Prayer by Names

Lately I have been thinking a lot about prayer and how important it is to everything we do. I have been convicted that I need to spend more time in prayer, I want my first instinct when something comes up to be to pray about it to take it and lay it at Jesus's feet no matter how big or small.

If you have read my blogs from last outreach or spoken with my while I was back in the US, you have heard about my passion for the VVF women. The women who are affected by a childbirth injury that causes them to constantly leak urine, resulting in them being outcast from society. Leaving these women destined to live a life on the outskirts, many of them basically waiting for death. Lord willing we will be doing surgery on 68 of these women coming up in about 6 weeks starting the end of May and running until the beginning of July. This last month and in the month ahead we are getting together names of potential patients and then will be screening them when our surgeon arrives in late May.

As the list of potential patients is growing, it has been on my heart that we need to begin praying for them by name. The referrals we have recieved so far is nearing 200 and as I said we will be doing around 68 surgeries. God has a plan for everyone of these names. Some of them we will be able to help and some we wont but either way I am praying God uses this experience to show them hope and to show them His love. If you feel led to join me in specific prayer for individual women please email me (inthedustonmyfeet@gmail.com) or comment with an email address and I will get you a list of a few first names you can start praying for. I trust that God has already started the work, but join me in praying that each women's mind, body, and spirit is prepared for the journey ahead of her over the next few months.

Kpalame

So, it was about time for adventure and Saturday was the day. I headed with 6 other girls from the ship out for a day trip to hike in a place about 3 hours north called Kpalame. We headed out early found the local "bus stop" and headed north.

We wanted to hike up a mountain here. Now when you tell African's you are going to go hiking you get a strange reaction, they just can't understand why in the world you would want to go hiking in this heat. So after our 2 hour bus ride, we then got a taxi and a "guide" to take us to the mountain. Now there was a little miscommunication between the taxi driver and us and he ended up driving us all the way up the mountain. So instead of hiking up..... we walked down. The thing about a day like this is you just have to be prepared to take the twists and turns of the day as they come. 

It was so nice to get out and get into the green. I find I miss the green when I live in the city or live on this ship. Every now and then I just need some fresh air and some green surroundings. It was Easter weekend and it was just good to have some time to talk to God and be away, even if just for a day.                                                                                      

As we walked down through some of the villages and met some of the local people on the roadside. I was struck again by how vastly different growing up here is compared to how and where I grew up, but yet the God I serve is here on a mountain side in central Togo, just as much as he is in the plains of central Illinois. What a great God we serve!

For more pictures from the weekend you can check out my facebook album

So Far Away

Today.... Africa feels like worlds away.... the ocean feels so much bigger than it did yesterday.... and to be honest I am mad at it. I am mad that the ocean is so big. I am mad that I spent the whole day feeling helpless. Nurses don't like to feel helpless, we are fixers and today nothing was to be fixed, at least by my hands.

The morning started with tragedy... a call for the emergency teams to A ward it was only a few minutes before we heard the news and it took my breath away. In moments like this time stills for just a moment. The call was for Anicette and she was gone. This ship has a long history with Ani, she came to us last year a malnourished tiny little thing with a cleft lip and palate. She went to and fro from the hospitality center to the hospital and back again as we fought the uphill battle for her to gain enough weight for surgery. It only took one look at Ani and she had you hooked. She was famous on the wards in no time and everyone knew her by name. She had her surgery and went home a healthy looking happy little baby girl. She returned this year severely malnourished again, what had happened to our dear little Anicette and could we get her to gain the weight back. At 14 months old she weighed just over 8lbs. We admitted her again and began the fight again. Then this morning without warning she was gone. I know this happens, in fact one child every 5 seconds dies from hunger related causes. But its not supposed to happen in here not when we are fighting so hard. When you know the face and the name and you have held her in your arms.....it is not supposed to happen then. By midday you could feel a weight on the whole ship, here when something happens in the hospital the whole ship mourns and today we are sad.

I felt like I didn't have the time to process it. I was trying to figure out some logistics for my VVF women and making sense of things with your African contacts is like a big maze of confusion. Who am I meeting with when, and who has found how many women where? and no I didn't talk to that women from the rotary club I have never even heard her name before. It was an uphill battle that has yet to be won.

About 10 minutes before I was to go into a meeting to try and sort some of these details out, one of the gals from the office came down the hall, your mom is on the phone she said.... I thought well this cannot be good. It hit me like a brick. It doesn't matter that the words include she is ok I am still on  a completely different continent and never feel the distance quite as much as in these moments. I have spent the rest of the day crying out to God. Lord heal her wounds, bind them together. Guide the hands of the surgeon and give her body, mind, and spirit your divine healing.

