Chapter Nine: Degaje!

My heart has reached the point where it is so overwhelmed with experiences that words are hard to find.  It is not a bad place, but rather a quiet place for my thoughts to sink deep down into my heart as I reflect on what I’ve seen and learned, and also as I come to grips with the fact that I am leaving this beautiful place in less than three weeks. This has effectively slowed me in the process of sharing what I have been experiencing here in Haiti, but I wanted to honor you all for your investment into my life by sharing a little bit of what has been going on the last few weeks!  So, this post will be totally DEGAJE... a term that the missionaries here refer to often. It is the creole word for "making do with what you've got!" It's fitting, as I am just going to "make do" with the words and experiences that I do have to share.

We have had some busy days in the clinic, with some very interesting cases. Last week, a woman arrived on a moto and before we knew it, the waiting room looked like a crime scene.  She had been cleaning her house and dropped a machete on her foot, which severed some branches of her dorsal pedalis artery.  We prepped the OR for surgery and Dr. Jim worked with steady hands to tie it off.  Our patient was incredibly calm throughout this entire process, and what could have been a much worse situation actually resolved quite nicely!  It reinforced that I was definitely not in Canada anymore, Toto!

We also saw a baby that was born 5 weeks early en route to our clinic. When the mother sat down for Sally’s breastfeeding class, Sally realized that this baby desperately required special attention! He was grey, with a temperature of 91 degrees fahrenheit and an oxygen level of 48%. (I’m sure you don’t need medical training to know that this was NOT a good situation for baby.) Thankfully, Sally has extensive experience with neonates, and immediately assumed control of the situation, delegating Jenn to heat up towels and Ziploc bags full of rice in the microwave to get this baby warm! Talk about degaje! We started the baby on oxygen, and his level came up to 80% by the time Jenn transported them to MSF for more treatment.  When Jenn returned to MSF with another baby later that day, the report was that both baby and mom were doing well. Praise God!

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to join Sally at an English speaking church in Port, and to pick up 2 more HHM volunteers. It was so refreshing to be part of corporate worship in my own language! I also took the opportunity to try to get some photos, but I just can’t seem to capture on camera the heart of Haiti…

Sally bought some plants at the roadside for her garden, so naturally we had to stop to get some pots!

I loooove these paintings. They make the walls so vibrant!

….I think by now most of your have seen this picture on facebook, but just in case you haven’t, this is my temporary roommate who I gave an *ahem* pretty potent evacuation notice to. (But let’s be honest, I didn’t do anything at all. Garrett pretty much ran the show while Emily and I offered suggestions and some solid moral support while keeping our distance! He did get back at us in the end while we stood over the tarantula’s now lifeless body… he tentatively used the plank of wood that had been the execution tool to prod it and let out a yelp of terror like the tarantula was rising from spider hell all over again, sending Emily and I into a new fit of tarantula fueled screaming. ) I don’t think I could have asked for two better people to share this particular “first” with!!

And finally, if you refer back to “Chapter Three”, I posted a picture of the pharmacy in progress. This is what it looks like now! (And all this with a two week hiatus from construction!)

This is Tingue and Garrett, proudly showing off their handiwork! (or at least graciously because I kind of forced them to let me take this!)  Tingue has been a huge part of the construction ongoing at HHM. Garrett is Emily’s boyfriend, who came to visit and who tackled the big job of all those beautiful trusses! I think they have done a pretty amazing job, don’t you?! 

Also, great news, the x-ray machine returned to us today! Praise the Lord for answered prayers!

Though words are few right now, I can say this: I am enjoying myself. My heart is full. My faith is being stretched and stirred. My hands are being used. They are small things, and yet powerful, things I was forgetting and that God is restoring unto me. He is ever faithful. He is good. 

