Injustice

I am overwhelmed by the injustice done to people around the world.  Videos about the thriving international sex trade, genocide by cruel dictators and armies, thousands of homeless in Haiti because of an earthquake, and orphans living naked and sleeping in their own urine all tug at my heartstrings but I shut down those feelings as quickly as possible because they are quickly followed with crushing feelings of helplessness.

I am very easily riled up these days about even the smallest of injustices directed towards someone I love. I pace around the house when my brother doesn't play a baseball game even when his stats show that he's one of the better players and an upperclassmen.  I write letters in my head to people when my sister isn't accepted to be staff for a summer worldview camp. I bristle when a friend isn't given a chance to show her skills and talents; and I am resentful when someone tells me one thing to my face and then by action shows me that I am not valued.  These are small injustices.  Most of them will not be remembered in the grand scheme of things and the ones that are remembered become lessens in perseverance.  They can't be compared to the above mentioned injustices, but I am not overpowered by them and can take action.

I went to the Good Friday service at church today.  The pastor spoke about looking at the resurrection through the cross.  Or....not stopping at the cross, but looking past it to the resurrection.  It was good, but I spent most of the time thinking about the number of injustices done to Jesus.  How did Mary and those who loved Him stand there and watch Him be abused and betrayed and condemned? If I get riled up about an unfair baseball coach, how am I not stricken with grief over the number of unfair things Christ endured before He died for me?  How did the Father watch His Son go to the cross and be separated from Him?  The wonder of the cross and what Christ and His Father endured for me has gripped me anew.  The number of terrible injustices done around the world on a moment by moment basis cannot be compared to the injustice that Christ faced in living a sinless life and being torn from His Father's presence and enduring an incredibly painful death on my behalf.

My response is to respond with adoration and gratitude and to remember Psalm 9:1: "I will praise you O Lord, with all my heart.  I will tell of your wonders.  I will be glad and rejoice in you, O Most High." That I can do.  I also pray that God will use me to lessen worldwide injustice.

Flashbacks

Update:  I did get accepted to the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Program.  Now the reality of how much it costs has set in and I'm considering asking if they'll let me defer enrollment for a year.  Oh dear....I just can't make up my mind.

I've been informed by those of my classmates who are more anxious than I am that I can call MUSC on Monday to find out if I've been accepted to the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Program.  I'd rather not call.  I'm having flashbacks from the last time I was waiting to hear from them if I had been accepted or not.  In case you weren't around in the spring of 2008, I wasn't accepted, I was wait-listed.  The same week I got the wait-list letter I was accepted to the University of Miami and only given a week to decide. 

I remember the misery of trying to figure out what to do and feeling like Miami was the automatic option.  I immediately had a sinking feeling like I was making a huge mistake in going to Miami.  Turns out everyone else felt the same way and I decided to turn down Miami and just wait to hear from MUSC.

The next few months were agonizingly long and I annoyed the CON with my frequent emails questioning them on whether or not they thought they'd have a spot for me.  The last week of May they called me to offer me a spot.  I'm pretty sure the offer was not based so much on my qualifications as it was out of a desire to stop hearing from me.

So, two years and a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing later, I'm waiting to hear from them again.  In the middle of the program, I told myself I wasn't going to MUSC again and that getting a graduate degree wasn't worth the heartache or hard work.  Yet, I applied to the PNP program and am hoping to get in and start in August.

If I don't get in, I'm going to assume the Lord has a reason for it and not go knocking down doors and persuading people to change their minds.

Why do I keep getting myself into these situations?

(I forgot to mention that I wasn't accepted to the Honors College at College of Charleston and went and persuaded them to change their minds as well....what a crazy foolish thing to do. I regretted that decision halfway through Western Civ....apparently, I'm a slow learner)

Michael and Amanda O'Neal

Our Neighbors in Uganda

Michael and Amanda have been in Masindi for just over a month. We had the chance to meet them while we were there last week and are excited to get to live and work with them. Michael is PMI's project manager and they will stay in Masindi through the completion of the new hospital. Amanda is working on her master's in counseling from Liberty University and is also a pilates instructor, so she will be a wonderful friend and resource for us. 

