Uncohesive blog post

This past month has been a little on the wild side. I usually try to tell one good story here, but I don´t have one to pick this time. I´ve just been running from story to story non-stop since the last time I was online. So, here´s December in brief.

Dec. 6: take Pastor Rich to the Waspam airport. Have to argue with the people at the counter to get him on the flight he had already paid for. He ended up having to buy a new ticket.

Dec. 7: Run a mobile clinic in Miguel Bikan with Janet, the MINSA nurse.

Dec. 9: Almost get to help with a birth. I wait at the mission house for too long, and make it to the clinic 20 minutes late. Janet, Amelia, and Jenny had already taken care of it.

Dec. 10: Take a 15-yr-old pregnant girl to Waspam because she´s too high-risk to give birth in Francia.

Dec. 12-14: Help lead Vacation Bible School for Francia´s children.

Dec. 13: Take a pregnant lady to Waspam for a C-section.

Dec. 15: Help lead a Pathfinder´s meeting in preparation for the coming camperee. Interesting, because I´ve never been a Pathfinder, and now I´m leading it in Spanish . . .

Dec. 16: Run around madly trying to find transportation to Waspam for a woman who´s had a stroke in the village of Wisconsin. Jeremy is gone, and without him to drive, we can´t take her in our truck. I am reduced to begging transportation for my patient from a truck that happens to be coming thru Francia. The driver says no. :( When Jeremy gets back, we have a birthday party for him, and I tell him to plan on driving to Waspam the next day.

Dec. 17: Coordinate getting my patient from Wisconsin to Waspam. Tell Jeremy how to take care of her - I can´t go with him because I have a health class this afternoon. Finish planning for health class. Spend a lot of time and effort and am pleased with my program - but no one shows up. Apparently it is bean planting season, and everyone is too busy to come.

Dec. 18: Clear the church yard in preparation for the Pathfinder´s weekend. This means cutting grass with a machete. It´s fun for the first half-hour. Then I start wishing the rest of the people who promised to come help actually would. They must be planting beans, too.

Dec. 19: Pathfinders arrive. Finish clearing church ground in the morning. The men who promised to help finally arrive and help. They tell me clearing ground with a machete is men´s work. :P Well, if the men aren´t around . . . I spend time in church playing Bible games and singing songs in the afternoon. In the evening I go back to the mission hill to shower, because I´m still gross from cutting grass. I´m ready to go back to town and sleep with Tekoa and the Pathfinders in the Community Center when a man comes to the hill and says they need help taking care of a burn victim in the clinic. The nurse, Janet, is gone. I rush down to the clinic to help the miwife, Amelia, clean her up. She has second degree burns on the back of her right calf, blistered, with blackened skin peeling off. Jeremy, Amelia, and I clean and put on burn cream. I tell Amelia to watch for signs of shock and give her rehydrating salts. Then I finally get to go to bed - with a bunch of hyper Pathfinders.

Dec. 20: Wake up at 5am to the first Pathfinder worship of the morning. Tekoa and I hadn´t realized this service was on the schedule. :( Jeremy and I go clean and dress our burn patient´s leg again. We have to cut off more dead skin that´s peeling up. It takes a long time, and we don´t get breakfast until 9am. After that, we head out to Santa Clara, where Jeremy, Jenny, and I are responsible for the church service. Getting on the road is challenging - we have to push-start the deuce in order to pump air into the tires of the four-wheeler and then start the four-wheeler off the deuce power. When we get back, we play more Bible games with the Pathfinders. After Jeremy and I clean burns again, we get to go to bed.

Dec. 21: 5am worship. [groan] Tekoa and I don´t get out of bed this time. Later we hear that the lady Pathfinder leader from Tasba Pain prayed in Miskito that God would forgive ¨the ones who don´t speak Miskito and are still asleep.¨ I want to tell her that the reason I´m tired is that I´ve been busy trying to save people´s lives recently . . . but I don´t bother. Jeremy and I go to clean our patient´s leg and find Janet, the nurse, back in town and there ahead of us. We´re relieved she´s taking control of the situation.
We go to the church for Pathfinder events. We haven´t been there for 5 minutes when Barney, our friend who works at the Adventist radio station in Francia Sirpi, comes and tells us that his son Sam is sick. The 14-month-old baby is vomiting and having diarrhea, which is a serious concern because he´s been delicate ever since he was born. He´s lethargic and I´m worried he´s dehydrated. We talk to Janet and another missionary nurse, Marilyn, and decide to take him to Waspam in Marilyn´s truck. The doctors take blood and stool samples to test and then try to start an IV on him. He´s tiny, he´s dehydrated, and I can´t see any veins in his arm where the doctor is fishing. Sam is terrified. It hurts to watch. They finally decide to try oral rehydrating salts first.
Jeremy and I leave Sam at the hospital and come home. We rest a little, then go to the Community Center and wait for the pathfinders to come in for the night. As they´re walking back from the church, some drunk teenagers from Francia try to pick fights with the Pathfinder boys and walk up close to the Pathfinder girls, scaring them into thinking they´re going to be molested. After we get everyone into the Center, the drunkards hang around outside setting off firecrackers and throwing rocks through our windows. It takes forever to get my girls calm enough to sleep.

Dec. 22: Worship this morning is even earlier than 5am. Tekoa and I stay in bed - we´re past caring whether we get prayed for in a pointed manner. Help get the kids off to their homes and clean up the church and Community Center. Work on sorting through our Christmas give-away bags all day. In the late afternoon, I go for my usual physical therapy with Joseas and discover that his blood pressure is through the roof - 184/106. I go get Janet and help her give him Furosemide, IV, to bring it down. Then I go help her care for the burn patient again. Throw a birthday party for Rachel in the evening.

