The Rain is Back

We had a rainy Saturday today.  We love waking up to rain, especially because the boys tend to sleep a little later.  We have had lots of rain this week.  In fact, the rain caused problems on the roads.  There are two roads between Shell and Quito and this past Tuesday morning, the last day of our Easter break, there were such heavy rains that one of the routes was blocked by mudslides and the other was blocked by flooding.  A good bit of the Shell missionary community was stuck in Banos and Quito that day.  Thankfully, everyone made it back safely the next day.  Just another of many reminders not to take safety in traveling for granted.

It's been a busy week.  Paul has had quite a few cases, especially at dinner time or bed time. One night he was called in for an accident victim who arrived in the back of a pick-up but the young man didn't have a heart beat and didn't make it.  Please pray for his family.  The newest precious Casa de Fe baby is in a hospital in Quito right now with an overwhelming infection and multi-organ failure.  She was at Casa de Fe for less than 24 hours before going to Quito to get a previously undetected heart murmur evaluated.  She ended up in the hospital and the next day was transferred to the ICU.  Her sudden decompensation was extremely unexpected and seems unrelated to her heart murmur.  Her parents are there with her now and she is still in extremely critical condition.  Please pray for her family as well as Patti Sue and the folks at Casa de Fe. 

An Easter Timeline

Yesterday I just had to laugh.  We were not at church a week ago, but were told they were celebrating Easter at a river.  Since Good Friday is the bigger holiday here, culturally, I was happy to have something special on Easter and determined to go by myself with the boys since Paul was due home later that day.  We were told to meet at the church at 9am, 1 1/2 hours earlier than the usual starting time.  I imagined that then we would go to a NEARBY river and by finished by 11 or so.

8:20 - "Boys, everyone get dressed while I take a shower.  We don't want to be late or they'll leave us!"
8:50 - After a quick call to Paul, who is already on the bus and only 2 hours from Shell and several mad dashed back inside for things, we pull out of our driveway, making us ON TIME at the church.
9:05 - Four people other than us are at the church.  All are in jeans.
9:30 - Twenty or so people.  Jeans.  (I am wearing a skirt because it's Easter!)
9:45 - A truck full of people pull-up and a vote is taken on whether to continue as planned or cancel due to threatening rain.  The Ayes have it!  Nos Vamos!
10:05 - We load up in our car - the boys and the pastor's family - and about half the people load into a truck and another car.  We go to buy batteries for the boombox, but no one has size C.  We give up on batteries, but I got a pre-paid card for my cell phone.
10:20 - We stop at a bread store and get bread for after the service.
10:25  - I call Paul and he is about 45 minutes away.  I tell him to call when he gets to the church and I will come get him.  We leave the bread store and go in a direction I've never been before.
10:35 - I ask how much longer to the river.  Five minutes.
10:45 - We arrive at the river.  One truck is there and 2 are right behind us.  The boys play with the other children by the river.  My phone has no cell phone service.
11:00 - We are called to gather on some rocks.
11:07 - We sing a song and hear a Bible passage
11:15 We leave to go get Paul.  Sammy watches the phone to see when we get service again.  We speed along the rocky dirt road.
11:30 - We have service and call Paul who has been waiting and calling for about 15 minutes.
11:37 - Paul is walking towards us!  We decide to go home since by the time we get back to the river church will be over.  Isaac says, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

The Home Front

The past two weeks have been long and fun and a bit crazy and tiring.  We are happy for Paul to have the chance to go back to Haiti, but can't wait for him to be home.  The boys have been helpful, grumpy, mischevious and loving by turns. 



























School days go by quickly but we fill the weekends and vacation days with puzzles, art projects, games, and Easter activities.

Of course, I have been working at the hospital and Casa de Fe as well as at home.  My clinic day at the hospital ranges from coughs and colds to things like constipation and ADHD.  Not too different from practicing in inner city Dallas.  Finding the resources to help my patients here is sometimes a little more tricky.  At Casa de Fe, there have been 3 new babies in the past few weeks.  One has already been admitted for pneumonia, one has a cleft lip and palate partially repaired and one little girl turns out to have a previously undiagnosed heart murmur and seizures and is at a hospital in Quito for further evaluation. 

Paul will be back tomorrow and will be able to hear Isaac's dozens of new words and see how long everyone hair has grown.  I suspect haircuts will be on the agenda for next week.  I have figured out the system of plugs in the mysterious zone behind the computer, driven part of the way home from Quito for the first time and tried new recipes like pita bread and caramel sauce.  It will be strange and wonderful to be together as a family again.  Happy Easter to all!  He is risen indeed.

