What a beautiful sunset tonight! It lit up the sky with streaks of fire and cast a pink hue over everything. Nature often makes me want to break out in praises to the one who paints the heavens, sets the stars in place, assures cyclic rising and setting of the sun, and knits us together in our mothers´ womb!
The weather here is quite nice other than the heat and humidity between noon and 4:00. Even that is not unbearable. Sometimes torrential downpours alleviate the heat during the day. They also send us girls shrieking and scampering outdoors to grab the clothes off the clotheslines before they are re-soaked! Today several loads of linens from the clinic were hanging to dry when a tropical downpour appeared nearly without warning. Five of us girls scurried to grab whatever we could and hide them under our hunched shoulders for less than a minute before the rest were too wet to save. I believe we saved about ¾ of what was hanging on the lines. We hung what we could under a small awning and the girls began to laugh at me because my scrubs were soaked all except for a bit around my hips! We all had a good laugh at our collective hysteria.
Yesterday, two of the girls and I trekked through Xocempich asking at each tiny store whether they had certain baking ingredients for banana bread. Interesting enough, bananas were the most difficult ingredient to find! We returned about a half hour later triumphant and ready to bake. We had a proper party laughing at the oddest things while I explained to them what I was doing. I only wish I had more experience with old gas ovens. Apparently, you must hand light them and let it warm up a bit as you s-l-o-w-l-y turn the knob up to the proper temperature (if only the oven heated past 300 degrees! At least it makes for softer bread!). The first time I lit the oven I assured it was functioning correctly and raised it to 300, 50 degrees below the desired temperature. As soon as I turned away a small *BOOM* sounded from the oven, causing the door to open enough to as to make quite noise when it slammed back into proper position. All three of us squeaked and jumped back a couple of feet. The immediate danger passed, I dove to turn the oven off and the kitchen soon resounded with nervous laughter. Fortunately, the second time´s the charm. The banana bread turned out beautifully and the girls are asking for more! Tomorrow we bake brownies and muffins, as per gifts given to the girls by previous American groups.
I am pleased to finally have had one-on-one conversations with each of the girls, adding to the camaraderie and ease in the group. We seem to be meshing quite nicely though I often feel out of place simply because I do not know where the vast majority of equipment is in the clinic.
I have found my role in the clinic is not one of hands-on experience like I had expected, rather, as an educated observer, teacher, and mentor. As students they are required to staff the clinic on rotating shifts and have very specific rules and responsibilities both on duty and off. Like me, they also look forward to hands-on experience as many of the clinic visits do not require any treatment from the students. Those who do nearly always require gluteal injections of either pain medicine or antibiotics. I try to help out with their more mundane tasks like cutting and folding gauze and making cotton balls as those are the kinds of things required in any underpaid small-town clinic that hospitals in America provide pre-packaged and ready for use. I also hope to learn how to pack and sterilize instruments sometime soon.
I have taken a bit more time these last couple of day for prayer and devotions. Some of that is due to being familiar with the girls´ schedule and some is for preparing my heart and my relationship with the Lord so I can better witness to the girls and others who come to the clinic.
I have definitely been blessed to have as much time as I do for prayer and meditation. The opportunity to have a house to myself where I can one moment shout my praises and sing at the top of my lungs and the next moment to just be silent is so freeing. I savour the lack of time crunches from which I could never escape at school. As much as the trials at school aided my relationship with the Lord it also strained it as far too often my attention was stripped from my personal time with Him to instead type furiously in front of a lifeless lit screen or cram all semblance of critical information from a textbook into my ever tiring brain. I want to make the most of this opportunity to lay aside the hindrances to my relationship with the Lord, making the most of my time with Him for these days (and time itself!) are evil.
Through my studies in John and Luke I have been impressed with how our devotion and obedience to the Lord is truly in response to his love for us (Romans 5:6-11). I believe this is the theme God wants me to use to minister to the girls. The book of John wholeheartedly focuses on the agape love of God demonstrated through his son, Jesus Christ and those are the kinds of verses the girls are picking out to read and discuss each morning. I feel the Holy Spirit telling me that once someone honestly conoce (Spanish for 'knows in their heart') the love He has for us, the obedience will naturally follow.
As we are all familiarize ourselves with a new schedule (devotions in the morning, music theory and voice at 2:00 and perhaps English in the evenings sometime soon) things are slowly running more smoothly (HA! Slowly? I have only been here a week!). Unfortunately, not everything can possibly happen on time as everything revolves around the workload in the clinic. For the last two days we have not had music class because of the patient load (the primary in each case had to do with a broken finger!).
Prayer:
For a couple that came to the clinic today. The 20 year old wife is one month pregnant and came in because of bleeding. Via ultrasound the doctor found the beginnings of a spontaneous miscarriage. The issue is complicated by the fact the girl is rather thin due to an active E-coli infection. The miscarriage is most likely due to that and the subsequent nutritional deficits. Family is priority one in this area and this is their first child. They were both clearly crushed. The doctor put her on absolute bed rest though he made it clear she will most likely lose the baby soon. I am praying for God to knit the baby together and she would miraculously carry it to term, and that his perfect will be done, among many other things.
For continued spiritual growth in both myself and the girls.
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