Pictures from Africa!

Here are a few pictures of our patients last week

  (courtesy of Amber Henderson, Michael Overcash, and Josh Drake's excellent photography):

a real live hippo...as seen from our Nile River cruise on Saturday:

the whole team (+translators, drivers, and clinic coordinators):

...and here are a few more gory medical pictures. 

I've made them small on purpose so that 

people who don't want to see them don't have to.

Click if you want to see them bigger:

"Welcome Home"

I look forward to traveling back to the US and going through Immigrations and Customs and hearing the words "welcome home."  Even though I was only gone for 10 days, it's so exciting to hear those words said.  I love traveling and living in other cultures, but the United States is my home and I'm grateful for it.

So, we made it back safely!  It was a wonderful trip and now begins the processing, debriefing, and preparation for the next phase.  Mandie will go to Orlando, FL on Sunday to attend PIONEERS' Candidate Orientation Program. Hopefully, we'll receive approval from the Area Leader over Uganda to pursue this new adventure.  From there we'll begin raising support.  We're confident the Lord is leading us both to do this, but finding investors requires more humility, perseverance, and trust than either of us currently have.  We are looking forward to how the Lord will work in the next couple of months as we step outside our comfort zones!

I will begin nannying on Monday for three teachers with three infants between the ages of six months and eleven months.  I'll be living in Charleston with Mandie's family till the end of the school year.  I'm so thankful for my second family and their willingness to open their home!  Much of the time that I'm there, Mandie will be continuing her travels (Orlando, FL and Brazil). 

Thanks for your prayers and loving support! We'll keep you updated as we figure out things.  Having seen the medical need in Uganda, we can't wait to go back and start serving.  Our time there this last week was fruitful for the kinds of things we need to be prepared to do and to see.  We've started making a list of the books and equipment that we'll need to function there.  We didn't have any time to figure out where we'll live or what kind of things are available, but I'm sure that will come as we email back and forth with Michael and Amanda.  Our housing decision is dependent on the Bishop of the local Anglican Diocese.  From what we understand, he controls the housing situation and will probably just tell us where to live.  Worst case scenario, we'll live at the Masindi Hotel for a couple weeks while he decides where we should live and while renovations are being done to make it livable (eg. running piping into the house so that we don't have to go in search of water every day).

Hopefully we'll have a few pictures posted soon!

Mandie's Birthday and Murchison Falls!

I (Rachel) “accidently” let it slip that it was Mandie’s birthday today….she wasn’t happy with me. She was lavished with unwanted attention and got to spend her 24th birthday on the Nile River. We spent two long hours in the car up to Murchison Falls swatting at Tsetse flies (which are very resilient) and sweating with the heat. It was worth it to see the Nile River pounding through a narrow 20 foot wide canyon. The amount of energy coming through was unbelievable. We walked around the top of the falls and enjoyed the spray misting up from the pounding water. The hotel had once again packed us a marvelous lunch and we ate in a little thatched open hut with the sound of the water behind us. From there we spent another hour or so in the car going down to a lower point in the river where we took a 2-hour boat cruise up to the bottom of the Falls. I was so tired that after only a few minutes of being on the boat, I crawled under one of the benches and fell asleep for about an hour. It was a beautiful day on the river and we saw hippos, crocodiles, water buffalo, elephants, warthogs, cranes, baboons and a plethora of birds. We traveled up to the bottom of the Falls and took a team picture on a rock. From there, it was only about an hour downriver back to where we had started.
Mandie now:
I’m 24! I rather knew that with Heather and Rachel on this trip it was not likely that I could escape birthday attention. They set me up for an impromptu counseling session with our team psychologist, Rachel Darrow, over breakfast and she reminded me that birthdays are a time to let other people celebrate the fact that I was born. I liked that definition and actually enjoyed the several times that Son initiated a round of “Happy Birthday” or the many team members who reminded me it was my birthday throughout the day. It really was a perfect birthday: slept in a bit, had a delicious breakfast, a fun bus ride to Murchison Falls (with lots of baboons along the road!), the breathtaking Falls and Nile River, good conversation on the 3.5 hour boat ride, a long and crazy drive back (with 2 hours of group singing from our rather extroverted bus group – Richard, Amy, Erin, Derek, Ansley, Roxanna, Christian, Brian, Rachel, myself, and our poor driver, Steven), an amazing dinner of shish-kabobs, and cake to go along with the “life story” sharing at the end of the evening. Son (for the team) bought me a beautiful handmade Ugandan bead necklace and a paper bead coin purse at Merchison Falls and presented them to be at dinner, in his sweet humble way, “on behalf of the team”. Then the Masindi Hotel staff gave me another beautiful necklace and trinket box.
The day was a perfect end to our time in Uganda. It was sweet to spend time with the amazing people on this team. After a whole week of being thrown together (and working well together) at busy clinics, we were able to sit with each other and have more conversations, enjoy the relaxing boat ride, and SLEEP!!
Tomorrow we head back to Kampala to catch our flight to Ethiopia, then Italy, then DC, then Charleston. Pictures will be posted as soon as we’re back!

