Live Your Life for the Benefit of Others

Thanking God for yet another good week at clinic and for more meds. God is good.

 Things have been pretty low key for the most part around here.(besides the longer days at clinic with normal consultations and a bit of odd cases. ) We had one birth last week,but it had been a good couple of weeks before that  that we had one.

(Katie,baby,Kayla, Autumn and the Pt. Midwife)

Please excuse our unprofessionalism in this pic;) It was seven o'clock Thursdays evening when we got a nock on the gate. Sure enough,it was a lady on labor.(since it had been so long we were expecting it.) So Kayla,Autumn and I quickly ran to clinic to see what the status was on this lady. She was a first time mom and hardly in the first stages of labor. As we were down at clinic and just had decided we were going to send the lady back home,  it began to pour down heavy rain. So we sat up a bed in the hospital room for our patient and her husband  and decided they could stay the night and we would just make a quick dash for the house in the rain since it didn't look like it was going  to stop any time soon. We had almost reached our gate to our compound when we heard our names called out. "Mis Mis." We turned and looked to see yet a other laboring lady coming down the trail on a cot drenched from the rain. So we turned back around and headed straight back to clinic. By the time we got there,not only was the patient drenched from the rain,but so were we and the rest of the crowd that brought the patient(which meant for a really wet, sloppy,slippery clinic floor.    At first there was a bit of a concern about  the baby because of some meconium staining in the amniotic fluid.  But within an hour, a  baby boy was born! He didn't want to cry for a while after birth but he pinked right up and seemed to have been doing really well. 

The next morning(Friday) the baby was showing signs of maybe what seemed like seizures. So we had him sent out to a hospital a couple of hours away. Please pray for him when you think of him. His name is James. We have yet to hear how he is doing as of now. 

(Sharon,Autumn)

This dear friend of ours used to come to clinic for a bandage for his skin cancer. But since there wasn't anything we could do to make it better,we started having him come back every week for bandage supplies and "someone else was supposed to be doing the  bandages for him". On Tuesdays he came back to clinic with a complaint about his wound, so we decided we could bandage it for him this time. As I pulled the bandage back to remove it, I couldn't help but gasp at what I saw. The wound  was full of maggots crawling every Where!

Bless dear Autumn and Sharon for stamaching it up and pulling out each individual maggot from the wound. They didn't think to count them but they estimated over a hundred that they removed. 

Doc, James and Kayla performing a minor surgery on a young boy who had fallen on his hand a few days prior to this and had gotten the slightest tiniest cut that caused a major infection in his whole right hand. 

That brings me to the end of yet another blog. 

We can't say it enough. But thank you so much for your continual prayer and support. Please keep it up. 

Mis* Katie 

Sufficient Grace

“And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

-2 Cor. 12:9

Our busy days here have continued... I believe we had over 1,600 people in the month of May. It is enjoyable to see the clinic become a beehive of activity every day as each person does their job and things flow smoothly. But there are also frustrating moments like when we are really low on meds because of the many extra patients this month. Or when there is another screaming child who just won't cooperate and insists on letting the whole world know that she isn't happy, as we try to remove a bean from her ear. (This seems to be a common occurrence the last while, as a lot of people have harvested their bean crop recently.) At times there is nothing to do but pray for the grace to keep going, to keep smiling, keep loving, when the strength to do that certainly isn't in me. But God is very faithful, and has kept and helped us through each of these busy days...and in the middle of each crazy day, we can look up, and find His grace sufficient... it never runs out, no matter how many various needs are demanding our attention. (I'll probably need to remind myself of this 10 times today. ;)) At the end of the day, God is very good...all the time!

Here are a few glimpses at recent patients and moments...

Recently Dr. Felix and James removed a cyst from a man's leg. It was a nearly a minor surgery.

I'd like you to meet this little 4 year old friend of mine. She has been living at the clinic for several weeks now, as she is being treated for some severe burns. She fell in a cooking fire, and her clothes caught fire... she had severe burns on her back and one arm when she came to clinic. Sometimes it has seemed like we are making slow progress, but with daily care the burns are healing and it is fun to watch them close up, one by one. She only has one small spot left on her arm to finish closing up and then she will be going home. By now we are good friends, and it has been a joy getting to interact with her and her parents these past weeks. I'll never forget her...and pray that we have been able to encourage and influence her family for the Lord during these past several weeks. (Sorry for the photo quality...this is what happens when you Whatsapp and crop photos...but I haven't the time to do it all correctly.)

This lady had her baby at our clinic recently... they came back one day for a check up, and both mom and baby are doing well. This lady is a daughter of Madame Ossinee, for anyone who has been here and knows her.

Here is Autumn, with the baby. Autumn arrived last week and is our newest clinic staff member. She is settling in well and learning her new job here. I'm sure you'll be hearing from her later, so I'll let further introduction to her. =)

We get to meet some of the most precious children at clinic... and some of them are just so perfectly squishable!

This guy had a nasty cut on his hand and needed some stitches.... but he didn't act very adult-like about the pain as Katie tried to help him.

His yowling brought a nice little crowd of onlookers. =)

Please keep praying for us as we carry on here, and thank you for faithfully praying...it is our lifeline!!

-Mis Sharon