Chapter Eight: Out the Window

What a day! According to the ladies here, today was a classic Haiti day. We ventured into Port au Prince with a full schedule of things we had planned to accomplish. After a long week at the clinic, we were anticipating a nice reprieve as we made a day of getting groceries, going out for lunch, and picking up three more HHM volunteers from the airport! Yes, our hands were full of plans... until the moment right after our first stop, when the truck wouldn't start!

With the help of a kind stranger who helped us pop the clutch, we got the truck going, but not without some minor hitches: something called the glow-plug light was flashing, the A/C didn't work, the horn was the equivalent of a soft whisper on the noisy Haitian roads, and the power windows worked inch by slow inch.

Needless to say, we had to take those plans and throw them out of our wide open windows as we inched through the heavy traffic, dust hovering in the air, trying to get the truck to a dealership where it would be safe for the weekend. (We didn't make it - but we called reinforcements, and so we were able to get both the truck and our new volunteers back to HHM safely!

Driving through Port au Prince is an overload to the senses. The sights, the sounds, and the smells all seem to compete with another. There are so many people - men walking cows and shining shoes, women balancing baskets on their heads and washing their vegetables in the muddy water as they sell on the roadside, motos weaving in and out of traffic. Makeshift shacks constructed out of whatever resource was available offer shade from the hot sun, as goats scale garbage piles as high as my waist scrounging for a snack. This is a way of life. I am a stranger looking through the glass at the houses stacked on the hillsides.

Today, once again I find myself so frustrated by the constraints of language. This time, it's not because I can't speak the language of the Haitians, but because even in my own language, I am limited in trying to paint a picture for you who speak and understand the same language as I. Words seem so insufficient. They lack so much... or maybe it is I who lack the ability to string together the right words. How I long to find the words to truly express what I see... to have words to share my heart as we drove those streets.

I was reflecting on this tonight, and my mind wandered to this verse:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal" - 1 Corinthians 13:1

As I read this, I felt as if God was saying "LOVE is the language I have given you to speak. You are perfectly equipped, through me. Be not afraid. I have made you as a giver of love... so daughter, GIVE!"

I know from my short time here how important language is. I have been so humbled as I have been forced to rely on other people to help me communicate, as I have stumbled over words and sometimes even as I have used very wrong ones!
I love that God doesn't diminish language, but that His LOVE transcends language. And I see that as I employ my very basic creole in the clinic, as I ask people how they are when I take their vital signs and their faces light up as they respond. I see it in a woman's bashful reaction when I tell her that her dress is pretty, or that her baby is beautiful. Sometimes, all it takes is a smile! My interactions with these Haitians has been limited by language, and yet God shows Himself in little, seemingly insignificant moments, through significant love.

Because can you really beat ending a post with an adorable brand new baby goat? The correct answer is no. It can't be done.

Chapter Seven: When Things Don't Make Sense

Haiti is a complex country. That statement in itself could unravel so many stories, and as a guest in this country I can't even begin to understand the depth of corruption and poverty that is present within these borders. However, I have come face to face with some things here in Haiti that simply do not make sense.

Take, for instance, the currency. The national currency in Haiti is the haitian gourde (the r sounds more like a w). One American dollar is the equivalent of 44 haitian gourdes.

Sounds simple, right?

You'd think so, but no. There is actually another currency called the Haitian dollar. It is not legal tender, it does not have any actual paper note or coin, but yet it is frequently used by Haitians. Five gourdes = a Haitian dollar. 8 Haitian dollars = an American dollar. Some of the markets and street vendors price their items by the Haitian dollar. It makes my brain hurt to figure out gourde to haitian dollar, to US dollar... so we aren't even going to throw Canadian currency into this mix. ;)

There are things, like the choice of decoration at this local pool, that just don't make sense:

Photo courtesy of the lovely Andrea!

....Trust me, we were pretty baffled too.

It also happens in the moments where I am trying to kill the big spider near my bed, and it somehow VANISHES... that doesn't make sense!

It's even in the moments, like yesterday when I was carrying my laundry out to hang on the clothesline, that I look around me and realize... I'm in Haiti! It sometimes doesn't make sense, and yet it's real.