Love to all!

March 11

DIRTY has been the theme of the week. We have been working for the last two days in a huge one room church with a bright red dirt floor. As if walking in red dust all day is not enough, we ride for an hour and a half one way in a non air conditioned van on a dirt road with the windows down. Most of us could pass for Latinos and in a few days would blend right in with our dear African patients and translators. Speaking of patients and translators, Rachel got to do her first pelvic exam today and I got to pull a molar. I spent the day in triage and found several enlarged spleens, interesting neuro cases (Dad and Dr. Ken would have been proud!), and mostly just enjoying hearing all the CRAZY stories people told to try and convince me they had malaria.  Rachel got to be with the doctors and PA’s all day and so learned some good diagnostic techniques and got to teach the PA students how to draw up and give an IM injection. Speaking of IM injections, I got to give two on Tuesday night. They were, unfortunately, on Rachel, but being the baby nurse that I am, I was excited anyways. She had a pretty bad migraine and the only thing that it seemed was going to work were two IM phenergan shots and I happily obliged. She woke up migraine free and was fortunately able to come to clinic (Rachel here: though 50 mg of phenergan and two ibuprofen pm and two regular ibuprofen may have been overkill...it was hard to keep my eyes open that day.)

(Rachel here) Back to today. We saw just over 200 patients and had to turn away at least that many. Since we were there for the second day in a row, word had spread that we were coming back and so the line stretched around the corner. We saw lots of coughs, heartburn and high blood pressure, but the day also included several children with seizures, a boy who had a broken arm with a piece of bone sticking out near his elbow (it had been broken for over a year) and a girl with a six inch infected abscess on her head that was eating away at her scalp. Not only is basic health care lacking, but education on how to care for wounds is as well. So many of the problems we saw today were due to a lack of hygiene. Patient after patient came through with bug bites that they had scratched and that had become infected with staph because they do not wash themselves or clean open sores. It was a particularly hot day and the flies swarmed on any open wound they found. Most of the time spent with patients was spent educating them on diet, hygiene and the cause of their discomfort or illness.

Tomorrow is the last day of clinic. It has flown by and although we had hoped to post something every night, by the end of each day we have been exhausted (not to mention that I kept Mandie up till almost two am the night I had a migraine. She was very kind and made a great nurse…I’m pretty sure I was not a great patient…though I did give her the opportunity to give not one, but two shots since the first one didn’t work). Anyway, my hope is that we will both be able to be with the doctors and physician assistants doing diagnosing and prescribing. It’s great practice for what we will do when we live here. I’m hoping to be able to pull a tooth and any wound care or exciting diagnostics will be exciting. On Saturday we will have a day off and relax and see the Nile River! We were hoping to spend some time with Michael and Amanda, the couple overseeing the building project. They won’t be there, unfortunately, but it will be good to spend time with the team, without the chaos of clinic. On Sunday morning we will start the journey home!