Some changes

The last few months have been quiet for me on the blog front.  It's been a struggle to create time to write, and there always seems to be something more pressing that needs doing.  But tonight all of my people are asleep and I feel the writing bug, so ... here's to a new post, finally!

I'm not going to attempt to catch up on months of neglected posting, but I am excited about a couple of recent changes in our lives.  (Much of this is the result of a Christmas gift from one of the couples here on station - a date night! Our kids spent a very fun evening at their house while Mark and I enjoyed an entire afternoon and evening of uninterrupted conversation, and a dinner delivery so I didn't have to spend my 'free' evening cooking for us. It. Was. Amazing.)

The areas in which we're making some changes are - my approach to homeschooling, the amount of hired help we have in the house, and my involvement at the hospital. 

After a lot of deliberation and prayer, we are switching our school curriculum.  Our new school books arrived in the mail recently, and we started using them this week - and we're excited!  However, this curriculum doesn't come with DVDs so I am hands-on teaching for the entire school morning as well as preparing for Levi's preschool year (which I think will look much different than Anna's!).  In light of this change, we have decided to hire additional help for me at home.  Currently we have a lady come one half-day a week, so we'll be adding another half day or (hopefully!) two. 

A second reason for this is that beginning the last week of this month, I will be spending one morning a week at the hospital doing patient education.  I'm so excited about this!  Some members of staff recently suggested that patients need more teaching than the doctors are able to provide given the time constraints of a very busy hospital - both on the wards and in the outpatient department.  However, since the current budget doesn't allow for an additional nurse to be hired for this position, myself and another missionary RN will be beginning patient teaching during the week. 
I can't count the number of times Mark has come home from clinic with stories about patients who were truly trying to do the right thing to help themselves or a family member, but because of lack of information ended up doing more harm than good.  The young mother who came in with a malnourished baby after weaning too early, having been told by relatives that she would pass her asthma to her child through her breastmilk.  The man with high blood pressure who had stopped adding salt to his food in an effort to control his hypertension, but had no idea that the boullion-cube-esque seasoning that he'd switched to and is cheap to buy here is also loaded with salt.  The elderly man with COPD who dutifully brought his (unopened) inhaler back to his follow-up appointments but wasn't getting any better. 
It breaks my heart that in order for the doctors here to get through the line of patients who are waiting to be seen each day - some of whom have travelled for days just to get to the hospital - they simply don't have the time to sit and teach their patients how to manage their various illnesses.  And, as it happens, I learned in nursing school that this is something I love to do!  So, starting in a couple of weeks, I'll be working with a translator to provide education on two of the more common (and most commonly misunderstood) illnesses that bring people to the clinic: diabetes, and asthma. 
As I've been creating my teaching material, it has struck me that these are two diseases with which I am well acquainted: I have had some level of gestational diabetes in all my pregnancies, and my son has asthma for which daily medical management is required.  I can easily identify with the patients I'll be teaching. 
It has been challenging to put together teaching material that will be understood across the language and cultural differences. Most of the patients I'll be teaching do not have any concept of foods being made of carbohydrates or being broken down into sugars (so yes, I have come up with diabetes education material that doesn't reference carbs at all!).  And it's not as simple as reading food labels, counting carbs and looking for sugar-free or low-carb options.  When you subsistence farm and what you grow and eat is a very starchy root vegetable, transitioning to a low-carb diet can pose quite a challenge!  Also, there is a fairly prevalent idea here that sickness is brought on by either sin in your life, or the curse of someone with whom you have recently fallen out.  This is an idea I will have to challenge as I meet with patients.
My translator told me today as we went through some of my teaching material, that she was actually a patient of Mark's in the fall, when she'd been having some breathing difficulty.  Mark prescribed her an inhaler to use for the duration of her illness, and was actually able to sit and teach her how to use it.  However, when she went home she confided to her husband that she was nervous about this new kind of medicine.  It wasn't a 'drink-marisin' (a tablet or liquid medicine to drink) and it wasn't a 'shoot-maricin' (a shot), and she felt anxious about it.  Her husband had to remind her that Dr Mark wouldn't give her something dangerous, and that if he told her to use it she should use it. 

