Week 2: Evangel

This week has been incredible; full of so many experiences, sights, thoughts, emotions, prayers and reflections. I feel as though I have not the skill to even begin to describe to you all that has gone on in these incredible full and short four first days working at Evangel! And yet the passion and burden to convey the experiences the Lord has given to me to all of you, my dear supporters, that I must try to calm my excited and racing heart just enough to put thoughts to words, and words to a page.

Let me begin with a few fun things that have been going on with Allison and I before I dive into what we have been doing at the hospital. Allison and I have been cooking!!! It has been really fun! Dan and Tim (the two med students from N. Ireland) and Allison and I have been trading off nights for dinners and Rachel has been helping both teams and joining us. I must say, the bar has been set high each night for both dinners and desserts and it has been fun to put on full meals. I DO have a MUCH greater respect however for you mothers and wives who cook every night all the time!! I am so tired after I work all day and then it takes so long here to cook that we have to start at least an hour and a half before we want to start eating! But we have all been having a ton of fun and Allison and I have been learning cooking creativity along the way! I think the Lord has also been teaching Allison and I the joys of the Nigerian way of putting people first before time and events because both of our watches all of a sudden broke within the first week of being here!! It has been a strange and somehow freeing phenomenon to never really know exactly what time it is. Thank God for a culture that puts people first. May we learn from them and implement that more into our lives from now on!

Ok, now on to hospital. The first day was short and full of getting introduced to the hospital and its way of operation. We met with the doctors for morning report at 7:30, where one of the residents or interns who has been on call all night lists the cases that have been admitted that night and the mortalities. Then all of the doctors, residents and interns begin to discuss the cases, with the consultants (who are the senior and residing doctors) and the consultants begin grilling the younger doctors about the cases and begin guiding them through critical thinking patterns. It seemed to me a harsh way of doing things, and yet I suppose public humiliation and public teaching allows one to remember what they learned much better and gives great incentive for wanting to know as much information and make informed and accurate decisions as possible. We then followed Dr. Ardill around on what they call ‘Ward Rounds’, which is when the doctors go around and visit each bedside of the patients whom they are interacting with (ie. Dr. Ardill as a surgeon goes around and sees all the surgical patients). We must have visited at least 30 patients and it took about 2 hours or so. It was really interesting to get to be introduced to each case and then to hear what they were doing or what they were going to do for each patient. The doctors work hard and are almost over worked but have an underlying passion and energy that is undeniable and that is so God-centered that it spills out into their words and their deeds.

Tuesday and Wednesday morning were busy days in the OR, or what they call the “Theatre”. We had some really good experiences!! Both Allison and I got to scrub into a surgery! I got to scrub in to a surgery on a 3 day old baby who had a myelomeningocele, which is birth defect where the back bone and spinal canal do not close before birth. I got to help hold instruments in place, clamp and even help Dr. Ardill with the stitching. It was amazing to watch Dr. Ardill at work and it is such a blessing to have him at Evangel because he is such a skilled surgeon and able to do almost anything that is set before him due to his many many years on the field and his gift of accuracy and critical thinking from the Lord. We watched a few other surgeries on both days, including a removal of a fat tumor (lipoma), an exploratory surgery on a man’s abdomen who was eventually believed to have Tuberculosis, and had the mycobacterium infectious in his abdomen. After we had watched a few surgeries and I got to help put an IV in, we helped with wound dressings. This was also held in the center room of the Theatre. I do not even know how to describe to you the intensity of these wounds that we were dressing! I am not going to describe the wounds because of the gruesomeness of the details I would have to include; however it was so mind altering for me to help bathe the wound or the burn of a small child or an adult. These people are so brave. Most get an IV pain medication just before we clean and dress their wounds, but some chose not to. The ones that do not are very brave and try to just bite their tongues and cringe but most have to scream because of the pain. Pain management is something I am still trying to figure out and some of the people I cannot comprehend how they cannot be unconscious with pain due to the severity of their wounds or the intensity of our cleaning them. As I was holding a screaming child’s hand today my heart broke for the pain this world must go through and how much more God’s heart must break when He watches his children suffer.

Thursday we did Ward Rounds again but it was similar to Monday. Thursday afternoon and Friday were similar with the wound cleanings and a few other skills including a few catheter insertions. Allison and I began to get a better feel for what to do during the cleanings and started to get more proficient at them. The two doctors really appreciated our help because they usually do the cleanings on their own, but it really is a two man job at least. So many of the wounds are from road traffic accidents or burns, and some are complications as a result of underlying disease, especially sickle cell anemia. It has been fun to get to see the same wound dressing patients for four days in a row. However, there is a part of me that feels sad each time the same child or a familiar face gets rolled through the door; it’s almost as if you have to wonder if these people will ever heal from these outrageous wounds. I suppose it has been only a short time and difficult wounds take a long time to heal.

