All For Love

Why would 6 Americans travel to Fallujah, Iraq? Love. 

I had the amazing privilege of being part of this team. It's hard to put into words some of the experiences we had, but I will make an attempt here in my blog. For now, here's a quick slideshow that is a summary of our time in Fallujah (Arab Iraq) and Sulaimaniyah (Kurdish Iraq).

Next Adventure

Tomorrow afternoon our team leaves for Iraq.  I have been excited for this trip since I found out about it in April, and I can't believe it's actually here. Please pray for our team when you think about it. We will be in 2 different places over the course of the next 2 weeks and get home on July 13th.

A few prayer requests:

-Safety as we travel in and through the country

-Peace and rest 

-For procedures and recoveries to go smoothly

-Equipment to function as it should

-Resources to be available

-That the children and their parents would see something different about us even if we can't use a lot of words

I am so grateful to be on this team working with 5 other doctors and nurses that I know and love. Thank you for praying!

Wow

I just returned this weekend from traveling for a week. I was in Canada, then Mongolia, then Canada again before I came home. It was quite the adventure :).
Each time I get the privilege of transporting for CHP I get so excited. I love it. It's amazing to me the opportunities God gives me to take care of children and meet all kinds of people from all over. My life is anything but boring.  This trip was no exception.

These are the 2 beautiful girls, their moms, and our translator.

Even before we set out on our journey to bring them from Mongolia to Canada for their life-saving heart surgeries, I got to spend 48 hours with my good friend, Emily, in Ulan Bataar.  You would be surprised how much fun we could cram in to such a short amount of time, especially while she was still working. Check out all of the pics and make sure to read the captions. I had a blast hanging out with Emily and visiting with my Mongolian friends as well. It was a good time!

Before I wrap this up, I want to share a quick story from this transport. The baby girl you see in the above picture is about 20 months old. While the older girl handled the transitions well and slept quite a bit on the airplanes, the baby certainly had a harder time. By the time we were ready to board our plane from Seoul to Canada, she still had not slept. Babies who are awake for 24 hours are not very happy babies.  I was a bit concerned about her and was really hoping she would sleep on the long flight. I really wanted to be near her on the flight, but the ticket agent said they couldn't change my seat. Out of 400 or so seats, there was only 1 empty one.  As I was getting the group ready to board, I told the translator I wanted the group to get together and pray. I also hadn't slept and I really needed God to intervene. Even as she was translating to the moms to get together so we could pray, the ticket agent came over to us and handed me a new boarding pass for a different seat next to the group. Immediately Matt 6:32 came to mind: "...your Heavenly Father knows what you need".  It was such a little thing, to change a seat, but it felt very big to me in that moment. So we prayed together as a group before boarding, and even before we were done, the baby fell asleep in mom's arms. The Lord knows what we need before we ask, whether little or big things.

I also got to visit another little girl from Mongolia who is leaving Canada soon to go home. We had a great time in downtown Toronto with her host family helping to support the Herbie Fund, who works with the CHP kids. I met more awesome people and ended up on a live Canadian newscast!

Here are the photos for your enjoyment :)

P.S. I leave for Iraq with For Hearts and Souls June 29th for 2 weeks. More details on this trip as it gets nearer! Guess what? I'm excited for that one too!

Things That Might Happen :)

My 2 months in Texas is almost up. Only a few more days until I head back to Colorado. It's bittersweet. The time I have had with my family has been great, but i really miss my Colorado family. I wish I could be lots of places at once, but since I can't, I seem to go from place to place to place...to place.

If things settle down in South Sudan, I will hopefully be a part of the team going in October. Unfortunately, I will not be going to Honduras this year. This particular decision was extremely difficult for me, but the more time that passes, the more I can see how I wouldn't have been able to go in July. This summer looks a lot different then I first thought it would. The reason I say these are "things that might happen" is because all plans I make seem to be pretty flexible. I think that God doesn't want me to get bored :).

So next week I'll head back to Colorado, and then the first week of June I'll be doing a transport for CHP. I get to go to Mongolia! I will be picking up a child from Canada who has already had surgery, and taking the group home to Mongolia where I will spend 2 days and then take a group back to Canada for surgery.  My mom is going to come to Colorado to visit near the end of June, and then we will fly back to Texas together. We will get back in time for my grandma's birthday, and I will be getting ready to go to Kurdistan with For Hearts and Souls for a week the beginning of July. If all of these things happen like I think they will, and nothing else comes up, I'm also hoping to go back to CAMP as Med-staff for a week in July. I worked at CAMP from 1997-2004 and I really miss it. It would be great to go back for a week.

There's so much more, but that's the basics. Every day is an adventure.

One Step at a Time

I'm really glad God knows the plan. I have to remind myself that He is not surprised by the changes that seem so sudden to me.