Knowledge is something we take for granted so easily in the west.  We can acquire any information we want within seconds online, and do many times a day - especially information pertaining to our health and well-being.  I love the idea of empowering people to take care of themselves and their families by providing them with the information to do so.  I'm a little nervous about it since I haven't done any type of nursing work in about a year and a half, but I'm excited to be able to hopefully make a small difference in the lives of some of the patients who come through our hospital.

The internet is back! (maybe)

For the last couple of weeks our internet has been patchy to non-existent, but things seem to be running faster today so I'm going to try uploading a catch-up blog post. So ... what has been going on in our little corner of the mountains recently?

Well, we have gotten back into our school groove and are in our third week of Abeka K5. We have a teacher and classmates on our school DVDs, and Mrs Reese is Anna's kindergarten teacher this year.

Reviewing her accomplishments last year on her first day of this school year.  She needed some spelling help, but got a lot of it on her own!

 Reciting the Pledge with Mrs Reese

This is a very different approach from our first year of school, but it's going pretty well.  The first month or so of DVD lessons is reviewing material already covered last year, so at some points in the DVD we just switch to our own material and continue where we left off before the summer.  A definite strength of the Abeka program is their focus on memorisation.  In the first three weeks of classes, Anna has committed to memory the Pledge of Allegiance,  the Lord's Prayer, three Bible verses, three poems and numerous new songs, and is also learning to write in cursive.  Levi will often sit with her and listen to her classes, and has started reciting bits and pieces of her work with her, which is fun to listen to :) 

This little girl is growing quickly; hard to believe she is approaching 7 months!  She is almost sitting up by herself, and can squirm her way around on the floor now.  She's started eating solids, although I think I may have ruined her for life by making the rookie mistake of starting her on delicious bananas instead of some bland vegetable.  So now she has her mama's incurable sweet tooth and rejects her vegetables, silly girl! 

Family dinner, times five

Over the last few weeks, the measles outbreak seems to have slowed down and Mark is barely seeing any new cases at the hospital.  We have been staying home from church since the beginning of the outbreak since Lucy is not old enough to be vaccinated, and whenever she is out and about with me she receives plenty of attention, love and touching from our PNG neighbours :)  So we have had a couple months of family church at home in our living room in an attempt to not expose her to the illness.
However, Mark and I have each had the opportunity to take one or both of the big kids out to a bush church. Recently Mark stayed with Lucy while I took Anna and Levi to the church of a nearby orphanage.  We went with another missionary family and were able to take part in leading the service. Anna helped me teach a Bible verse to the kids - "Ol sipsip bilong me i save harim maus bilong me" (John 10:27 - "My sheep know my voice") - and explain the analogy of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  

Pastor Ruth leading the service

This lady, Jenny, gave Anna a bilum (bag) she had made as a gift

 Trading babies after the service :)

Since we're a little short on recreation/ free time options here, Mark has been developing a new hobby that makes use of one thing that IS here - the workshop.  He has been learning from some of the guys on station who are responsible for maintenance and construction, and has built a porch swing, night stand and now a much-needed bookshelf for our house.  Levi has been learning right along with him, and is always glad for the chance to go see (if not actually use yet) the power tools :)

Levi enjoying the fruits of his (dad's) labour 

 

 On the 16th of this month, PNG celebrated the anniversary of its independence from Australia.  We invited one of Mark's colleagues from the ER, Petrus, and his family to our house for lunch and were able to learn a little more about traditional celebrations and customs that mark this day.  After lunch Petrus and Mark walked to his village to watch some of the local fun, while Francesca and I visited and the kids played. 