I feel so helpless, but the truth is the prayers are the most important thing I can offer. And tonight Jesus, I lay it all at your feel. Give baby Ani a kiss for me and hold Megan in your arms.

Mosquito Hunting

So just a little glimps into my Sunday evening, I spent about an hour on the gangway with one of my favorite ghurka's Lok (affectionately nicknamed Papa Lok). There are a lot of flys here more than I noticed last year in Benin, don't know why. So the ghurka's have the most awesome version of a fly swatter I have ever seen. It looks like a small tennis racket and when you push a red button it gives a little electric zap that kills the fly or mosquito and makes a super cool zappy noise. So Papa Lok let me play with the electric fly swatter. Apparently all the fly's were scarred of me and had been warned by all the other flys about the electric fly swatter of death. But I did manage to kill one mosquito, I am sure the misquito I zapped was carrrying the malaria, so now thanks to me Togo is now one malaria ridden misquito less. Now if only we could kill the rats and the cockroaches that are such great company as I walk the dock just as easy.

Screening

Today I helped with screening. This year instead of doing one big day of screening where thousands of patients show up we are doing multiple small screenings every week. I think the members of this team have some of the hardest jobs on the ship.

So this morning I had signed up to go along and help. My job was to stand at the front of the line and direct the patients to the next available screener. The patients are seen by nurses at this screening then if it is thought they may be possible surgical candidates they are given a card to come to the ship and be evaluated by the surgeon who then makes the final decision.

What makes this day so hard is the nos. I don't know the numbers for sure but we maybe saw 100 or so patients and gave less than 10 cards to come to the ship. I know that we cannot help everyone, I know that.... but it still doesn't change the fact that I want to. The girl the same age as me with severely bowed legs who is too old for surgery, it would simply take more time than we have for her bones to heal even if we did have a surgeon and a surgical space for her (which we don't). The mama who brought her 8 year old boy who has some sort of palsy with severe delays in that he cannot walk or talk, even though he does crawl around and laugh and interact, we have nothing we can do surgically. The women with the goiters growing from their necks, who we must say sorry unfortunately we cannot help you because their goiter isn't big enough to be life threatening.

I keep coming back to the fact that we are helping those we can. The precious little one only a few days old with a cleft lip and palate who we will begin on our feeding program and hopefully will grow to be healthy enough for surgery. The little girl with a leg that can no longer straighten after a burn where the skin grew back holding the leg permanently in place bent at the knee. Another precious little boy who had surgery for a large tumor on his face in another country and they took away part of his jaw bone, not bothering to replace it with anything, and now his mouth just hangs open, he cannot speak or eat well and he drools constantly. I know God has all his little children in His mighty hands and we will help the ones we should but even resting in this truth... on days like today it just simply doesn't feel like enough.

Words I didn't have

Last Friday I spent trying to make contacts with a number of doctors throughout Togo who have been helping to find VVF women for us and referring them for possible surgery coming up in a couple of months. One local surgeon here in Lome said he had over 10 women for me, so when we contacted him my translator Caleb realized he was going to be going to the same hospital this doctor worked at later that day with some other nurses from the ship and thought it may be easier to meet in person. I was game to go and thought it would be a fun field trip to get to go see the local university hospital.

I went with 2 of the nurses here Suzanne and Becca, who coordinate the Burkitt's program. I had the opportunity to meet 2 of their patients, two precious little boys. We spent a couple of hours at the hospital trying to get everything sorted and I spent most of the time just playing with these little guys along with some of the other children in the pediatric unit. I have been wanting to write a little about my experience that day. About how these little boys and their stories break your heart, but I just couldn't find the words. So here is a link to Becca's Blog. Please keep Suzanne and Becca in your prayer's along with this program that is just getting underway this outreach.

Night Shift

There is something I really love about this ship at night. It feels so peaceful. The wards are dark and the patients all tucked it, the babies snuggling with their mamas. Little casted children with their legs propped up in the air on pillows and their parents sleeping on mattresses on the floor under their beds. When you walk around the ship all is quiet, just a few of us awake making sure everything runs smoothly until the morning.

In just a few short hours all of this quiet will change. Everyone will start to wake up, to prepare for the week ahead. The patients will start lining up on the dock. Some to be admitted for surgery this coming week, some to be screened by the surgeons, and some to come follow up after their already completed surgery. As they arrive this morning they will be filled with hope that maybe this big floating white steal box filled with strangers will hold the miracle they have been praying for.