I tried to mentally prepared myself for the possibility that the trip to South Sudan could be cancelled due to the recent increase in violence, but I underestimated how disappointed I would actually be if it were to happen. I received the phone call this morning and have been on the edge of tears since. My heart was so set on going. The hospital that we were set to work in is setting up tents for the influx of patients that they are receiving, so even if we went they wouldn't be able to give up the beds and operating room space for non-emergent patients. My thought: let's go anyway and help the hospital staff with their extra patients. I wish that was the way it worked.

The bright side is that I get this extra time with my family, which has been really good. There is another trip for later in the summer that has been presented to me and I will update the blog if I end up going. I have only known about it for a few days so I haven't made a decision yet, but it looks promising. For now, I am sticking with my plan of being in Texas for a few more weeks. God seems to be stretching my faith further and further in a lot of areas, but especially in the area of not having a plan. I keep hearing a replay in my head of something Ps. Aaron Stern has said so many times: "The bible doesn't say that God's word is a spotlight to my future, it says 'it's a light to my path'." A lot of times we only get to see our feet and where we need to take the next step. I so wish I could have a spotlight...

Getting Ready for S. Sudan

Barely a month until the Sudan trip! I can barely contain myself :). I am so excited about this opportunity.

I was officially done with work as of a few days ago. The end was kind of rough. The ICU has been super busy, and it's hard to leave knowing they need help. Even so, I know I am right where I'm supposed to be. Looking forward to some much needed time with my family and then off to Sudan!

Here are some prayer requests from my team leader. This will be the second cleft lip project team SP has sent to Juba, so I asked her about specific things to pray for that they had run into the first time.

1. Pray all our supplies/meds are able to be procured without too much of a challenge and will get through customs okay. Pray especially that we will be able to procure compressed tanks of oxygen and get it to Juba so we have enough o2 for the surgeries.

2. Pray that anesthesia machine works well. We rely on this machine to work well for the week of surgeries and we do not have a backup for this machine.

3. Pray the power supply is consistent and that the backup generator works well.

4. As we try mobilize patients, pray that people who need this surgery would hear about the team coming to Juba and be able to be helped. Pray that just the right amount of patients come for surgery- not too few, but not too many which would overwhelm the system!

5. Pray for our team, that we would work well together and be a light to the patients and staff we work with at Juba Teaching Hospital.

6. Pray for our Sudanese Pastors-Robert and Justin, who will be ministering to the patients during this week. Pray they would have many opportunities to point our patients and their caretakers to Christ.

Unexpected Happenings

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind of decisions and changes in plans. What I thought this year would look like is turning out to be completely different than reality. Not bad, but unexpected. I've gotten pretty used to a lot of unknown in my life, but I have times where I don't handle it as well. These last few weeks definitely fall into the category of not handling it as well, but I'm coming back around to a better perspective of everything. I know that God has a plan, that it's good, and His timing is perfect. One day at a time I remind myself to trust instead of worry. So here's what's been unfolding...

I had originally hoped to extend my contract at work through the end of May like I did last year, but found out a couple of weeks ago that they weren't offering extensions. It actually happened that by that time, I had already made the decision not to extend because I really feel like I need to go back to San Antonio and spend some time with my family. Within 24 hours of those decisions I received an invitation to be part of a surgical team to South Sudan in May, which I accepted. The team is through Samaritan's Purse (the same organization as Children's Heart Project), and we will be doing cleft lip repairs for a week. This trip will take place during my time in Texas, and then I plan to come back to Colorado Springs at the end of May. So in 48 hours, my vision of the next 2 months changed drastically.

I don't really know a lot after that. The trip to Honduras is in July, and Mongolia will be in September. Both of these trips are on the table right now. My budget is a lot different than I thought it was going to be since I'm not working the extra 2 months I thought I would. Those paychecks would have paid for both trips completely. God knows where I need to be and when, and He has always provided what's needed. It would break my heart to have to pick one trip or not go on either. Please pray that I would have wisdom and direction about where I need to be.

Recently we had a guest speaker at our church and she talked about gifts in unexpected packaging. It's certainly not the first time I've heard this preached, but it came at the right time for me. I needed a reminder that even though this wasn't what I had planned at all, God's plan is certainly better than mine. So although I won't be working the extra 2 months I was hoping too and I am unsure about my trips to Honduras and Mongolia, I do get priceless time with my family and the privilege of being on a surgical team to the South Sudan, along with whatever else God has planned that I don't know about.

I suppose that's it for now. I am really excited about spending several weeks with my family, and my sister and I are planning to get away for a few days while I'm there. I have actually never been on vacation so I am super excited about this :).

Whenever I find out more I will pass it along. Even though it's been a bit challenging to have lots of things change at once, I am looking forward to whatever God has in store for the coming months.