On a hike to Ti Boukan (up the road from the clinic)

Then, there are the realities that my heart wants desperately to reject, the things that my eyes see but that I can't process and I don't want to accept as real. They are the moments of being in the room as someone loses a baby, regardless of how far along this baby is, my heart aches for each mother that will wait until heaven to hold her child.

It was the moment we had to tell a woman who has already miscarried six times that 25 weeks into her pregnancy her cervix is beginning to open, causing her to be at high risk of losing this baby. It is in her tears as she longs for her body to sustain her baby, in her desperation and prayers for a miracle. It doesn't make sense that someone who could love a child so well has had a womb with child six times and yet empty arms...

It's in the sadness of a old man who had a stroke, who squeezes his left arm wanting to know why it won't work the way it used to.

It's in the bony ribs you can count on a malnourished child, in the swollen face of a boy with failing kidneys. It's in the cancer that steals years away... These are the things that I see and cannot resolve, cannot understand, cannot grasp.

Some things don't make sense. The most beautiful thing of all that I see might not make sense to some.

It's the fact that these beautiful people cling to the hope of Christ with everything they have, that they raise their hearts in prayer to God, that they praise Him authentically in the midst of suffering and endure in love... before stepping into this country, that kind of faith baffled me. This is a nation where I have seen a faith that intensifies when things don't make sense.

It has stretched me and inspired me to want to have that kind of faith.

Prayer requests:
-The x-ray machine at the clinic was sent to the US for repairs. The part costs $1665. Pray for provision of this part, and also for a quick passage back to us as it plays a vital role in helping us diagnose patients!

- One of my co-nurses (and a very good friend) has lost a family member this week, and I lost one of my most treasured mentors from my church back home... pray for our hearts to grieve and to live the legacy of love that these beautiful women left.

-There are still many Haitians who don't know the hope of Jesus. Pray for opportunities for them to encounter Him, and for us as we serve at the clinic to share openly and walk in the Love that we know through Christ.

-Pray too, as we work in the clinic, for our hearts as we process and respond to difficult situations, and for God's wisdom to guide us as we treat patients. Pray for healing for our patients.

I want to say again a huge thank you for journeying alongside me in prayer, it means the world to me!

Chapter Six: Sights on the Mountain and Stirrings in the Heart

This weekend, we had a little retreat in the mountains to celebrate easter weekend. It was a time of refreshment and reflection on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Yesterday, we decided to follow the road up the mountain to see what we could find. Here are some pictures of our adventure!

This is one of the beautiful buildings we saw on our hike! It was so intricate.

Emily and I found some nice new real estate opportunities

A beautiful painted rock along the side of the road

"She think's my saddle's sexy" 

Hibiscus flowers adding some color to our walk!

Okay, so get this. We are right at the top of a mountain, and one of the haitian girls we are walking beside tells us to follow her to where the artisans work. We end up in this little village where they have areas for artisans to set up, a covered area for a food market, and most bizarrely of all, a tennis court! This mural is painted at the end of the court.

This is the stage that borders the tennis court. 

The amazing view

This is at our hotel, where we spent our time in worship and studying the resurrection

The garden was gorgeous

This is the front of the hotel!

It was nice and cool being in the mountain air... I even wore sweat pants! We also came back from our hike drenched with sweat and the excitement of adventure, only to find they had turned the electricity on, which meant warm showers! It was my first warm shower in the past month, and it did not disappoint!!

I am always so humbled upon reflecting on the humanity of Jesus... that He would step out of Heaven and walk in flesh, as one able to empathize with our weaknesses. That He, having no sin of His own to confess, would take mine to the cross and die my death. And on the third day, the stone would be rolled away to reveal that my Jesus rose! It was impossible for death to hold Him. The picture that puts in my mind of Jesus fighting against the hold of death, motivated by the purest, most furious kind of love. Yelling out "I'm coming for my bride!" as He struggled and WON.
And He has made us co-heirs, more than conquerors... oh yes, this is a time to reflect on how very much we have to be thankful for!!!

