Praise GOD for Kate!

So many people have prayed for Kate that I thought I would post the whole story in case anyone wants to read it. :)

Sunday afternoon one of our children accidently slammed our outside metal gate on Kate's middle finger. Long story short, it was nasty--definitly broken, and a VERY deep cut.

We decided to take her into town right away and made calls to see if any good doctors were at the big teaching hospital at the moment. My friend Hilkka arranged for two surgeons to meet us at the ER when we arrived. They were SO kind--one great Indian doctor (hand surgeon?!) and one great American woman general surgeon. They looked at her finger, poked, prodded, examined, and then decided not to do anything :). Remove the picture of the typical ER from your mind, and instead replace it with a room with beds right next to eachother and lots of people crying and talking. No machines, and (as we found out the next day) not even a scale that worked. They discussed what to do the next day and Dr. Reddy said that he would stitch her up the next morning. Dr. Katrina asked about just stitching her up that night (sounded good to us) but he said no sutures were available. She happened to bring some from her apartment. Still, there was no place to do it where there would be good light, he said, so come back the next day.

We drove home a little slower than we had come, and Kate slept the whole way. When we got home, we rinsed it with salt water, wrapped the whole thing up and put her to bed (her favorite thumb also wrapped up) and prepared for a long night. She didn't make a peep. :)

Next morning our whole family got up and left the house before 7 to head to town. Got to the hospital and met Dr. Katrina. She went through some of the procedures with us and explained that she had gotten us on the surgery list for the morning. My friend Hilkka, who works there, called around and within ten minutes there were three American pediatricians standing with us, ready to help! Dr. Reddy came and got his scrubs on and, after scouring this huge hospital for a scale that worked (to figure out the amount for sedation), we wrapped Kate in a sheet and took her into the OR area. At this point Dave and the kids left for the airport, as my folks were arriving on a plane soon.

After getting ready, two of the pediatricians and Dr. Katrina talked to the nurse anesthetist to ask him what he was going to give her (our main concern about the whole deal). He said he would just give her general anesthesia, which the doc strongly recommended not doing, as the whole procedure was only going to take a couple of minutes. He agreed to a more mild sedation, didn't even look at her weight, and I prayed a lot. Sent her off to surgery (she wasn't very excited about going!).

She came out about twenty minutes later, and although kind of grouchy, she was totally fine.

She is still healing today, but certainly isn't letting a big fat bandage get in her way! She even tried writing with her big hand. :)

God is so good, and we are so thankful for all of you and your prayers. We are SO blessed!

Witch Doctor?

Local Witch Doctor

Today was a medical day in town. We have many local witch doctors, and while we obviously wouldn't visit them, the question nevertheless remains, "WHICH doctor?" The options are more varied than in the past, for which we are grateful. We used to have the doctor at Hindu Union hospital, Dr. Kochar, who was a sweet old man who knew his local illnesses like the back of his hand, only he couldn't see his hand, or your rash, the back of your throat, etc. We went to him if we had illnesses that you could describe but didn't need any kind of observation. Then there was the other doctor at the Tumaini clinic (Swahili for "hope") who was exceptional at ears, but had a lousy lab--don't go there to get tested for malaria (you will have it, typhoid, and any other number of diagnoses). Which left one a bit devoid of the promised comfort, or else hoping there was a better lab nearby.


Recently they have come up with these handy home tests for malaria, which are terrific (you can poke your child in the comfort of your own house), and for everything else we go to the lab that we have gotten the most "negative" malaria tests from (in an effort to make sure that they don't misdiagnose something, they often write down a "positive" even when it isn't.) Yesterday we went to Hindu Union, since they are supposed to have a good doctor in there at the moment. We arrived, checked in, and looked at pictures of all the things we were glad we didn't have on the wall. Then we saw the doctor, who asked for symptoms and vaguely looked at both Megan and Carter. He told Carter he was destroying his teeth by chewing gum (I held my tongue about the sugar-free part) and then wrote out a slip for us to get urine, blood, etc. samples. I had also brought a sample from the daughter of a couple that is staying with us, as she has had diarrhea for a couple days. He said that was fine, but they wouldn't find anything in it (remember, we were not at Tumaini anymore). We went through the "collecting" rituals, Carter a bit pale after his encounter with the needle. Came back later for the results and found out that the doctor hadn't ordered a full blood screen and he needed one, so Carter had to encounter the needle again, this time on the other arm. At the end of the day, "there is no much problem"--what they said last time to Lauren, who looked at me and said, "You mean I'm going to feel this way forever?"


