Pictures!

With Linda and friends
Nurses' station
My first delivery!!!!!

Labor

Sunday morning about 6:15 am I welcomed a handsome, big baby boy into the world! What a privilege - I have dreamed of doing a delivery for a long time and was so thoroughly delighted with this answer to my prayer! And I believe it was just the beginning . . . I am on-call at the Ferke hospital to assist with deliveries there.

Labor is pain with great expectation, great hope and great joy to come. It is indeed great pain, but when the baby arrives the joy eclipses the pain.

While encountering my own "contractions" God spoke to me through John 16:20-21. With Him, the grief cannot last. Joy is coming. During contractions, we can follow advice given by Ivorian matrons: breathe deep and rest, don't make a big fuss. As believers, we can rest in Jesus' presence with us and the peace He gives us. We have great hope in Him for His daily compassion and mercy AND for an eternity delighting in His presence on a new earth where righteousness and joy will eclipse sorrow.

I am currently working in the wards at the hospital alongside Ivorian nurses. This has been a wonderful experience. I am making dear friends and learning many things. However, it is not without sorrows. In the past few weeks, two young moms (teens) have died. Often, patients arrive when the illnesses have progressed significantly and sometimes beyond hope of recovery. I have had the privilege of praying with patients as well as sharing the good news of Jesus with a patient's son while sitting at her bedside slowing pushing in IV medications.

The hospital is also a campground since the families come to stay here and provide food and care for the sick family member. When I arrive at 6 am to start working, I walk past grass mats on which people are sleeping - sometimes an infant lying alongside the mother is awake and staying quietly beside her.

Almost every afternoon I go over to visit or play Frisbee with my Congolese friend Momi, her house helper Fatou (13) and young daughter Rosa. Momi's husband is a doctor at the hospital and they live a stone's throw from my duplex, which is about a 1 minute walk from the hospital buildings. This week Momi taught me how to make a Congolese meal!

I am sensing God re-igniting the flame for long-term commitment to sharing the good news of Jesus in another culture. Will it be here? I do not yet know. But there sure are a lot of people praying I'll come back!

Hopefully pictures to come . . .

Presence

Thomas's question in John 14 is much like mine: "Lord, we don't know where You are going, so how can we know the way?" In my own words, "I can't see what's next . . ." And the way? Jesus replies "I am the way."

This past week, God has been calling me to lift up my eyes to Him, to look at and to Him. (Psalms 121 and 123). In the midst of changes and my ever present questions about the future, my eyes need to look at Him who is my Way.

Rod says that God is a sending God. So, as we are sent, we experience the reality of the gospel in a deeper, fuller way (Philemon 1:6, NIV). And therefore, without being sent, we cannot experience the fullness of the gospel . . .

Ivorians are very present people. They are with you - whether in the simplicity of an everyday greeting or in the depths of grief. They are present.

Last Saturday, news of a great tragedy reached the church courtyard where I was attending a women's meeting. The 3 year old girl I saw in her aunt's wedding one week prior, along with 2 other 3 year old boys (Muslim), had been found dead inside an abandoned car not far from home. People flooded to sit in the courtyard with or near the family. They just sat. Came to be, not to speak.

Likewise, in clinic this week, the RN, interpreter and myself sat with a pregnant gal who had just received the news she was HIV positive. She was stunned. Sat silent a bit, then burst into tears. Touch, presence, prayer and encouragement. Linda said "God will give you the strength to bear this."

Since Monday, I have been in Ferkessedougou at the Hopital Baptiste working mostly with maternity patients, which I love. I am learning so much from Linda, who has lived most of her life here and by experience is far more than an RN! She is a midwife, anesthetist, family practitioner/nurse practitioner. One veiled Muslim woman came in, 3 months pregnant and suffering from the results of an axe blade swung at her head by a rival wife. She is one of 5 wives married to what she calls a "complicated" husband. She has 4 children already. Two women gave birth today in the clinic room - no time to move back into the labor room!

A Fulani gal came in this week on her 10th pregnancy at 25 years old. She lost the last 5 babies, dead at birth. I stayed with her for part of her labor - until the contractions paused - and attempted to communicate without a common language. An answer to prayer, she had a live little girl during the night! On Friday, I met her baby and spent 3 hours in the room with her and another mom and baby who I had met the day prior(I didn't run fast enough to make that delivery!). Those 3 hours were precious. I was able to help the first-time mom learn to feed her baby as well as share the gospel with her in French. Both mothers and grandmothers offered me the babies!

Continue to pray for health, strength and quick grasp of the language and that I will be full of His Spirit in the everyday moments with people here.