Chapter Five: His Grace Abounds in Deepest Waters

Due to my inability to remember to bring my camera with me, or to use it when I do have it, my picture taking has been very limited so far. But, I broke all my usual rules when we went to the beach, and managed to sneak a few shots of the beauty I had the joy of spending the day in!

As I floated in the wake, staring off into that distant horizon line, I felt small in a beautiful way. It's like the kind of smallness that comes from looking up into an endless canopy of stars. My smallness, beautiful playing out in the midst of my Creator's vastness. The small ripples of my life incorporated into the picture He was painting me.

This is Emily! She is a rock star of a nurse, and I have learned so much from her. She also has a gigantic heart, and it's so fun to watch her in action.

And this is all of us girls! Jen is stuck in the middle with me, she primarily handles the wound care and prenatal assessments in the clinic as well as managing the guesthouse and making me feel totally at home. She is absolutely hilarious, and she is great at what she does. Andrea is on the end, an intern at a neighboring mission for a few months. It's been a blast getting to know these ladies!

I'm going to highlight some experiences I have had at the clinic, but I want to give fair warning to those who don't like to read about medical procedures and nursing things... skip this paragraph :)
It's hard to know how to begin to describe a day in the clinic... but I will say this: you never know what to expect! We started this week off with a breast biopsy. Jim typically removes the entire lump and sends it to the US for pathology. The woman receiving the surgery, despite multiple attempts at explaining the procedure, was unable to comprehend that we were only taking the lump out, and thought we were removing her entire breast. In the middle of her procedure, she became anxious and grabbed her wide open incision, contaminating the sterile field and causing some bleeding. With all of this going on, a visiting student who was observing fainted. It got a little wild in there, but with some teamwork and Jim's calm completion of the procedure, all ended well. Sometimes, things masquerade as simple, and God has given us abundant grace for the suddenly complex moments! We also saw a woman that recently miscarried early into her pregnancy, who started hemorrhaging while attempting to expel what remained in her uterus. It happened fast, but so did the response of the clinic staff. She received fluids and oxytocin to contract her uterus, and once again, all ended well!

Today, the last patient of the day came in for a prenatal check-up. Jenn measured her fundal height and found some discrepancies between the size of her uterus and the dates given, so we sonogrammed her pregnant belly. Inside, we found not one baby, but two! It was a moment of joy as we watched these two wee ones squirming around, looking as if they were already kicking each other ;) It was a great way to end the day.

As I have already shared in previous posts, sometimes I get discouraged at wanting to be able to give more, but finding myself limited by still learning the language, or something silly like fumbling through a nursing procedure. I have been reflecting on the parable of the talents this week, found in Matthew 25:14-30.

"For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money."

I can't help but wonder, did the servants compare how much they had been given to be responsible for? Did they wonder why one received five while they received two, or one? My human nature, especially in a place of learning and constantly being humbled, identifies as the servant given one talent. Because of Christ, I have something to give, and it doesn't always feel like much!! But you know how the story goes... the servants who invested what they had received the master's praise, and the servant who squandered his faced his master's displeasure.

And so I am realizing... it doesn't even matter how much I can give, only that I give everything I have... and in doing so, Christ will be glorified! That is a very freeing thing. My "best" is adequate. My "best" is different from your "best". I may admire someone else's "best", but I am not called to duplicate it.

So today I leave you with this beautiful thought!

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'." -Erma Bombeck

Chapter Four: Mosquito Bites for Jesus

If pride had it's way, I would tell you of a girl who never struggles, a girl who's attitude could overcome the circumstances of day to day life in Haiti. I would tell you of her willingness to tackle new things, and her ever present attitude of thankfulness....

Yes, I could tell you all those things... but instead, I will tell you the truth.

