Honduras Bound!

I have another opportunity to work with Children's Heart Project! In a couple of weeks I will get to take a little girl home to Honduras. She had her heart surgery here in Denver and is recovering well. I am excited to be involved with one of these children again, and it's a great bonus that I get to go to Honduras! I will get to visit the Hines family, the missionaries that I lived and worked with during the summer of 2010. I have really been missing them and am now counting down the days until I get to see them. It is such a huge blessing to be able to take a side visit to see them after I take the little girl back home to her family. I am looking forward to getting to see the return side of these trips. I imagine it's much different than being with the child and mom when they leave their families and have surgery waiting ahead of them. I can't imagine how excited they will be to have her home and healthy. I'm sure they are anxious to see her again.

Since I returned from Uganda I have been back at my job at the Children's Hospital in Pediatric ICU. It's nice to be back in a "routine", if you can call it that, but it's enough for me. I am mostly living up in Denver to be closer to work, but still coming back to the Springs every couple of weeks. I got to go home to TX for Thanksgiving which I was very grateful for. I was also able to visit my little guy from Uganda while I was there. It was so fun to play with him and see that he could be so active without getting tired. This was just a little added bonus in the midst of seeing my family.

As the end of the year approaches, I honestly don't know if I could recap it in a way that would do it justice. God has been doing so much in my heart and has taken me so many places. I am so grateful to have been able to return to both Honduras and Mongolia. These trips mean so much to me, not so much the places, but the people, and I hope to continue going on these trips each year and even more often when possible. Getting more involved with Children's Heart Project as a transporter has definitely been a high point of the year as well. My trip to Uganda was an amazing experience and I look forward to working with CHP more.

That's mostly the happenings around here. I will post pics when I get back from Honduras. I am excited to see what God has in store for 2012!

For now, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Whirlwind

Uganda was truly a whirlwind trip. 30+ hours of travel to get there, on the ground less than 48 hours, and then 30+ hours of travel back. I really wish I could have spent more time there. Hopefully I will have an opportunity to go back. Uganda is beautiful. I got to see Lake Victoria when we drove from Entebbe to Kampala. I loved just people watching as we drove or walked around. The general atmosphere is so much more laid back and I love it. It helps me to remember to slow down here in the US. I was there for about 24 hours before I actually met the little guy and his mom. This particular 3 year old is anything but shy. He just ran up to me and sat in my lap. He sang me his ABC's and proceeded to just run around showing off his dancing skills. It was awesome :). We packed everybody up and headed to the airport. After some difficulties with paperwork, we made our first flight by about 10 minutes. God was definitely at work opening doors for us. We had about 9 hours in the Amsterdam airport and I ran the little guy up and down hallways and played all sorts of games. I wanted to make sure he was all worn out for the next long flight. It worked. He slept the whole 9 hour flight. He was such a trooper. That is a lot of travel for anybody, but when you're 3 sitting still is not your greatest attribute. We made it to our final destination safely, and even a few minutes early. He has already had his surgery and is recovering. I will get to see him in a couple of weeks when I go back to SA for Thanksgiving. I am really excited. People don't usually get to see the kids after they transport them for surgery.

During the short time I was in Uganda, I had the opportunity to meet a mom who impacted me greatly. I felt so privileged to even spend time around her. It's hard to explain, but it was a situation where I walked away thinking that I would never be the same but I'm not really sure why. I just know that God did something and I don't get to see or understand it right now.

So now I'm back and it's time to start work. I go to night shift starting tonight. I am actually really excited. I am working at the same hospital I did last year so it will be great to go back and work with them again. I love the people there and am looking forward to catching up and getting back in the swing of things.

Here's the link to the pics!

Always Ready

So I’ve been home from Mongolia exactly 4 weeks and am currently on a plane to Uganda. I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I LOVE my life. It’s crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Lord literally dropped this trip in my lap and I am so grateful. Despite the last couple of weeks being pretty busy, the Lord has been preparing me and there are a couple of scriptures that have been in the forefront of my mind.