Dec. 23: Wake up at 12:30am not feeling right. Sit near the bathroom for a few hours, then go back to bed. Wake up around 4am to throw up. Should have expected to get sick - I´ve been too stressed for too long. I go to Teekamp with everyone else to give away our Christmas bags, because I don´t want to miss out. I end up spending a lot of time in the outhouse there, but it´s worth it to see all the happy faces of people getting new clothes, shoes, soap, towels . . .

Dec. 24: Our Christmas at the mission house. Rachel spends all day cooking. I help a little, as I´m able. We eat a big dinner together and play the white elephant gift exchange game. I end up with a machete, which is exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

Dec. 25: In the morning we follow the Nicaraguan tradition of giving gifts of food on Christmas. We go to our friends´ houses with bags of cookies, and we stay and visit with them for a while. In the afternoon, we leave for Puerto Cabezas. Bridget´s parents are flying in for a visit on the 26th, and we want to be there to pick them up. On the way, we take the opportunity to jump off the suspension bridge in Sesin into the river 20 ft below. It´s fun - but by the time we get to Port, my ears hurt really bad, and I have a fever. I stay on my cot in the mission house listening to Christmas music and feeling sorry for myself while everyone else goes to internet and talks to their parents.

Dec. 26: I wake up feeling better and go spend all day (literally) on the internet.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Miss you all. My thoughts are with you, at home in the snow, as I bake in the sun here. I´m hoping for a more restful week coming up.

Joseas

As I mentioned in one of my recent blogs, I´ve been doing physical therapy with a young man named Joseas. Dawn told me about him when I first got here - how he had gone to the States for open heart surgery and hadn´t had proper care while he was recovering here, resulting in him not being able to walk. Becky and Kathilee did some exercises with him while they were here, and Dawn was hoping I would continue.

One day I went to visit Joseas with Christina. While we read and colored with him, I observed his legs. For some reason I had been thinking that he was nearly paralyzed, but I saw that I was wrong - he moved his legs easily. Jeremy helped him get to church for an afternoon presentation and reported that he could stand up if he also supported himself with his arms. I began to believe that he could walk if we just made his legs a little stronger.

I talked to Ruth and asked her to help. She had a physical therapy internship recently and will be attending Loma Linda next year for PT. We asked Becky what they had been doing for him and tried to get in contact with a physical therapist in the States. In the meantime, Ruth and I started exercises based on what she knew.

We discovered that his legs were weak from not being used in so long, and his ankles were turned in. They were stiff from disuse and wouldn´t point out like normal ankles should. Their condition was making it hard for him to balance when he stood. The first day we visited him, we asked if he could walk by himself. He stood up to show us, which scared me. I stood next to him to catch him if he started to fall. Sure enough, within three steps he fell forward onto his knees. We got his walker out for him and watched him use it. He leaned on it heavily with his hands and just shuffled his legs to move forward. We knew we were in for a lot of work.

Ruth and I started a routine - three times a week we stretched and working his legs to build muscles, and we pushed and pulled on his ankles to increase their range of motion. We also had him practice walking from time to time - we had him exaggerate bending his knees to correct the shuffling problem.

We´ve kept that routine for over a month now. Last Monday we stretched with him as usual and then brought out the walker. He was leaning heavily on it, hanging on for dear life it seemed, and we wanted him to stop. Ruth told him to let go of the walker and practice standing up straight for a minute. Slowly he let go and straightened. Then we asked him to take a step forward. Tentatively he bent one knee up and moved his foot forward. Then he stepped again. And again. We stayed with him and kept the walker in front of him in case he started falling. But he didn´t fall. He kept walking.

About halfway around the room it hit me - Joseas is walking! By himself! We´re not touching him - he has the strength to stand by himself! He can keep his balance by himself! We reached the point we had started from and suddenly Ruth realized it too. ¨Joseas!¨ she exclaimed, ¨You just walked around the whole room by yourself!¨

Tears filled my eyes and Ruth´s. We could hardly believe what we had just seen. And Joseas? He stood up straight and laughed - just laughed. It was the happiest sound I have ever heard.

Last Friday night Joseas gave his testimony in church. He walked to the front of the church independently, with Ruth and me at his side. He thanked God that he is getting better now and encouraged the church to pray and trust in God. After church, he stood up with Ruth and me to go home, and his father brought his wheelchair over to take him home. But Joseas told his dad, ¨I don´t need that. I´ll walk to the door by myself.¨ And he did.

Joseas still walks slowly. He has to have us with him in case he loses his balance. And he can´t walk far - he gets tired pretty quickly. But he can walk, and he´s going to keep walking and getting better. God has really floored me on this one. He just used two people with a spoonful of training between them to get a man out of a wheelchair and onto his feet. All I can say is, I had an AMAZING Thanksgiving. Hope you did too. :)

Random pictures

In the back of the truck under a tarp to protect us from the tropical rain storm. L-R: Ruth, Tekoa, and Rachel in back; Bridget and Christina in middle; Keegan in the front.

On Nicaraguan independence day last September, our friend Gali looking all dressed up. He´s one of the kids we love to play with.

Me waiting for the Independence parade to come by.

Me and Ruth.

The pet monkey.

Why Beans and Noses don´t work well together

It was a lazy Sunday morning. I was reading my Bible in the hammock, waiting for worship to start at 7. Usually we have team worship at 6:30 am, but we were all tired that day from our church conference in Tasba Pain the day before.

