees here that is about 3 months old. She had been having some constipation and so they took her to a midwife out in the community which is what most of the people here do. (The midwives here are clueless and sometime perform witchcraft, and most of them are completely uneducated.) She went and bought mineral oil for the baby at the local pulperia, heated it up, added salt and poured it down the baby's throat. The oil was way too hot and scalded the babies mouth and esophagus. After a couple of hours because the burn was so bad, the airway started to swell and the baby started having trouble breathing...that is when she arrived at the hospital. After arriving, we decided there was not much we could do for her since her airway was closing and didn't have needed equipment to deal with the situation, they gave her a steroid injection, and sent the family to the city. After a little over an hour car ride, they arrived at the public hospital (sidenote: they will not even take patients if they don't look sick...there have been so many patients just turned away at the door). After I got back home, mom and I prayed...prayed for the missionaries who were taking this family to the city, prayed for the family and for this tiny baby. The Lord heard our prayers that night! The baby was sent home the next day and is now doing fine...praise the Lord!

As mom's time was wrapping up here, we started to hear about a strike on Spirit Airlines (her airline) and kept attentive to it. We found out on Monday after checking Spirit Airlines website that mom's flight had been cancelled for wednesday and her money refunded. As we were looking for tickets and finding they were about double what she had paid round trip to come, we contacted a friend who appeared on skype. He used to work for Delta and let us buy a buddy pass. Mom was able to get on the first flight on wednesday as planned. She also was able to leave at noon instead of 1am, had a direct flight and was placed in first class...we are guessing because of his seniority...and she only had to pay $30 more for this ticket than she was refunded. What a huge blessing that was...and what a huge blessing it was to have mom visit! :)

Pizza making

Since I have been here I have really enjoyed making pizza. I learned how to make the dough a couple of months ago and it has been one of my favorite meals since. It's quick, easy and I always have leftovers! Sometimes I bring some to the girls in the lab and they just love it. Today I went to Lucinda to teach Veronica how to make pizza since her children absolutely love it! She was so surprised at how easy it was. We made two pizzas and this was the one she made all by herself. She is now hoping her husband will build her an oven. (They build them here out of clay.)

I also finished teaching the 10 Commandment to my sunday school class today. There is a song here that one of the doctors teaches to the kids in the schools and we sang it in front of the church this morning. It was so cute, I wish I had a video of it!

Catch up

So, I have been back in Honduras now for about a month since my first visa trip back to the states. I had a wonderful time with family and friends at weddings and new baby outings. It was a very enjoyable time and I am very thankful to all of you I was able to visit with. Thank you for the encouragement and the prayers.

On Mother's Day, we had a wonderful celebration at church with a the baptism of a new believer. Jorge who became came to know the Lord about a month and a half before that was baptized right after the service out at the Rio Estaban river. Many have seen his life change since he came to know the Lord. Please pray that he would grow in wisdom and knowledge of the Lord day after day.

There were 4 birthday celebrations with lab employees and their children in this month in a span of about two weeks. I was able to go and visit both of their families and celebrate with them. This is Veronica's family and this is the first family photo they have ever had taken (I did take one for her without me in it).

Things in the lab have been crazy as usual, but good. Right after getting back from the states, Irina left for her vacation. Their vacation here is a lot different than in the states. They take their vacation all at one time around the month they were hired. It leaves huge voids when people go on vacation here for a month at a time. It is very difficult to cover areas when everyone is already busy…somehow it seems to work though. So, for the last month since I have been back, Irina has been on vacation. It has given me a great opportunity to get to know the other girls in the lab, Ruth and Veronica.

I have seen the provision of the Lord just in small things. Some of you may know that almost every piece of equipment in the lab has broken in the last four months since I have arrived. It was very discouraging at first and was difficult to handle, but now I know what to do and when things break, it is not such a big deal. Just in the last several weeks I have had three centrifuges break out of the five that we have. One type, we just recieved several on the container from the states right before two broke. Another centrifuge broke that we bought about 3 years ago and one of the girls who was on her visa trip was able to get the part from the man who goes to her church that owns the company we bought the equipment from. She brought the part down and the centrifuge is working great. Another centrifuge broke that we use everyday to spin specimens down and a man was here from the states that comes a couple of times a year with his wife and was able to fix that centrifuge in the time he was here. Some of you who are not lab people will have no idea what I am talking about, but hopefully through all the lab talk, you can see how the Lord just provided and knew ahead of time what was needed.

My mom is coming this coming this Friday, June 4th to visit for the first time. Please pray for safe travels for her. Hopefully will get a chance that week to post about some of our adventures.

Can't believe I have been here for 2 months already

Hey everyone...sorry I haven't posted in a while. I am staying pretty busy here at the hosptial. I have been busy working some weekends as well as having spanish and other studies at night. So...where do I begin. First I will tell you that I have started discipling a young 11 year old girl from the children's center who accepted the Lord about a month ago...very exciting. We do a study together once a week. I would ask you guys to pray for her, her name is Andrea. Please pray that I would be able to lead her and that she would grow in her walk with the Lord.

