Mending Bodies and Healing Hearts

Change ... I've written a blog about it before, mostly about how I don't like it.  In the couple of years that have passed since I wrote that blog post I have come to acknowledge that sometimes change is good. But among all the changes that have taken place since that blog post, one thing has remained the same, I still don't like it.  There is actually a big change that is about to take place in my life a couple of months which is why I am bringing up the subject of change. God told me on my first missions trip in 2013 that I was going to serve here at Hospital Loma de Luz in Honduras long term. It took me a couple of years to make it happen but in 2016, I left the States on a two year commitment to the hospital. That two years has turned into five years. How has it been that long already!? During these five years, I have been seeking God's direction on how long I will be here for. In the past 6 months, God has making it clear that my time here in Honduras is coming to ...

     It's been a really rough couple of weeks. Honduras was hit not by one but TWO hurricanes in TWO WEEKS! Hurricane Eta passed south of the hospital flooding the city of San Pedro Sula and displacing hundreds of families. The airport that I normally fly into is completely under water. A notice was sent out saying that the airport will be closed for at least a month. This week Hurricane Iota followed in Eta's tracks re-flooding San Pedro Sula and displacing the same hundreds of families.        Hospital Loma de Luz was hit by it's own personal hurricane the weekend between Eta and Iota that we are still recovering from. It all started on Saturday evening in the middle of a beautiful little wedding on our hospital's beach in front of a gorgeous Honduran sunset. Right after Pastor Rony told the groom, "You may now kiss the bride" ... it happened... Dr Anthony's radio crackled, "SQ Balfate Code Blue in the emergency room!" A patient was in trouble...

After six months of being in the States, I have finally made it back into Hondura s! I was rather concerned about traveling because of flights into Honduras continuing to prove to be unreliable but thankfully everything went really smoothly! Honduras now requires those entering the country to have a negative COVID-19 test 72 hours before flying which means that I didn't have to end up quarantining for two weeks after  all.   In some ways  it is really weird to be back but yet feels like I never left in others. It looks the same and sm ells the  same.  The beach is still here and my  dog, Paisley, definitel y remembers me. We still communicate b y radio and there is still an endless number of patients to tend to. The only thing that's really different is that the kids have all grown at least 6 inches this su mmer alone and then ... there is COVID ...    Who knew that a virus would unexpectedly turn my few week trip to see my family into a six ...

The other day, I was reading through my blog posts realizing how depressing the last few have been. It think they reflect how difficult it has been this year especially in the past few months. There has been so much tragedy lately. So many losses from dengue and other culprits. Yesterday we lost a 20 yo otherwise healthy young man to complications of a brain injury from a car accident. He is the third young guy we have lost this year due to such accidents. Life is so fragile. We take life for granted when in reality we need to be ready to face eternity at any moment. I vowed to not talk about depressing things this month, but here I am! Let's change topics. I am going to tell you a funny and yet quite embarrassing story. Those of you who know me well might actually find it surprising that I had not done this sooner.  One of my many jobs here at the hospital is "Volunteers Logistics Coordinator". Once a potential volunteer has submitted their application and been proved...

Dengue Fever.... just hearing someone say it sends chills up my spine. So many people I know have had it. I have watched it steal the lives of several otherwise healthy people and of three unborn babies. A four year old boy is currently admitted in our hospital fighting for his life.  Dengue is typically found in tropical climates and is spread by mosquitos. A female mosquito becomes infected with the virus when it bites an infected person. After about a week incubation period, it then bites a healthy person transferring the virus to them. Incubation in a healthy person takes about four to ten days after the inicial bite. The infected person develops an extremely high fever often reaching as high as 104F with shaking chills, severe bone and joint pain, headaches, vomiting, a red rash, and swollen glands along with the classic low white blood cell count (usually illnesses cause the white blood cell count to go up) and a low platelet count. The fever usually breaks after about a...