I was just feeling relaxed and happy when Rachel called my name around the corner. ¨Some kid is here with something wrong with his nose. Do you want to come?¨ I went to the steps and saw a young mother with a 1-year-old boy in he arms. The rest of the medical team was already there, and Jenny was trying to discover what the problem was. ¨I think she´s saying he´s got something stuck in his nose,¨ Jenny told us, ¨but she doesn´t speak Spanish very well, so I´m not sure.¨

We looked up the kid´s nose, and saw . . . something. We weren´t sure exactly what. It was dark brown and shiny, and defintely blocking his whole nose. ¨Is it a bean?¨ The mom couldn´t tell us.

So the next big question, ¨What are we supposed to do about it?¨ None of us have ever taken college classes that even mentioned how to get beans out of one-year-old noses. We found some small forceps and started telling each other, ¨Do you think these will work? Will we just push it farther back? Do you wanna do it? I don´t wanna do it.¨

Jenny and Mindy bravely decided to try. The kid immeditaely started screaming and struggling, of course, and the forceps kept slipping off the bean (or whatever it was). We were clearly making no progress.

I suggested using a syringe to try to suck it out, so we went to the clinic to try. That method was even less effective then the forceps.

We were in over our heads. Jenny and Mindy went to get Janet, the MINSA nurse. I sat in our clinic watching the kid glare at my mistrustfully from his mom´s lap.

Janet told us she had alreayd tried getting the bean out the night before, and couldn´t, which is why the mom took him to us. (Great). She knew another method to move it, though - stick cotton in the kid´s ears, hold the open nostril shut, and blow hard into his mouth. With no other exit, the air would have to go through the blocked nostril and push the bean out. So which of us wanted to blow in his mouth?

Silence.

¨OK, I´ll do it,¨ I said. (¨What am I thinking?¨ I said in my mind). So we held the kid´s ears shut, put a finger on his other nostril, and held down his legs to keep him from kicking me in the stomach. I leaned over him, took a deep breath, and dove.

There´s nothing quite like sealing your mouth around the snotty, screaming mouth of a one-year-old baby and blowing from you diaphragm. Classical singer´s training is good for something, I suppose. But it didn´t work. The stupid bean wouldn´t move. We tried for two hours, alternating me blowing and Janet trying to pull the bean out. Finally Janet said we would try later that afternoon. The kid´s nose was pretty swollen, so we gave him ibuprofen and hoped it would go down.

We went to Janet´s house that afternoon and found her smiling. She had already got the bean out two hours before. ¨How did you do it?¨ we asked in wonder. ¨With this!¨ she said, and pulled a bobby pin out of her hair. She said it was huge - not a normal bean at all - and the kid´s nose was small. We had good reason to have trouble getting it out. It took the bobby pin to get behind it and scoop it out.

You get everything around here, I suppose. Still, that was pretty weird. I´m now the official mouth-to-mouth bean-getter-outer at the clinic, and we know to keep bobby pins on hand.

Hey everyone! I was going to give you some pictures this time, but they didn´t upload properly. Sorry.

I´m busy working at MINSA. We have a new doctor there named Rachelle. She´s very nice, and I´m learning more Spanish working with her.

I´m also doing physical therapy with a young man named josias Simmora. He can´t walk and is somewhat mentally challenged, but also the happiest person I know. I love watching him get stronger and more flexible, and am longing for the day when he can walk to church by himself.

That´s all I have time for now. Keep praying! and I´ll try to get more out soon.

Change of Plans

We got back from Puerto Cabeza on Wednesday night, a day late. After all the excitement that a trip to town entails, we were planning on a nice, normal last two days of our week. Problem with that is, we live in Nicaragua . . .

On Friday morning I was settled in my hammock studying Miskito and listening with one ear to Jeremy, Zephan, and Rusty testing out the hand-held radios. Payton took the four-wheeler to Santa Clara to see if she could talk to us from there. (Speaking of the four-wheeler, yes, it´s still running, but the back right wheel falls off from time to time while you´re driving it). I heard the four-wheeler come back into our driveway, and suddenly Dawn started yelling for Bridget, our picture maniac, to come quickly with her camera.

I ran out with my camera too and foud Payton unloading a baby sloth from the back of the four-wheeler. Actually she was detaching its claws from the four-wheeler rack—sloths grip hard! Payton had found the animal on the road with no mother in sight. Some kids from the village who were with her wanted to kill it, but she wouldn´t let them. She had wrapped the sloth in a shirt and brought it back so she could beg her mother to let her keep it.

We all marveled at its sharp claws and squashed-looking face. Then we wondered what to do with it. What does it eat? Will it live in a box? How will we keep the dogs from eating it? We finally put it on a post of the verandah and let it do what it wanted, which was climb . . . slowly . . . around . . . all the buildings.

After settling the sloth, I became involved in a conversation with a man who was sitting on the porch with Zephan and Jeremy talking and asking questions about what it means to be a Christian. Zephan has the best Spanish, so he was doing most of the talking. I was amazed, though, at how much I could understand and even contribute with the little Spanish I know. God gave us such a thrilling opportunity to share—the man was completely curious and open to what we were telling him about living with God.

We asked the man to stay for lunch. I helped him prepare his plate, since one of his hands doesn´t work so well after having a bullet pass through it. Right after lunch while I was trying to feed the sloth, Payton suddenly remembered that Mindy and Jenny had told her to tell me there was a lady giving birth and I should go help.