Being in Haiti is not always easy. There are days when I get so frustrated at wishing I had more to offer, days where I compare myself to the people who have been here for months and find myself falling short There are days when I complain far too much about the heat. There have been days when a pepto bismol commercial lists everything I am feeling in it's jingle. There are days that I can't take a joke or days where I am quick to speak in anger. There are days I can't get a needle in a vein (which any nurse can attest to being frustrating!) There are days I forget to be thankful at all.
I am in constant need of God's abundant, beautiful grace.

I was sick halfway through this past week, and as always seems to happen, my heart faltered when my health did.  To me, sickness was a physical representation of failure, and that perspective poisoned my attitude. To top it all off, while I slept off my nausea, a mosquito (or a whole mosquito army!) chose to make a snack out of me! (So to everyone who thinks tropical temperatures are dreamy, remember they come with a cost!)

Yep, that happened. Now, I hate bug bites not only because of the itch, but also because I become so self conscious of how my skin looks. Having white skin is a glaring enough difference here without being speckled with red dots!

This is so ridiculous to admit, but it even got to a point where I shied away from taking vitals for waiting patients, afraid that people would draw attention to my polka dotted arms. As I moped about with an attitude that reeked worse than the clinic garbages (which trust me, REALLY reek), my heart was gripped by a simple, convicting thought.
Do I truly value the appearance of my skin over the work that Jesus has called me to do? Am I so worried about some silly red bumps that I would refuse to show love to some beautiful people?! Most concerning... the biggest question of all.... would I allow a circumstance I couldn't control to dictate whether or not I would go on serving?

I don't want the answer to be yes. I am claiming my mosquito bites, and any other silly inconvenience I may happen upon, for Christ. I will choose to serve. I will choose to love. With every mosquito bite I count, I will thank God for something. I will desperately beg God for humility. and for perspective over silly things like mosquito bites! Finally, I will remember that I am not here to succeed, I am not here with any ability to change hearts or to fly around as a super nurse. I am here as a testimony of a broken person that God has redeemed. I am here to learn, and to grow, even to fail... I am here to trust God to come through in it all.

Praiseworthy news... Three people came to know the Lord through morning devo at the clinic Thursday morning :)

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory which far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

"Not that we are sufficient in outselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency comes from God" 2 Corinthians 3:5

Chapter Three: Some Perspective

It's sometimes difficult to envision where people are and what they are seeing. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are seven that I took (on the compound only!) to give you an idea where I spend day to day life here in Haiti. I will post more pictures outside the walls later :)

This is the beautiful place I am calling home for two more months!

In my first post, I mentioned how if I had arrived three weeks earlier they would have trained me in a tent. This is the inside of that tent! In total, there are three. One tent was a waiting room, another tent was for administration and where Sally (the pediatric nurse practitioner) saw her little patients. The one pictured here is where the doctors and nurse practitioners saw their patients. They did all their exams and even surgeries under the roof of this tent! Now, I only stood in this tent for five minutes and was sweltering hot. Meanwhile, these amazing people spent a couple summers in these tents (which reached a temperature of  a whopping 114 degrees farenheit... that's 45 degrees celsius!!!) It really makes one appreciate the new facility that God has provided!

This is the outside of the tent. As you can see, the move was very timely!

This is the front of the brand new Haiti Health Ministries Clinic!

The new pharmacy is still undergoing construction, but they are working fast. When I arrived, those walls were a third as high.

This is the guesthouse kitchen. Instead of eating a big supper, here as clinic staff we all eat our big lunch here together. We also meet for bible study and a potluck supper on Sunday evenings!

 And this is me, sweating it out under the hot sun, some picture proof that I am really here! (I still can't comprehend it some days!)

This week, someone received Christ at the church I attended, and two more accepted Christ into their life at the Clinic. God is on the move! I am so humbled to be able to witness God at work in the lives of these Haitians, and feel Him so tangibly at work in mine.