We have had several sick children at the hospital lately, two of which are from the children's center. A little 7 year old boy named Luis who came straight to the children's center from a hospital in La Ceiba. He had just had surgery to remove a ball of worms from his intestines and last week had surgery here again. He has been through a lot in the last several months with the loss of his parents, two surgeries and moving to a new place. Please keep him in your prayers as he is very fragile right now.

I also ask that you pray for a little boy named Orlin who is 8 months old. He has been here in the hospital now for about 3 weeks and maybe even a month now. He is a little boy who has so many health problems I don't even know them all. One of the problems he has been having is aspirating his formula which was causing Pneumonia and very fluid filled lungs. He now has a feeding tube that goes directly into his stomach where he is getting food and all of his medications. What a blessing to have our surgery team here last week to help with him and Luis.

I want to tell you a little about the children's center that is associated with the hospital. It is run by Ian and Liz Mckenzie from Scotland whose vision was to build an orphanage where there wasn't one out here in the middle of the jungle. They opened their doors about a year and a half ago and have had many children come and go, and right now they have about 16-18 children. Because they are associated with a very well equiped hospital, they have become known as the orphange for very sick and disabled children. It is such a joy to spend time with the kids and just see them playing and having a good time. Most of the children that are here, are here to stay and will not ever go back with thier families. We will get to watch them grow and change and hopefully come to know the Lord.

Hopefully will get to see most of you when I come home in a few weeks for my visa trip. :)

Have a blessed Easter weekend! Praise the Lord! Christ is Risen!

Giving

I have been very encouraged this week by a young lady here at the hospital. Her faith has challenged mine. I have known her now for about 3 weeks and she has been very slow to open up. She is a very timid young lady who I desire to see blossom. I was talking to her a few weeks ago and found out some days she wasn’t eating breakfast or lunch because they didn’t have any food, so I bought her some food. The basic staples here are very simple: rice, beans and manteca. She was very excited to have the food, but especially the manteca as she said they had run out and she didn’t have any money to buy more. They use manteca here for everything because it’s cheap. It also is one of the main reasons for high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes (or at least that’s my theory).
I was talking with this same young lady yesterday as we had some one on one time cleaning urine cups of all things. I asked her when she became a believer and was baptized which I found out was about 3 years ago. As we continued talking, she told me that she felt like God wanted her to give her entire first paycheck to Him. That is such a huge sacrifice for someone here who makes as little as they do. Just to give you a little background of about how much they make in a month…the average salary for someone out here in the campo (the name of where we are, where the majority of people are poor and uneducated). Minimum wage here is just over $200/month which means they make about $50/week or $10/day. Could you imagine working for around $1.25 an hour? And this is considered good pay out here in the campo. So, she is saying yes Lord, I will give you the only $100 that I have and trust you to provide. She needs closed toed shoes for work as she only has sandals right now which are not good for the mile and a half walk she has to and from work everyday or for the work that she has. Her two children have needs as I know she has not had money to buy them clothes or shoes in a very long time. Her husband works some milking cows and gets paid around $50 when he has work, but that work is few and far between. Her family has great needs, but she knows that the Lord knows her needs.
Proverbs 3:5-10 “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.”
This truly is a picture of someone giving the first fruits of their labor and giving out of her poverty. She is giving all that she has to the Lord and trusting Him to provide for her and her family. She reminds me of the shortly mentioned story Jesus tells in Luke 21:1-4 about the poor widow giving more than the rich man. If you don’t know this story, I would encourage you to read it.

Resting today

Today I am taking the day off and resting. Thankful for the day off to rest...the Lord knew I needed it. I am on oral antibiotics and just had an IM injection of antibiotics as well for a cellulitis that came to appear yesterday. Praying this would be a day of rest as I spend most of the day on the couch with my leg propped up. Probably the price I pay for going to the waterfall last Saturday.





We have a new staff member in the lab who has started training named Veronica. Please pray for wisdom as Irina and myself try to train her from no previous knowledge of lab stuff. It is more difficult for me to explain stuff in Spanish with my limited language. I am going to try to get something together for her with pictures today on my day off to help her learn the different areas of the lab.





Last week was a very busy week at the hospital as we had one critical patient that had never really recovered from his surgery the week before. We also had a little 8 year old boy come into the emergency room who had been bitten by a Barba Amarilla, a very poisonous and deadly snake down here. He had been bitten 4 days prior to coming to the hospital and was close to dead upon arrival. For those of you lab people, his hematocrit was a 10 and his blood would not clot at all. He was completely anticoagulated from the venom. He had a bite on one finger and on one of his legs. He immediately recieved the antivenom, and then a blood tranfusion. I had already tested the donor's blood the day before, so I just had to crossmatch her and draw the unit. What a blessing that I had done all the work the day before for our other critical patient who had not needed it. The Lord provided all in his timing. Within about 2 hours of coming to the emergency room, he had recieved the antivenom and was recieving his blood transfusion from one of our missionaries here. It is truely a miracle that he is still alive and is doing well. Two days after coming to the hospital for treatment, he also accepted Christ as his savior. I know that God has a purpose and a plan for this little 8 year old boy, just as He does for each and everyone of His children.

Blessings until next time!