I rushed down to the house of Amelia, the village midwife. Amelia´s niece was giving birth inside. She´s just a girl, seventeen years old and bearing her first child. She´s small, too, and it seemed that she was having trouble. Mindy and Jenny told me that her water had broken several hours ago, but the baby still hadn´t come. All we could do was sit and help her through the contractions while we waited for the baby.

Mindy and Jenny decided to go eat lunch, but I stayed with the mother and tried to help Amelia, Janet, and the other ladies attend to her. Soon after Jenny and Mindy left, her contractions grew stronger. The women were holding her shoulders and knees back with each contraction, and Amelia was watching the birth canal carefully. Suddenly I heard her say, ¨Tuks! Tuks! [Push! Push!]¨ I moved to stand next to her and saw the baby´s head crowning. Amelia told me to help hold the woman´s knees back so she could catch the baby. With the next few contractions the head came out—but slowly. And then just the head was out and no more was coming. Amelia reached in around the baby´s neck and pulled off the umblilical cord. It had been wrapped around the infant´s neck, strangling her.

Amelia yelled to the mother to push, and she grabbed the suction bulb and started sucking the mucus out of the baby´s nose and mouth. I didn´t know what to do—I felt in the way and scared. So scared—because the baby´s head was blue, bluer than normal for a newborn, and I didn´t know how long it had been without oxygen. I started praying hard.

The mother delivered the rest of the baby´s body, and Janet rushed in next to me, cut the umbilical cord, and moved the baby to a blanket on the floor. She started rubbing the baby´s body, holding it between her hands and desparately massaging. Another woman brought in salt and chicken feathers and started using a feather to tickle the inside of the baby´s nose and ears. She blew into the baby´s mouth while Janet kept rubbing. Janet handed me an ampule of atropine to prepare for injection, but I didn´t know where her syringes were. So I just sat there and prayed, and watched, and FINALLY--the baby started crying. Very weakly at first, but as Janet kept rubbing, it became stronger and fuller, until it sounded right, like a healthy newborn cry.

We all relaxed. ¨Mairin [it´s a girl],¨ we told the mother, and Janet gave it the atropine and wrapped it in some clean clothes. Then the women handed it to me to hold while they cleaned up the mother. It was so tiny! I watched and listened carefully to make sure it was still breathing, and I thanked God that its face was pink now.

Jenny and Mindy showed up too late for all the excitement. :D The women asked us to name the baby, but we couldn´t decide. We said the mother should choose one of our names. :)

We walked back to the house, tired and excited. Somehow I wasn´t surprised when we found a new animal waiting at home—a kioki, I think it´s called in Miskito. There is no English word that I know of, but it´s a rodent, bigger than a rat, with sort of kangaroo legs. A man had been selling it for food, but Rachel had bought it to rescue it. I held it and thanked God for the miracle of life—animal life, new human life, and new spiritual life in my friend from earlier in the day.

So you can see from this post that no day is predictable here in Nicaragua. My plans change over and over again. I run wildly from one new situation to the next, and pray that God will prepare me for each one. It´s utter madness, but frankly, I wouldn´t change it if I could.

Pictures

A turantula we found in the clinic the first day. I thought it was dead when i took this pic, but later came back and it had moved . . .

Francia kids hanging out watching us thru the clinic door. They hung there nonstop for the first few days we were working.

Jenny and Mindy sorting thru the cockroach-dung-covered contents of the mobile clinic suitcase.

A definitely alive turantula. I took video too. :)

Jeremy, Jenny, and Mindy running a mobile clinic in Wisconsin (a village, not a state). We meant to go to Esperanza that day, but got a little lost. Oops.

Packages

The other great God-thing from the broken clavicle experience was the fact that my first two packages from campus ministries arrived with Dawn just before we left to take Rusty to Waspam. Right in that moment full of fear and anxiety, I held in my hands my new Project impact Tshirt, all the Clocktowers and Ministry Matters, and, most importantly, the piece of paper signed by all my friends on registration day. It seemed that God had saved the arrival of that encouraging package until the moment when he knew I would need it most. I sat in the back of the truck wiping blood off of Rusty´s forehead every few minutes, reading the notes from my friends telling me to stay strong, that God was with me.

Never underestimate the power of those little notes CM is always asking you to write. They always bring me a huge blessing from God.

The Craziest Week in which Everything Went Right (Thanks to God)

A week ago last Sunday, our missionary directors and family, Rusty, Dawn, Payton, and Keegan Zimmerman, went to Port for groceries. That night, while they were gone, we got a patient to transport. He had a broken collarbone, and we had to take him to the ¨switch¨ where the bus stops so he could get to the hospital in Waspam. He stayed overnight at our mission, and we had to pray really hard for the four-wheeler to run the next day. It´s new trick is: it´s begun to turn off randomly, sometimes while climbing a hill, but always for no good reason. As if it didn´t have enough problems.

On Wednesday night Rusty got back. The rest of his family was supposed to come later that night with the Halversons, the missionaries who run the radio station. However, the Halversons´ truck didn´t come back. So the next morning, Rusty went on the motorcycle to look for them, supposing that they had broken down on the road. On the way, he came over a hill and ran into a truck he hadn´t been able to see. The motorcycle destroyed its front half on the truck´s front tire, and Rusty flew thru the air and landed on his left shoulder. Thanks to God, another truck came along just then and brought him back to Francia.

I was on the verandah feeding the parrot when Mindy ran up yelling for Jeremy and me and looking terrified. She had been at the MINSA clinic when Rusty was brought in. We hopped on the four-wheeler and headed down. Sure enough, Rusty looked pretty bad. His shoulder was hanging way lower than any shoulder is ever supposed to go. I thought it was certainly dislocated, and maybe also had some broken bones. We decided to take him to the hospital in Waspam. The owners of the truck that had brought Rusty back offered to drive us if we would pay for gas, but, again thanks to God, the Halversons and the other Zimmermans got back just at that moment.