Going Back to Nassau Hall

Well, it was more like Nassau Hall came to me!  Three weeks ago Josiah and I went to Quito to welcome the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship Ecuador Spring Break Mission Trip 2010!  Their flight arrived late Saturday night and our friend Kevin Skillin went with me to pick them up from the airport in his P '96 sweatshirt.  For the first time I regretted leaving my P '92 sweatshirt in Houston away from Shell's mold and humidity. On a side note, we became friends with the Skillins through our son Samuel and their daughter Laura who were best buddies in Kindergarten during out 9 months of language training in Quito and later figured out our Princeton and PEF connection.  Anyway, the bus driver that I hired for the PEF team (who talked to me by phone several times that night) did not actually show up at the airport, so Kevin ended up shuttling the team to the Guesthouse in his mini-van.  Glitches like this are par for the course here in Ecuador, but what a crazy welcome to the team!  The next day we headed  to Shell.  The 10 students and 4 leaders spent their week doing construction at Casa de Fe, the orphanage in Shell.  They also taught PE, art and reading to the orphanage kids as well as led chapel, art and PE at the missionary school.  Five pre-med students spent a day at the hospital and to top it all, they painted our church building in a near-by town inside and out in one day!  For a great slide-show of the trip see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVwAxCWocfI

It's hard to express how much this PEF visit meant to me.  PEF played a significant role in maturing my faith while I was in college and it was incredible to be able to play a small role in the faith of students 20 years behind me.  It also caused me to reflect on my years at Princeton and since graduation in a way that I seldom think about.  Until planning this trip, Princeton occupied little of my life except for several close friends, a few connections made on Facebook and Reunions every 5 years.  I remember sitting in PEF Freshman Bible Study listening to someone tell us possible reasons God may have brought us to Princeton.  Maybe it would open doors in our future careers that would bring God glory.  This reason appealed to me, but as far as I know, it didn't work that way in my life.  Maybe because I didn't tell people where I went to college unless pressured!  Anyway, this week with PEF made me think of the verse in Esther, "And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"  Maybe part of the reason for Princeton then as well as for Shell now is this mission trip and this generation of Christian students from my alma mater.  Missions wasn't on my radar at Princeton and I was not sure I wanted to be a doctor.  But twenty years later I am able to testify to the clear hand of God's leading in my life, demonstrate the incredible diversity of missions in a small jungle town, and share the great privelege of God's call for all Christians to go, send or facilitate the world-wide spread of the Gospel.

Paul's second trip to Haiti (cont.)

This is Wadlene whom I remember well from our first visit to Haiti.  She arrived at Baptist Haiti Mission nine days after the earthquake.  During this time she was at another facility with little or no care.  As things began to slow a bit here after the first week, we sent word out that we could accept other earthquake victims from outlying facilities.  She arrived, like many others, in the back of a truck that bumped up the hill to the hospital.  When I first met Wadlene, she was one of many who had been filing through the O.R. where we were racing too care for as many people as possible.  I immediately started in with the usual pre-anesthesia interview questions in a mechanical, tired-after-all-this-work type way.  Her answers were difficult to sort out and not linear or direct.  A simple question like, "do you have any medicine allergies," for example, was just not registering.  My medical student translator interjected that he had seen AIDS patients in his (limited) experience act this way and he was sure she was infected with HIV.

Looking back now I see that it was the Lord who, at that moment, helped me to do something a bit uncharacteristic for me and especially in this setting.  I slowed down and considered where and from what she had just come.  All I knew at this point was that, indeed, nine days had past and this woman who lay before me was still untreated and had been waiting all this time for any type of help.  So, through my interpreter, I asked her what her experience had been up to this point.  Suddenly, something clicked in her mind and I could see it clearly in her face.  She recounted that she been in her kitchen cooking when her building crumbled around her.  Her children where in another room and perished in the quake.  Incredible!  It all made since at this moment.  Here she was, suffering for over a week with limited or no care like pain medicine or basic hygiene with a broken arm and leg caring for herself in utter despair at the loss of all of her family!

I started again with the doctor stuff emphasizing that she was important and that we wanted to help her feel better and begin the healing process.  Still terrified, physically hurting, and emotionally spent we moved to the O.R. where she underwent the first stages of repair for her injuries.  Shortly after this our team left and, though her memory remained, I didn't expect to see her again.  Well, upon our arrival, one of the first people I saw was Wadlene!  She had remained nameless to me up to this point.  We again met in the O.R. again to further care for her left femur fracture.  I have since learned that, during her time at the hospital, she has put her trust in Christ as her Savior and Lord and continues to heal from her injuries.  Several days ago she went outside for the first time since the earthquake and enjoyed some rays.  We even gave her one of the "sonset" radios to encourage her to get out of bed and outside to charge the thing with its solar cells while listening!  Please pray for continued healing both physically and emotionally for Wadlene.  Further, we have heard rumors that one of her daughters may still be alive.  Pray for their reunion!