The first is Psalm 139:5 -You hem me in-behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me.-

There is definitely still part of me that is really nervous about this trip, but I read this scripture and find peace in it. I have never done a trip like this and it contains a lot of firsts for me, yet I know that God has it all under control. He coordinated some crazy logistics for this trip to even happen and I know He will continue to take care of every detail. I know that He has gone before me and is following me as I go.

The other is Exodus 33:14-16 - The Lord replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then Moses said to Him, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that You are pleased with me and with Your people unless You go with us? What else will distinguish me and Your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?-

I read this particular passage of scripture quite frequently while I was in Mongolia. It is certainly true in my everyday life, but it stands out to me when I go on a trip. There’s no point in going if God’s presence doesn’t go with me. It is Him in me that makes me different, and I depend on Him for everything; leaning on Him whether things go smoothly or not. This is easier said than done and I am most certainly in the learning process of trusting Him more and more. I keep finding myself in situations where I have to let go of a little more control and trust just a little more, or sometimes a lot more of both. I feel so privileged to be transporting this little boy. I am only one person on his journey who will be the hands and feet of Christ, but it only takes one bad example to leave a bad impression. In and of myself I am a messy example, so I pray for His presence to be with me. I have an advantage over Moses though, because God’s presence isn’t only with me, He’s IN me. I love that with His presence comes rest. Rest has been a focus for me lately and I find myself talking to my soul like David often did in the Psalms. Ps 116:7 says, “Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” If I am not at rest, I am always focused on the wrong thing. If I reorient my perspective on the goodness of God, then I find my rest again.

I have also been learning to be prepared in season and out. I really love my plans, and although God isn’t anti-planning, He needs me to be ready and willing to do things on short notice or without the preparation I might want to have, trusting Him to be and provide everything I need. Mongolia was a planned trip, but life happened and I didn’t feel as “prepared” as I would have liked going into it. Funny how that trip turned out awesome and stretched my faith and trust in new ways. This trip to Uganda happened very quickly. I had 10 days notice and I said yes knowing that those 10 days were going to be really busy. That’s just life. I have been spoiled in the past by having time off preceding most of my trips, but that’s not always how it will be. I want to be ready in season and out; always able to respond when God wants to interrupt my life to send me anywhere He wants. It might be my next door neighbor, my job, or halfway around the world to a little boy who needs heart surgery.

Sorry if this seems scattered. I am pretty tired, and I’m not really a good writer even when I’m not tired :). As I read over this prior to posting I thought, “wow, this is kinda deep”. Love me anyway :). Just wanted to share all of the things that have been running around in my head and heart the last few weeks. Thanks for listening.

P.S. I arrived to Uganda safely :)

God's Sleeves are Big

So as my day unfolded yesterday, I kept thinking to myself, " Wow, you just never know what God has up his sleeve".

I woke up yesterday to a voicemail from someone at Children's Heart Project asking me if I wanted to go on a transport. If you are interested in more info on CHP you can check out the link here on my blog, but I'll give you the basics. CHP helps to identify kids that have heart defects and require surgery, and then they find hospitals here in the US to donate their services. Once a hospital accepts a child from the waiting list, a physician or a nurse has to go and transport the child from their country to the hospital in the US. Soooo.....24 hours later....

I will be leaving for Uganda in 10 days!!! My brain hasn't quite been able to wrap itself around this news yet. I am super excited. This is where the "crazy" part of my life fits in. I just never know what opportunity God will drop in my lap. There were a lot of logistics that had to fall into place for me to be able to go on this transport, and none of them were within my control. I'm not sure how many times I had to remind myself yesterday that God set this up and He would take care of all the details. I leave in 10 days, gone for 5 days, and start work less than 2 days later. Yep, that's right. In the next 17 days I will go to Fall Retreat with my church, then Cori and Grayson are visiting, then I will go to Uganda and back, and then I will move up to Denver to start my contract at the Children's hospital. Oh, and the hospital that accepted this particular child for surgery happens to be in San Antonio, so I get to be home for about 12 hours :). So these are the latest events in my crazy life.