So we four medical people, Dawn, and Rusty went in the Halversons´ truck. We got to Waspam and went to the hospital, but they told us that the emergency doctor and the orthopedic doctor were both gone and they didn´t know when they would return. Typical Nicaraguan health care. We were walking away to find somewhere to eat and wait, but just at that moment, thanks to God, we saw a doctor we knew personally. He pulled some strings, and Rusty was seen immediately.

The X-ray showed that Rusty´s collarbone was broken, and I mean broken. It was in two very separate pieces, about three inches away from each other. The doctor in Waspam said probably surgery was necessary to repair it. For that, Rusty would have to go to Puerto Cabezas, if not Managua or the States. The next step for us then was to get ahold of the missionaries with the airplane, Clint and Marilyn, to fly Rusty to Port. We sent out a radio message for Clint, but didn´t have to wait long. In about half an hour, we heard his plane landing. You see, by ¨chance¨ Clint was already on his way to Waspam. He had been in town in the morning to drop his mother off, and the hospital had asked him to come back with his airplane because they wanted him to take another patient to Port for them. Thanks to God, he flew in at just the right time to take Rusty too.

So Rusty went to Port in the little plane and we brought Dawn back to Francia so she could catch the bus to Port the next day. She went at 6 in the morning and took her son Keegan with her. Poor kid--that day was his 11th birthday, and he had been so excited to turn 11 for so long. We hated the thought of his day being ruined, so we all got up at 5am to have a party for him. We made mac and cheese--that´s really special food here, and he loves it. He got 11 little presents from his family and a scooter from all of us. He was so happy.

After Dawn left, it was just the ten of us student missionaries with no director. We were planning for the worst scenario--that Rusty and Dawn would be in the States for a long time and we would have to function on our own. We knew that we could handle it, but it was still somewhat sobering. We had our plans worked out for getting to Port and buying food. We were planning on taking the bus to Port yesterday, because Jeremy has only driven our truck (a 1965 military deuce) once and isn´t completely comfortable with it, especially starting it. It doesn´t actually start on its own--you have to roll it down a hill or push it. Plus we just fixed the brakes, so we weren´t sure if they were working, and we had just put on a ¨new¨ radiator, which we weren´t sure would work. (At this point in my conversation with my sister, she asked politely, ¨Does anything on it work?¨ And I replied, ¨It´s actually the safest, most functional vehicle we have.¨ To which she said, ¨Awesome.¨)

Because of all these concerns, we decided that Jeremy would only drive the truck as a last resort. And then the story got interesting. :) On Sabbath, we were sitting in church and someone handed in a note from Janet, the village nurse. She wrote that there was a baby being born and that we could come help.

We figured she didn´t actually need our help, so we waited till after church and lunch, then headed to the lady´s house. The baby, a little girl (Maidin in Miskito) had already been born around 1:00. However, the mother still had a hard lump in her uterus. The placenta had already delivered, so we knew it wasn´t that. She had stopped having contractions, but she said she was in pain. All she had strength to do was lie on the floor with an IV dripping into her arm. Amelia, the midwife and Janet´s mother, told me she thought the lump might be another baby, but she wasn´t sure. I felt it, and it felt like a baby to me, and when Amelia used the Doppler, we picked up a heartbeat. It was too slow for a newborn, though, and I wondered if we could be hearing the mother´s abdominal aorta, but Janet said no.

We asked Janet if the mother´s condition was serious. --Sí, es seriosa! she exclaimed, and told us that the mother could die if she didn´t get to the hospital in Waspam. We went and asked Mike Halverson, the radio station missionary, if he would take her in his truck, but he said no. So Jeremy and Mindy bravely went to start our deuce.

Mindy pressed the gas pedal with one hand and the starter button with the other. Jeremy worked the clutch and the brakes. The truck rolled down the hill and started, and it turned out we did have brakes, which was good. They drove to the mother´s house. She couldn´t walk, so we had to get people to carry her. I was going to help Ruth get a mattress and blanket from our clinic, but Jeremy told me he was worried about the radiator and asked me to go get some containers for water. So I ran up to our mission house, grabbed two big jugs, and ran back. By the time I got to the truck, the mother was loaded and ready to go. At the clinic we filled the jugs with water and discovered they both had holes in them. We laid them in the truck hole-side-up to minimize leakage.

After loading up all the people in Francia who wanted a free ride to Waspam (this is a normal part of emergency patient transport), we took off. Poor Jeremy--he was pretty stressed. He really hadn´t planned on driving the truck anywhere by himself. He wanted to drive carefully, too, so the lady wouldn´t get bounced around on our rutted roads. He did an excellent job, however—he even handled it when the truck tried to stall in the middle of going up hills. We prayed hard for the engine, the radiator, the brakes, and eveything else—and, thanks to God, everything functioned!

We got to the hospital safely, got the lady in, and hugged Jeremy and told him we were proud of him. The doctors said the mother didn´t have another baby in her uterus, but they didn´t explain what the lump was. They said she had sepsis and started her on an antibiotic. We saw her settled in bed with her baby girl, whom Mindy had been holding for her on the truck, and then we drove back to Francia.