Here is another picture of Tilisier today.  He is the young man who suffered a fracture of the front of his skull then underwent a surgical closure.  He continues to heal and you can see that some of the swelling has left his eye.  We hope to get him out of bed tomorrow and outside where we will also give  him a radio.  Please pray for his continued healing.

Paul's second trip to Haiti (cont.)

Today we did some disaster tourism.  You may recognize these photos of the presidential palace in Port au Prince.  How different seeing it live and in person!  The destruction was much more striking! Many buildings crumbled starting with the failure of second story as you see in the palace.  The second floor failed then those above pancaked down upon it.  Some buildings look almost unbroken but are one story less!

Some were reduced to rubble juxtaposed with others which were untouched.

Haiti still suffers from lack of replacement construction to house the thousands of homeless.  Construction has begun on many fronts but it will be quite some time before it really makes a bit of a dent in the need.

Paul's second trip to Haiti

What an interesting turn of events!  When we were here the first time we all spoke of how we wanted to come back several weeks or months later to follow up on our patients.  This follow up trip was originally planned for earlier this month conflicting with our plans of  hosting a group from the States.  With that I forgot about it.  At the last minute they changed the dates to the day after our work team left so...here I am, back in Haiti working at Baptist Haiti Mission approximately 2 months later.  Now that I have a computer with me and this cool blog I will try to keep a running update of my daily experiences.

We arrived in Port au Price at about 2pm on Saturday, March 20, this time flying Copa Airlines, a commercial flight.  We were greeted by the banjo band you see below plucking out a spirited little tune that was short and continually repeating.  What a big difference from the first time!

 We were taken to a warehouse that served as customs, baggage claim, and immigration.  Thankfully all of our bags arrived with us and we made the trek to the top of the mountain arriving at Baptist Haiti Mission later that afternoon.  It feels strangely home-like and almost as if I hadn't left.  We have several surgeries planned for tomorrow.  One of which is to remove the hardware from Yonel's right arm.  You will remember him as the 12 year old shepherd boy who, while tending his sheep, suffered a crush injury of his right arm and leg.  He is healing great! His wonderful, bright spirit demonstrates the joy of the Lord Jesus!  He has won the hearts of all those here at the mission compound where he has been since the earthquake.  Unfortunately his mother, also pictured below with Yonel and me, is suffering from terminal breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and she is not expected to survive much longer.  Pray for her, Yonel and his siblings who also lost their father in the earthquake.

Today we started a regular schedule and did 4 surgeries.  Yonel's surgery went well and he now has a cast where his pins were along with a leg cast to help improve his overall mobility.  Below is today's picture of us caring for another young man with a broken leg.  The surgeons are finishing the fitting of the cast while he is under some light sedation.

Tuesday, March 23 Dr. Wolff broke the slowing afternoon schedule when he announced that he needed my help urgently to examine and close a head wound in an 11 year old child.  The boy had fallen from something earlier in the morning and fractured the front of his skull above his nose and had brain leaking out of the wound (I'll spare you by not including the gory picture.)  A quick exam revealed a somnolent child in urgent need of care.  Below we are pictured doing "brain surgery" which in this case consisted of examining the fracture site, reapproximating the bones and closing the thick lining over the brain with some surgical mesh.  He woke up easily, praise the Lord, and we moved him to our make shift ICU which is the pre and post op area just outside the OR.  He continued to improve over night and moved him to a regular bed the following day.  I'll keep you posted on his progress.

 

Here he is today, Wednesday, March 24 resting comfortably.  Please pray for him as he continues to recover and that he will not contract an infection from his brain wound or develop a cerebrospinal fluid leak.

Farah is one of the sweet ladies we helped in January by putting on an external "fixator" that is holding the bones of her  leg together and aligned while they heal.  You can see it on her left leg as black rods on each side.  It continues all the way to her left hip.  This morning we encouraged her and several other women up and out of bed to walk for some physical therapy.  We even joked with them that they were racing against one another from one end of the room to the other as we cheered them on.  You can see her competition behind her right shoulder...an elderly women with a healing left femur fracture.

Daniela was injured in the earthquake when a wall fell on her right leg.  We got to know her early on and managed to resist doing an amputation of her badly mangled extremity with much exposed bone.  We are grateful to the Lord for leading us with His wisdom in not proceeding with an amputation!  After much wound care by the various teams over the last two months that included a skin graft, you can see that her skin is now healed and she is walking!

Here is Madam Kafa again still hard at work in the OR!  At this moment she is ooo-ing and ahhhh-ing as she has just received a "SonSet".  These are solar powered radios pre-programed to receive up to 5 local FM Christian radio stations.  This is one of the many ministries of HCJB.  One of our team members brought 100 of them to give out to those we meet who are interested in learning more about the Gospel and growing in their faith in Christ by listening to radio broadcasts.