Worthwhile 5 Minutes

This is a compilation of pics from my 3 weeks in Mongolia. They are in order from my time at the orphanage, then our week screening children for heart defects, and finally surgery week.

Mongolia Update

I've been back from Mongolia for a little over a week now. The first few days were a little bit of a rough transition back, which is not normal for me. It was hard for me to sit still and try to recoup.

The days that I spent at the orphanage were amazing. It was such a huge blessing to have my only responsibility be to show up and play :). That's a good day. I really enjoyed that week, but it was also exciting to meet up with the team when they arrived. For Searching Week with the team we set out in trains to the south Gobi desert. I love trains! We were in sleeper cars for 3 of the 5 nights. It was quite the adventure. We started out traveling to the southern border of Mongolia with China and then traveled back north for the second half of the week. We set up at a hospital in each location, and also went into schools in each area and screened over 2,000 children for heart defects. We had the amazing opportunity of taking 3 kids with us who have been part of For Hearts and Souls and Children's Heart Project and had their heart surgeries done in the states in the last few years. They gave their testimonies throughout the week and helped give out gospel bracelets and the Gospel of John in Mongolian. I loved having them as a part of our team.

During Mending Week our team completed 10 open-heart surgeries that required heart-lung bypass, and also 19 heart catheterizations. Some of the caths were diagnostic and some were interventional where they were able to close a hole without open-heart surgery. This week was challenging. We had 2 kids in particular who really had some complications. Thankfully they were done earlier in the week and we were able to continue to watch over them and intervene as necessary. One of them was a teenager and the other was a little guy from the orphanage. The little one turned out to have a stomach bug and started improving around the time the team left. He was not having any heart issues following his surgery, mostly issues related to dehydration. The teenager had multiple complications in the operating room during the course of his surgery. He was the recipient of a few miracles during his time with us. Once the surgery was over, we all breathed a sigh of relief when he woke up and started talking. He required a pacemaker to help with the electrical activity of his heart. We were all praying that his heart would recover from surgery and be able to have normal electrical conduction without the help of a pacemaker. Getting a permanent pacemaker in Mongolia is possible, but it's not the easiest thing to accomplish and would not have been able to be done for several weeks. Basically, if something happened to the pacemaker and his heart didn't kick in on it's own, we would not have been able to save him. Less than 12 hours after surgery, and a lot of prayer later, we were able to turn the pacemaker off and his heart was functioning on it's own and continued to improve throughout the week! There was much rejoicing in the ICU in the early hours of that morning. This kid has a purpose on this planet and I hope that we are able to keep up with him in the coming years.

I have to agree with one of our team leaders who said that the overriding theme of our trip was God's grace and provision. There were delays and complications throughout the week, and we went until 9pm every night. There were supplies we wished we had, but didn't, and plans changed every 5 seconds all day, every day. As a team, and as individuals, there was always something to be frustrated about and reasons to be short with one another. Surprisingly, with very few exceptions, the team operated in a supernatural level of grace with each other, the Mongolian staff, and the patients and families. It never ceases to amaze me that you can put 30+ super typeA people on a team and have them all not just get along, but function well as a team unit and have a lot of fun doing it. There are so many stories I could go on, but enjoy the pics. They are worth thousands of words.

Thank you all for your constant support and encouragement of this crazy life I lead.

Link to Orphanage:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2491754012696.2152364.1218128537&type=1&l=a425bc53b0

Link to week 1:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2530600823842.2153478.1218128537&type=1&l=a9abc20e98

Link to week 2:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2549762422870.2154147.1218128537&type=1&l=347a0c3bf0