When we pulled in at Mission Hill, we heard a familiar voice call from the porch, ¨OK, Jeremy, you can breathe now!¨ We looked at each other and said, ¨No way!¨ But it really was—Dawn! She and Rusty had gotten back on the bus that afternoon. It turned out that the doctors didn´t have to do surgery. They just set the collar bone and gave him a brace. We spent that evening praising God for all the coincidences that we knew weren´t by chance. We felt so blessed that He kept us safe through everything. And we felt so blessed by our delicious homemade pizza! No cheese except Parmesan to sprinkle on after baking, but it was still amazing. I think pizza qualifies as a blessing straight from God, too.

Pictures

I can´t believe it´s been a month since I posted! I have an exciting story to tell everyone, but not enough time to type it right now. I´ll either post it tomorrow or get it to you in installments through the radio mail. For now, here´s some pictures from my first two months in Nic.

at COVANIC

In the airport waiting for our plane to Puerto Cabezas

Mindy and Jenny displaying our boarding passes

Me on the plane flying into Puerto and me after our 4 hour ride from Puerto to Franica. Note the difference.

Me, Mindy, Jenny, Jeremy, Tekoa, and Christina immediately after arriving in the Managua airport

Transportation Woes

For our mobile clinics, we´ve been riding the mission´s four-wheeler. We stick our suitcase full of medicine and supplies on the front, and two or three of us ride. The others of us have to ride bicycles, or sometimes a motorcycle, but those break down and get flat tires about every time we ride them. The four-wheeler isn´t in good shape either. It´s welded and duct-taped together all over, it doesn´t have brakes, and the rear axle is broken. That means that we only have drive power in the front wheels, which makes it really hard to climb hills. Every time we come to a hill, we all lean forward to put the weight on the front and cross our fingers.

Last Tuesday, we were headed to Tasba Pain to run a mobile clinic. Predictably, the motorcycle got a flat, and Jeremy had to drive it back to Francia. The three of us girls continued to Tasba Pain, where we met a very steep hill that curved sharply to the right, with deep ditches on either side. We tried to shift our weight to the front to climb up, but because of the broken rear axle, we lost momentum quickly. We tried to downshift, but ended up in neutral and started rolling down the hill backwards. We decided to steer to the bottom of the hill and try again. However, because the four-wheeler does not have brakes, we could not control our speed. It was difficult to steer with all three of us, and then a small child ran across the road. We swerved, fish-tailed on the gravel, and ran into the left-hand ditch backwards. We fell on our backs on the ground left of the four-wheeler, and it almost rolled on top of us. We had to push it off of us with our feet, and, praise God, it settled on its wheels.

I landed on top of Mindy, so I wasn´t hurt as badly as she was. :P I just have a bump on my head, a bruised and scraped left elbow, and a bruise above my left hip. Mindy has scratches acroos her whole back and she feels like she pulled a muscle in it. She also has a big skinless patch on her left elbow. Right after I finished cleaning and bandaging her scrapes, she started blacking out and feeling like she would throw up. Fortunately, she was OK after sitting still for a few minutes.

We went ahead and opened our clinic to treat people that day. After we finished, we had to get back on the four-wheeler and drive home (thank God it started again). We had no way to tell someone at the mission to come pick us up. That drive home was the worst part of the day. We were intensely afraid we were going to crash again, and Mindy and I got off and walked up at least five of the steeper hills, just to reduce the weight on the four-wheeler. We got stuck in a mud-puddle, too. All in all, a bad day.

I really wish we had better transportation here at the mission. It´s frustrating to feel like I have to risk my life just to get to the people I want to serve. Please pray that we can get something that works better--soon.

Mobile Clinic

We ran our first mobile clinic last Monday in the little town of Santa Clara, about a 30 minute bike ride from Francia. I think the clinic went well, for our first time, but we felt incredibly overwhelmed. We were diagnosing and treating bronchitis, UTI's, pneumonia, roundworms, pre-eclampsia, and about a hundred kids with fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. We had to pull our books out every time to figure out what to do, and it felt like we were spending a long time on each patient. We hadn't packed
enough children's Tylenol, and Jeremy and Mindy had to go back for it. Overall, we just felt inadequate. I mean, we're CNA's--we're only licensed to take vitals and help patients bathe and use the bathroom.

Our other two clinics this week went more smoothly. It feels like we're getting a crash course in pharmacology and pathology, and our knowledge base is expanding. Pray for increasing knowledge, and pray for transportation. Next week's clinics are farther. We can't all ride the four-wheeler, but it would take 3 hours one way on the bicycles, even if the bikes weren't falling apart. We may be able to take the motorcycle for now, but we're hoping to buy a horse and cart soon--that will be a huge improvement
over technology!

Sorry if you tried the email address I posted and it didn't work. I found out it won't really work for everyone to email me there, so please send to katiebooton at gmail dot com instead. I'll still be able to check that once a month or so.

My email address at the mission

Hey everyone, you can write to me in Francia at yn4rra at winlink dot org

Your email will get translated to ham radio signal, sent over to Nicaragua, and translated back into text for me to read. At least, that´s how it´s supposed to work and how it hopefully will work after we get our end of it fixed. :) It should be working within the next few days, so maybe I can write back to you too.

I forgot to mention in the last post that Dawn Zimmerman, our mission director who was hurt in that motorcycle accident, is doing very well now. She met us at the Puerto Cabezas airport with her right leg and arm wrapped in bandages, on a crutch to support the leg that had to have gravel dug out of the kneecap, and she was smiling. She´s intensely hard-core and very much in charge of and taking care of all of us SMs. The idea that I might have been trying to take care of her is laughable.

