The electricity may fail me but my God never does

the sunset on my run the other night

Hello, as of right now I am typing in the dark. We went on a road trip to come back to no power. If you are wondering how I am writing on my blog, well it is because I am writing on a word document first then when 9 o clock hits I post it. I won’t be writing everyday from now on as you can see, I am sorry to everyone that has been reading faithfully, which I really appreciate. As you can understand internet just plans stinks here, and at this computer I cant even load pictures, so I have to go to someone else’s laptop to upload my pictures onto my blog. I hate having to be a bother so I am now waiting a few days when I have lots of pictures and lots of stories (don’t worry they wont be as long as the posts from a few days ago.)

how they bus people around, put them all in the truck bed

My weekends are always very enjoyable, not much going on since I am not at the hospital. Saturday and Sunday were just spent relaxing and catching up on some reading and studying. Harriet and I went on another run, and met another 23 year old girl, named Eunice. We are going to invite her and Jean for dinner on Wednesday and see if they want to come to the youth bible study later that night. This weekend we had an Anne of Green Gables marathon, made me think of my grandmother Buck. I use to always watch it at her house when I was younger (thinking about you gram, hope your doing okay). Also, Harriet and I spent a good 2 hours shelling peanuts; we ended up getting blisters and only about a bowl full of nuts. We decided to give them away since everyone has been so kind to us here. Other then that, not much happened this weekend, that’s why I didn’t write a post, don’t want to bore anyone.


how they make milk here, ya with powder

This is the church we go to every sunday

Here we are shelling peanuts

 Today at the hospital we spent about 3 hours rounding on all the patients. There was a car crash right outside the church yesterday and a few people had to go into emergency surgeries. If they were in the US hospital they would have been in an ICU, they were in a normal room here full of other patients. They had Nasal Gastric tubes to drain their stomach contents, catheters to drain their urine, chest tubes to drain extra blood, IV to give them many fluids and many other drains that I won’t get into. Also there was a birth of a baby boy with spine-a-bifida and he is still alive. In the picture below you can see a sac on the boys back it is part of his spinal cord which is very dangerous, I am surprised he is still alive. The boy also has no movement in his legs and you can see in the picture his legs just stick straight out, with his feet bending inward. I have never seen anything like it, its sad knowing that the boy won’t live long because they do not have the technology here for that surgery. Also today I saw a 15 year old girl (I wish I took a picture of her) but she weighs 30 pounds, she looks to be able 8 years old. The mom wants to take her home because she has many other children to take care of. I can hardly believe that she feeds the other kids from the looks of this girl, so sad. I saw a lady with a snake bite and a guy with a scorpion bite and they had to be opened up to reduce the swelling or they will lose that limb (like what happened to Robert.) Robert is doing well, the doctor noticed that his arm was moving better, I will play with him again tomorrow to see if he improved. Saw a few patients with Tuberculosis, which is still crazy to me. They are airborne precautions and here we are checking on them with no masks on or anything, but none of the workers have gotten it, so that tells me that the US just goes to far sometimes.

the baby with spine-a-bifida, see the sac on the back and how his legs bend straight

 I am going to have a hard time going back to the US hospital and being so strict with precautions. The funny thing is, the US has 10x more hospital infections then they do here and they do barely anything for keeping sterile. Granite in Surgery they are pretty good with keeping sterile, but nothing like they are back home. America has come to a point when everyone is resistant to antibiotics and has no normal flora left and everyone gets sick from the littlest of things. I can honestly say I am happy that my mom didn’t germ-x me every 5 sec as a kid and let me get dirty because I have a better immune system for it. I never get sick, where kids now and days they get a cold for touching a dirty doorknob. It goes back to the saying “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt.”  99.9% of germs aren’t even bad for you, it is the .01% that is, which the germ-x doesn’t even kill anyways so it is pointless. But anyways I am done with my spiel on that, sorry sometimes I need to just vent here and there.

                                                             can you guess what this is?

 Today after tea, Rebecca, Harriet, Julie and I went on a little road trip to get Rebecca’s passport stamped because she is waiting on her work visa to get approved. Every 30 days she needs to go back to the immigration office to get 30 more days to stay in the country or she will go to jail(it’s a pain.) I thought since I was there I would try and get my stamped also. My visitor visa only lasts 30 days and mine was going to expire soon. The man that usually does it was drunk and another man had to take us and a good thing too because he was nice enough to stamp mine till August 19 (I leave the 18, but just encase I have another trip back like I did coming here, he extended it!) Then we went to a bank and I got some more money exchanged, I will need more if we end up going to Victoria Falls this weekend! After our trip to the bank we got invited to lunch by Elva and Don Brooks another missionary couple here in Zambia! The great thing was they had Wifi, and it was so fast, I was so happy. I got to read my emails in5 minutes instead of the hour it takes here and text some of my family and it was just so lovely to have it for about an hour! Harry and I had to sit in the back and we picked up two people on our way back and took them home. It was another trip to the village church last week. Sorry to anyone who may be just starting to read and I make references to past posts a lot. I guess that means you will have to start from the beginning to see what I am talking about.

                                                   the view of a river we drove past

oh you know just some donkeys

                                          view from the missionary couple house, Elva and Don Brooks

                                             more scenery

 On our trip home we got to take so many pictures, I will try and post as many as I can. We drove past a beautiful river, tons of huts and market places. We even stopped and got a cold drink and these men dressed up in what looked like costumes came up to us, Julie informed us that they are witch doctors, very scary looking. Part of our trip was very bumpy and I was smart enough this time to bring a pillow and blanket to sit on, those wooden benches are not comfortable bouncing up and down. Julie stopped on the side of the road for us to take a picture, next thing you know there are about 5 kids running towards us. I put out my hand and they all come to touch it. I ask the guy that we took home, why they always want to touch our hands, meaning white people. He told me that they think we have different skin, like it is almost breakable and feels different. It is so cute, these kids spoke English and they all told me their names, don’t even think I will be able to pronounce them, let alone spell them. Then we drove off and they were all just waving goodbye, you can’t help but fall in love with these kids here. My friends were so right about me probably adopting one. Lord willing one day I can come back and adopt one or two. It is about 6 o’clock and I am writing you now in complete darkness, before there was sun, now the sun has gone down and I am using a flash light to see the key board. If I don’t get this up till Tuesday, which may very well be the case because there is no power then I am sorry for all my faithful readers.

                                          if you look close at what these witch doctors are wearing-intersting

 It was just great riding in the back of the car today, and being able to see God’s beauty. With the hustle and bustle of the day we don’t get to appreciate God’s creation. They have such wonderful sunsets and sunrises here, and at night you can see so many stars its breath taking. To think a God so powerful and mighty could love such small creatures as us. He actually sent His One and Only Son to die for sinners the people that were going to hate and reject Him Son. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. “He saves us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of His mercy…” Titus 3:5. The word of God shows us that we did not deserve any of the things He has blessed us with, but because He is a Holy, Merciful and Loving God that we are made free! I can see why the Zambian people are so happy here when they have nothing (well, in our eyes they have nothing.) But, in reality they have everything in Gods eyes, because they have eternal life, which is far better then riches and gold.

 

you can see hear what we eat on tea break-why i have gained a few pounds

 

Yay the electricity just came back on, I might be able to send this blog out tonight, we will see that is still a few hours away it may go off again. You will know, if this is up on Monday.