All For Love... Eye Opening

When I agreed to be part of the Iraq team, I did not actually realize what I was in for. Fallujah was not part of the original plan. We actually teased Dr Kirk that he got us all to say yes and then told us we were going to Fallujah after the fact. The order of events is true, but even he didn't know that we would end up there. The entire trip was supposed to be spent in Dohuk (northern Iraq). He had been there many times with teams doing screenings and heart caths, but this was going to be my first time there. A few weeks before we were set to leave, Dr Kirk found out that it had been approved for our team to go the the hospital in Fallujah. All of the political obstacles to visas and approval were thought to be insurmountable in such a short time, but God opened all the doors and it was apparent that was where we were supposed to go.

When we were on our last flight from Istanbul to Baghdad, I had a very eye opening conversation with the guy sitting next to me. I'm sure he was pretty shocked to see an American girl flying to Baghdad and asked why I was going there. I explained to him what our team was doing, and throughout the course of conversation found out a little bit of his story too. He is 27 and grew up in Baghdad. He was returning home after going to Istanbul to see a specialist. He had minimal feeling and movement in one of his legs because of shrapnel from a car bomb. The specialist he saw told him there was no hope for recovery for his leg. It had been about a year and a half. Once he got home he would be pretty much confined to his house living with his parents. His mom had been in the car with him when the bomb went off, as well as his sister and a friend. His sister lost her life that day. As I sat listening to his story, the reality of where I was going hit me. For people in both Baghdad and Fallujah, like other war-torn areas, most of their lives have been filled with war, death, injury, and uncertainty. On top of that, no one wants to go help them because of the danger. So many times other Iraqis would say to us, "You went to Fallujah? We would never go there!" Even their fellow countrymen are afraid to go to certain cities.

I love that I can be part of a team of people who are willing to go despite danger or fear. What a great privilege it was to work with the doctors and medical staff at the hospital there. They were extremely welcoming and took very good care of us.  We didn't go anywhere without our own personal armed security team, and mostly we just didn't go anywhere. We only took 2 trips outside the hospital compound, other than to the airport. They did everything in their power to keep us safe. Ultimately God was definitely watching over us and brought us home safely.

It was also a successful trip from a medical standpoint. Our team worked with cardiologists from Fallujah, Kirkuk, and Tikrit, as well as a cath lab team from Baghdad, and completed 12 heart catheterizations in 4 days. All of the children came through their procedures well with good results. Some of them had devices placed to close defective openings, some had narrow areas widened with balloons, and others were diagnostic caths to determine if they were eligible to have surgery to correct their heart defect. Before we ever left, they wanted to know when we could come back. Their cardiac center is brand new, and the week we were there was the first time that any heart catheterization procedures had ever been done.  There were a lot of firsts for them. Hopefully we can go and work with them again in the future so that they can help even more Iraqi children.

Here is the link to some of the pictures from Fallujah.

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.