Not that we have anything to complain about...if things get bad enough, we can go to Nairobi, or anywhere--the people we live with rarely go to the hospital and when they do, it takes the entire day (this is not an exaggeration...Jake and I waited for five hours to see a doctor once, and we considered ourselves lucky) and much of their savings. Our neighbor girl, 21, died of tetanus recently (and yes, they did make a last-ditch effort to the witch doctor), and we live in a country where someone dies of malaria every six minutes. One out of six children die before five years old. Those statistics, though staggering, don't touch our hearts until we put faces and names with them. How about Esther, Mariam, and Jonathan, three of the more than 1,000,000 orphans in Tanzania, who are going to move into their new Mavuno house this weekend?! :)

Jonathan and his new mama :)

Family house 2 coming along!

This last weekend we were able to get some more details of Family House 2 finished.

"We," meaning Dave and the kids and Hitesh and Lucy, who are here for three months along with Wayne Stolzfus, who is here for 8 weeks. This house has seemed like a long time coming, but it is almost done! We praise GOD for all the progress He has allowed us to make, and John, Milka and their three new kids are ready to move SOON!

Humble Moments II

Yesterday I drove by an old neighbor of ours from town. This lady is in her 50's, wheel-chair bound due to polio, and she is a sweet Christian. I was kind of in a hurry, headed elsewhere, but thought I should stop and greet her. So I pulled the car up close to her chair and opened the door so I could lean out and talk to her (she was on the passenger's side). She was so excited to see me that she pushed her legs off the seat so that her whole body fell off of the bike as she held on with her arms, then she grabbed the foot step and the seat to pull all the weight of her body up into the car--"I want to come in your car to greet you!" This was a tremendous struggle for her, but she did it quickly, then pulled herself up again so she could greet Kate in the back seat and give me a big hug. All this time, I was thinking about how I couldn't even get out of my car with perfectly good legs to go around and take two minutes to greet her. She didn't think a thing of it...gave me a big hug, and "Greet Baba Hannah for me" and then I picked her up and put her back in her chair. Humbling? Absolutely. I pray this is one of the last more embarrasing "Humbling" posts I have on here!

humble moments

Today we visited the neighbor lady's house. She lives a simple five-minute walk from ours but we are worlds apart, she and I. We sat under the shade of a skinny tree in her front "yard" (all-dirt area, freshly swept), she constantly aware of where I was in relation to the sun, always encouraging me to move over into more shade. We talked about the rain (we need more), her husband who died three years ago (killed by a neighbor), her grandchildren playing around us, her sore leg that is bothering her. She would lapse into her tribal kisukuma language and leave me hanging in the conversation, much to the delight of her older granddaughter who kept telling her "Grandma! She doesn't understand you anymore!" In the midst of this, Carter went with one of the girls to look at a jack fruit in the yard and stepped in chicken poop. "Mom, I kinda stepped in something..." This old grandma, who can't get up off the dirt, tells her granddaughter to bring some water. No big deal, right? When was the last time you carried your water two kilometers on your head to be used for dishes, clothes, cooking and bathing? I can't remember when I ever have either. Granddaughter pours a VERY generous amount (especially because she is the one who probably carries it) in a small basin and washes Carter's foot off. How humbling! What a visual reminder of the kind of service we are called to as Christians, coming from some very "heathen" people! What generosity shown to people who they know have so much more. And I thought, "When was the last time I washed anyone's feet?"
Jesus, make me more like you.