Every Thursday night our missionary community comes together for a time of worship and prayer. I love these nights because I get to hear stories of God at work in the hospital that I might not have been part of that week. One such story really stuck out to me that I want to share with you.  Coke - now I'm not talking about cocaine but the other type of Coke that is actually just as deadly. There is nothing quite like it. Popping the metal top of a cold glass bottle on a hot day. Hearing the loud fizz and that cold first gulp. And then it fizzes back up your nose. Ahh. Heavenly.  Hondurans drink so much coke that two liter bottles are just not big enough so that fizzy sugar goodness comes in three liter bottles. Brilliant! Bring it on. But then there is the saying that there is too much of a good thing. Hondurans love their coke so much that they bring they bring their 3 liter bottle to work in the blazing sun in the fields all day instead of water (to all you coke lovers o...

Change... there are two groups of people: the adventurous group who hears the word and thinks "Yes!!! A new adventure!" and then there is the group of people(of which I am in) that thinks it is a curse word.  The very sound of someone saying the word sends a chill up my spine and caused many tantrums when I was a child.  Even still, it makes me cringe in anticipation of the loss and the pain that it brings with it. The loss of the familiar, the loss or change of friendships, the growing pains that come with it, the fear of the unknown.  In a large mission like this with a big hospital, a children's home, a school, and a church it seems like it is always in a state of change as missionaries come and go.  Missions has changed drastically over the past generation. It used to be that missionaries committed their entire lives to bringing the Gospel to one people group  but now "long term missions" is any commitment of more than a year with majority of volunteers c...

A happy baby boy whose anus is functioning very well hence his smile under that blanket Okay We're going to talk about poop. Let's be real... not being able to poop is terrible. We have all been there. Now imagine being born without the ability to poop. Yep...it's horrible.  Did you know that you could have been born with one of two congenital defects resulting in it being impossible for you to poop? It's true!   One condition is called Hirschsprung disease when you actually lack the muscles to expel your poop so it just stays in there and builds up over time ... well you can imagine what happens. It is not pleasant. This usually  results in a permanent colostomy and much relief.  The more common condition is that you are actually born without an anus. Just imagine that. In this case you would get a colostomy at birth. If you are blessed to live in America, you would possibly have the surgery to create a hole, have months of dilation of that new hole, an...

Well, it has been exactly a week since I have arrived back at Hospital Loma de Luz after my 5 week long support raising trip. I have officially survived the week. It has been an eventful one to say the least. It started with my arrival at my cozy apartment that smelled of horrible, eye watering, stomach churning, rotting chicken which took three days to clean out. Then, the power being out in the middle of the night resulted in me breaking my nose by running into the concrete corner wall in my bathroom when responding to a "Code Blue". And today I am sick in bed with some sort of stomach bug. Normally I would say that I would take a cold over the stomach bug any day but the fact that it is quite painful to blow my poor nose, this one time I am thankful that it is the stomach bug. God is indeed good!  Yesterday was having lunch with some other fellow missionaries at our founding surgeon's family's house when the topic of our conversation changed to our crazy travel st...

Close your eyes and take a slow deep breath in through your nose and then out through your mouth. Now do it again. That air that you're breathing, that's oxygen. Most of us go through our day not giving one thought about what we're breathing. Here at Hospital Loma de Luz we think about it ALL the time. As you have probably figured out, being a mission hospital in a rural part of Northern Honduras means that everything is just automatically more challenging. Hospitals in America have oxygen systems built right into the wall by the patient's beds. Just connect the readily available oxygen tubing to the regulator on the wall, turn the valve on, and voila! you have oxygen. So simple. Here it is not so simple.  oxygen tanks lined in the hallway waiting for use Here, in Honduras, we have to go into La Ceiba, which is the nearest city to us, pick up huge tanks of oxygen in the back of a truck (not exactly the safest idea since these huge tanks, which ironically resemble...

It had been about a few days since I had arrived at Hospital Loma de Luz when I was visiting long time missionary Iain in his office in June of 2016. Sweat was pouring down my face and my back. The humidity was suffocating. "I really think that I'm going to die!" I exclaimed. "I don't know how I'm going to survive two years in this heat!"  "Two years is going to fly by! You're going to blink and it is going be gone already." was Iain's response. I kind of half-heartedly agreed with him all the while thinking he was a little crazy.  W ell that crazy old Scottish guy was right. It has been almost two years. Twenty one months to be exact.  Time is strange here. The days and weeks are long but the months and years are short. I think I've blinked a few more times than once but those two years are almost up.  I've spent the past 6 months praying about the future, about what the Lord wants me to do next. Do I stay at Hospital Lo...