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