Moments from my first week in Francia

Sunday, August 24,10 am
I´m in Managua´s domestic airport waiting to board my flight to Puerto Cabezas. We wait and wait and they don´t call us, and finally we realize we´ve been bumped to the next flight. We ask when it will come. The best answer we can get is ¨when our plane lands.¨ It´s a long wait. I employ the time well by getting Jeremy to teach me how to handle a hacky-sack.
Sunday, 2:15 pm
Finally in Puerto Cabezas, we get off our tiny plane and enter a deluge of rain. We run through to the tiny airport building, and one of the attendants hands us a note from the Zimmermans saying they´ll be back for us at 2pm. So . . . where are they? Then we ask where to go to pick up our luggage. The response: ¨Oh, it didn´t come on the same plane as you. It´ll be here at 8:00 tomorrow.¨ Oh. No. Most of us didn´t pack enough clothes and toiletries for this twist.
Sunday, 7pm
The Zimmermans came for us, we went shopping for bicycles, notebooks, and shampoo in the market, and now we´re at a little restaurant eating the local food—grilled chicken, cabbage-tomato-and-onion salad, plantain chips, and, of course, beans and rice. Next we plan to head out on the flatbed truck for Francia Sirpi. It should be a fun ride!
Sunday, 10pm
Two hours, five bruises, and two lungs full of exhaust fumes into, it´s not fun anymore. We´re driving on what must be the most rutted dirt road of its size in the world, and I´ve been bouncing around the bed of this truck, hitting the walls, our carry-on luggage, and bags of beans and rice. Plus, the wind carries away all my body heat by convection. I lean back into some bags and brace my knees against the truck side. The jolts kill my knees and back every two minutes, but I´m a little warmer. Two more hours of this, though? I´ll never make it. But then I look up—and the stars are glorious.
Monday, 10am
Rusty Zimmerman is talking to us about the mission and our jobs here. He´s drawing a map of the villages our mission serves. I´m wearing the same too-big, sweaty, muddy scrubs I wore yesterday, and I haven´t showered. It´s ridiculously humid, and these little black gnats are turning me into a pin-cushion. I´m also trying to adjust to the fact that I have an affectionate spider-monkey sleeping wrapped around my neck. This is a lot to take in . . .
Tuesday, 11am
Becky told me she left the clinic a little messy, but she couldn´t have prepared me for what I found. In the three months since she left, we´ve had two or three break-ins. People have thrown our equipment around looking for stuff they can sell (they usually take scrubs, for some reason). Furthermore, in the absence of human habitation, the cochroaches have moved in. A layer of cochroach poo covers rotting cardboard boxes, musty rubber rubs, and rusting metal basins stuffed full of bandages, medicine, instruments, and who knows what else. The disorganized junk covers shelves, counter space, and the floor. The worst part is, we´ve been cleaning for three hours and it still looks terrible. If I didn´t have all seven of the other SMs working with me, I would be sitting in a corner crying right now.
Tuesday, 1pm
I found Rilla Westermeyer´s old Peanut Gallery (UC student directory) in the clinic, and I´m looking through it during lunch for pictures of people I know. When I mention Rilla´s name in front of Ms. Brown, our cook, she lights up with happiness. Apparently Rilla, who came as a student missionary from Union several years ago, was a big hit in this village. She became fluent in Miskito rapidly and started a Pathfinders club for the kids. ¨All children Rilla good,¨ declares Ms. Brown. Later I´m sitting in the hammock trying to learn Jesus Loves Me in Miskito. Ms. Brown sings along, then says approvingly, ¨Maybe you be like Rilla.¨
Tuesday, 5pm
Our luggage is finally here! Dawn Zimmerman stayed in Puerto Cabezas to wait for it and brought it with her on the bus. I will never underestimate the value of a clean shirt again.
Wednesday, 5pm
We four medical SMs have been cleaning the clinic ourselves today, since the other girls have gone to the school to teach. The clinic looks so much better—we actually have clean, usable counter space now. I just finished putting all my IV´s and needles in order by gauge, and I feel so triumphant.
Wednesday, 6pm
I´m running around playing ¨Cut the Cake¨ with a swarm of Miskito children as part of evening Bible School. We just finished singing songs in English and Spanish, and 13-year-old Payton Zimmerman has been translating into Miskito for us to tell them what to do. After we finish the game, we walk home with the kids who live in our direction. I stretch the limits of my Miskito with the kids nearest me: ¨Naksa,¨ hello. ¨Nakisma,¨ how are you? ¨Ninim dia,¨ what is your name? How will I ever remember their names? They´re the most incredible conglomerations of sound I´ve ever heard. Brudilia, Ceedilia, Nesli, Kati. That last one is close enough to mine for me to remember. :) Payton tells me it means ¨moon.¨ Maybe that should be my name while I´m here.
Thursday, 4pm
Inventory of the pharmacy. All day. Typing up how many we have of what meds. Trying to figure out what the meds are for—we´re just CNA´s, after all. Some of the labels are in Spanish, and that makes it harder to look up in our drug book. Some of the meds aren´t labeled, they´re just sitting in plastic bags, and that makes it really hard. Some meds are rotting, and we have to throw them out. We´ve finished all but the bottom shelf, but we just ran out of battery on the laptop. The rest will wait till Sunday—we´re going to Waspam tomorrow. We´re going to talk to the people at the hospital about how to use our microscope to test for malaria, and we´re going to get internet.

Sorry about no pictures yet--I´m working on it, having trouble with my computer.

Sabbath at COVANIC

Because we´re missionaries, we´re expected to help with church. We should know that, but it still surprised us when the pastor came up to us on Friday at lunch and asked which one of us wanted to preach on Sabbath. :D We weren´t sure whether he was kidding or not . . .