Anna spent the afternoon catching butterflies with Grace, Emma & Ruth (L-R), Petrus' girls

So, there you have a little glimpse into what has been going on here while our more regular updates were on hold :) 

Prettiest girls I've ever seen

The unfair answer to prayer

(Note: I started working on this post several weeks ago, but delayed posting it because I don't feel like I answered any of the questions I've been asking since I started writing it! I am still posting it, though, because I would rather be honest about not having answers than give up asking difficult questions :) )

When I wrote about Levi's recent hospital admission, I briefly mentioned a patient in the next bed to his in the ER - a little girl about his age who was also in respiratory distress, with a possible diagnosis of pneumonia (like Levi), but whose breathing sounded even worse than his and who even in the couple of hours we were there, deteriorated noticeably.  Her parents stood on either side of her bed, her mother making phone calls in tears, presumably updating relatives or friends on the condition of her child.

I don't know whether this little girl lived or died; my guess would be that she didn't make it through the night.  I don't know her name, or where she was from, how long she had been sick ... but what I do know is how her mother felt as she watched her child struggling to draw every breath, and the uncertainty they faced about what the next hours and days would bring their family.

Praise God, Levi improved after a terrifying 48 hours.  We are so thankful!  As Mark and I have talked about what happened during that first night, we certainly feel overwhelming gratitude towards Dr Erin, whose skill and attentiveness as his doctor were amazing.  However, we also know that literally hundreds of people across the world - even many who we are unlikely ever to meet - were praying for Levi.  And although modern(ish!) medicine definitely played its part in Levi's recovery, we know that without the incredible prayer coverage of family, friends and total strangers, Levi's outcome could have been shatteringly different.

What if we had been that other family in the ER? The one who didn't have hundreds of people standing in prayer for the life of their child? I still get to watch my son run around and play with his big sister, and hug him every morning when he comes running out of his bedroom to find me; did that little girl's mother deserve any less simply because she didn't have a phenomenal network of believers across the world who were willing to drop what they were doing and pray for her child? What makes me any different from her? Why was my son spared when her daughter very likely died that night? Or what about the lady Mark cared for just yesterday, who came to the ER from the remote Jimi Valley after being in labour for many days with her deceased baby's arm presenting when she arrived? All of my pregnancies and deliveries have involved some level of complication requiring skilled medical intervention in a hospital setting.  The mother from the Jimi loved her baby no less than I love mine, the life of her child held no less value than mine, but I had access to the care I needed and she didn't.

I have thought about these questions many times in the last few weeks, and not come up with a satisfactory answer.  In fact, my questions have multiplied as I have mused.  Do the prayers of many people hold more weight before God than the prayers of one desperate mother?  What is my responsibility, knowing that prayer changes things and there may be patients here who don't have anyone other than their doctor or the hospital chaplain praying for them? How do I invest my heart in the hurting people around us, without emotionally incapacitating myself from caring for our own family's needs?

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I do know that Jesus was well acquainted with sorrow and suffering (Is 53), that He has promised comfort to those who are mourning (Matt 5) and that He uses us to meet the practical needs of His people who are hurting (Rom 12, 1 John 3).  I also know that while I may not be able to care for the lady who shows up in the middle of the night for an emergency C-section to deliver her dead baby, or for the teenager diagnosed with cancer or the victim of a bush-knife attack, there is one thing I can do.

Ezekiel 22 and Isaiah 6 both describe God searching for someone to stand or act on behalf of His people who, even in their sin, He loves desperately. In the Isaiah account, God found what He was looking for. But in Ezekiel, there was no-one whose heart was moved to stand between God's people and their destruction.

The one thing that I can do, even while hanging laundry or putting children to bed or sweeping crumbs off the floor, is to allow my heart to be moved to prayer.  I am being more deliberate in my praying.  Stopping what we're doing when Mark goes back to work for an emergency, and sitting down with the kids to pray together for those he is going to care for. Knowing the names of his patients so that I can pray into their lives in a specific way.  Pausing throughout the day to pray for the spiritual and emotional (and physical!) reserves of each of the doctors who are caring for patients here every day.

I may not be given answers to all my questions, but I do know that prayer is effective and has the power to change reality.  It changed Levi's on that awful night last month, and that experience motivates me both to thankfulness and to prayer for the hurting and needy around me.