We managed to convince him that none of us were up to preaching, but it was a little scary for a while. We did, however, help with Sabbath School by reading en espanol from Ellen White about the activities in the New Earth. (We were practicing our parts for a few days before). And then the pastor asked for volunteers to lead songs during the baptism. No one spoke up. Ruth and I looked at each other and said, ¨Hey, we can sing.¨ So we did. We stood up front and the people told us which songs to sing, and we announced them. Of course, we didn´t know the songs, so the people in the front row actually started them. We just pretended we knew what we were singing. Still, there we were, leading songs we didn´t know in a language we don´t speak fluently. Pretty cool experience, really.

After church, the pastor asked us to help lead the youth service in the afternoon. We thought he meant we should plan the whole thing, so we spent a few hours planning songs, games, Bible verses . . . When we got there, we discovered they already had a plan and they just wanted us to jump in and help. Since only Jenny is fluent in Spanish, that´s not exactly easy for us to do. The lady in charge kept grabbing my arm and talking to me really intensely in Spanish. Sometimes I can understand when people speak Spanish to me, but I had no idea what she was saying. I kept telling her, ¨No intiendo [I don´t understand].¨ Apparently she thought if she just talked louder and faster I´d understand what she wanted. :P With Jenny´s help, she finally got me to lead songs I didn´t know again. :D

We also played Sword Drill with our Bibles (the game where you have to look up a Bible verse faster than everyone else). That´s another one that´s harder with the language barrier. Not all Bible books sounds the same in Spanish and English. :P

I´m pretty impatient with the language barrier right now. I can tell I´m getting better at Spanish, but too slowly! And when we get to Francia Sirpi, we´ll have a whole ´nother language to learn. We started last week--some of the students here speak Miskito. We spent one evening trying to learn Miskito from them by means of our limited Spanish. The dean was also tranlating for us between Spanish and English, so we were speaking three languages for about half an hour. It made my head spin. :P

I forgot to say last time--for those of you who know Josh Enevoldson, Jeremy Meyer that I´m working with is his cousin. And another SM, Christina Tozer, knows Angela Gaedke from Camp Wawona. It´s nice to have friends in common.

We fly out to Puerto Cabezas (Port) tomorrow, and then we´ll go to Francia Sirpi, where the real adventure begins. I don´t know how soon I´ll be able to post again--maybe from Port. When I post from Francia, it will be short posts with no pictures. I´ll try to get pictures on soon, but I haven´t gotten that together yet and I can only do it from Port.

Don´t let that discourage you, though--send me an email, letter, package, whatever! And keep praying--it should be crazy organizing the clinic and figuring out life in Francia. Also, it sounds like Dawn Zimmerman is hurt pretty badly--I think they had to do sugery on her knee to get the gravel out.

I miss you all! Much love from Nic :)

I can blog from Nicaragua!

Ok, that sounded goofy, but I just found out, thanks to Evan Oberholster the magnificent (you´re awesome, buddy), that I can send emails to my blog and it will post them. So I don´t have to wait till we go to town to blog--i can email short blog posts from where i live via Ham radio. I´m happy about that. :)

Right now I´m still in Managua, at the Adventist academy COVANIC, using internet at the director´s house. We will fly to Puerto Cabezas on Sunday and then go to Francia Sirpi, our final destination. Because our tickets were already reserved for Sunday and the flight bookings are so tight, it was impossible for me to fly out early to take care of Dawn Zimmerman. (For those who didn´t get my email: Dawn is one of the permanent missionaries at Francia. She was in a motorcycle accident earlier this week and got badly burned. There was talk of flying me out earlier than Sunday to help take care of her, but it didn´t materialize for the above reason. They got a local nurse to take care of her, and I think she´s probably better off with someone fully trained.)

This week we´ve been at the Managua Adventist academy, COVANIC. We were supposed to have ¨teacher orientation¨ here, mostly for the SM´s who will be teaching in the school, but also for us clinic workers who will give health classes. Unfortunately, the people at the school didn´t have a good idea of what Christina Vargas wanted for us. They asked us what kind of work we would be doing and what we needed, and we had no idea. The teacher SMs don´t even have a curriculum. :( So the director´s wife showed us the basics of how to make a lesson plan on Wednesday, and then Thursday and today we sat in classes and observed. (That helped us get to know the kids better). Other than that, this has been free time for us. We´ve talked to each other, practiced our Spanish and a little Miskito with the kids and teachers, helped in the kitchen with dishes and food, and excercised. :) (Crazy American girls, running all over campus).

I think it´s been good for us to have this time to adjust and get to know each other. Last night we started having worships together, and we want to continue all nine months. And we´ll continue running. Christina is really gung-ho about excercise, and i´m wanting to be too. We´re getting the other girls into it. :)

Here´s who we SMs are:

Mindy from Southern: She´ll work in the clinic with me--she´s pre-physician´s assistant and a CNA.
Jeremy from Southern: He´ll also work in the clinic--he just finished a biochemistry degree and is going to medical school next year. He´s a CNA.
Jenny from Southern--health sciences major. She´ll help in the clinic, but she´s not a CNA.
Christina from Southern--used to be occupational therapy major, but now she´s undecided. She´ll teach high school English.
Tekoa from Southern--Social work major, will teach elementary school.
Ruth from Walla Walla--she´s going to teach science. She just finished the physical therapy pre-reqs.
Bridget from Walla Walla--just finished a two-year business degree and might go back for elementary ed. She´ĺl also teach English.

And me, the only one from Union. Feeling a little out of it, but I keep singing the school song to cheer myself up. :)

I miss you all! pray for me.

Katie