Let me go back a little to Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday afternoon the five of us short term medical missionaries from this compound went with a team to a place in Jos called Gidan Bege (House of Hope). Gidan Bege is a ministry that takes in street boys and houses them for 6-9 months as a sort of transitional period to make sure the boys will stay in an institution. Many boys will run away from a place like an orphanage. The ministry has taken in so many boys and feeds them, gives them a place to stay and teaches them about the love of Jesus. One little boy that was there when we went on Wednesday had a scar on his neck, later I found out his story. At age 6 this little boy’s uncle had gotten ill and the family had blamed the little boy because of witch craft and other beliefs and so tried to kill him by hanging him. The grandmother had saved the little boy and taken him to Gidan Bege for fear of his life. These children are in desperate need of hope and they can find it here because of the dear people who have devoted their lives to sharing the gospel, love and their time to these boys. (In case you were wondering, there are not many street girls because girls in this society are very useful, girls can be used as another slave or servant in the house and so you do not see many street girls here, mostly boys)

Gidan Bege also has a ministry to widows in Jos. They have a free sewing area where the women can come and bring their cloth and sew either to make a living or to provide for their children or themselves. They provide a meal, a program sharing the gospel, and a free health clinic every Wednesday. Many of these women are in hopeless need of love, acceptance and community, not to mention health. We sat in the little clinic room and helped take blood pressures as the women filed in one by one to tell of their health problems and get their BP taken and then stood outside the window to get their bag of pills to last them till the next week. Over half of the women have high blood pressure and the clinic provides a basic diuretic to care for this seemingly uncontrolled health problem in this community. As a part of the clinic, the ministry also travels to another part of Jos called Blind town. Blind town is a part of Jos where a large community of (as you would guess) blind people have gathered. But there are not only blind people here but also all their children, many other poor people, all their kids and then also a community of non-infectious lepers and their kids. Blind town is actually a very large section of Jos and has its own chief and is its own sub-culture. The community is very poor and all the houses are very close to each other. Close and small houses, open sewage and narrow alleys create a maze you must make your way through in order to reach the house you wish to inquire upon. We played follow the leader through the maze in a team of 8 and visited about 6 or 7 different houses in one section of Blind town and another team did the same in a different part. Blind town is 99 percent Muslim and does not look on to intrusion with a friendly eye so only certain entrances are open to white people and to Gidan Bege’s medical ministry. The people are so grateful for the services and it was so mind changing to stand in the homes of these people and take their BP, talk with them, answer questions, hand them medication and then walk to another house and do a similar thing. There are children everywhere and they get so excited to see white people! They think it is the funniest thing ever and want to touch you, rub your skin, hold your hand, say “hello”, give you a high five, smile at you, laugh and have you smile back. Of course me, germaphobe Alisha, was at first slightly perturbed when I looked down at my sides and had 6 runny nosed and snotty kids with dirt and grime all over them and their hands rubbing my arms and holding on to my hand like no tomorrow. I realized that I had the potential to get annoyed with all the kids as well because as we would walk through the alleys they would make it almost impossible to walk at a normal pace in order to get done what we needed to on our medical mission, and on top of that, because the kids would slow us down and make large swarms around us other people would walk up to us and ask the Doctor in our group questions and ask for medication or for help with a problem. BUT, I was given a moment that I have never had before; I was given insight into the life of Jesus like I never have experienced before. As I was standing surrounded by kids and poor and hurting people limping up or walking blindly up to the mass of people along a dirty alley and asking for help I thought to myself “I bet you this is how Jesus felt a lot of the time; surrounded, smothered, needed desperately, heart aching, tired, incredibly in love with the people in front of him and longing to heal their hearts as well as their bodies.” It was so overwhelming. Praise God for sending His son Jesus Christ for man kind who was so frantically groping in the dark, and now blindly awaiting His touch of love and healing in their hearts that can come at anytime through the miraculous ways the Holy Spirit works in and through people’s lives. I pray that the Lord would use my hands and my feet to be those of Christ’s that I might bring love and healing in the name of Jesus to a world that is so desperately searching for healing.

Let me just close with what Jesus said, as I cannot summarize it any better. I was reminded of this passage today.
As Jesus was preaching to the people he said...
“But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say? Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:46-49)

Let us be builders of solid houses as we follow the teachings of Jesus, the rock, no matter where we are or what we are doing in this life.

Blessings on each one of you! May you experience God in a new way today and feel His presence abundantly in your life!!
Thanks again for all your prayers!

Alisha

PRAISES
-The week at the hospital was very full and we were able to encourage the doctors as we worked along side them in their tasks.
-We have had really good fellowship with the other short term missionaries and other missionary families! Everyone is so loving and helpful!
-We have had safety on the roads, on the compound and in the markets!

PRAYERS
-Please pray for health for both Allison and I and me especially, I have been struggling a little but am currently feeling much stronger and I have been learning to depend fully on the strength of the Lord.
-Pray that the patients at Evangel will experience not only physical healing but also spiritual healing through the love of Christ shown to them by Allison and I and by the staff at Evangel.

-Pray for the poor and desperate in Nigeria and especially those in Blind Town.These are the white, nursing uniforms we wear when we are not wearing scrubs in the OR!

This was the child that had the myelomeningocele and the surgery I got to scrub in on.

This is Dr. Ardill at work and me assisting him!

This is what the child's back looked like post-surgery! Praise the Lord for good surgeons like Dr. Ardill, the child did not lose any sensory or motor function!

Allison and I in the "Theatre".
Allison and I doing a little time in the kitchen and showing off our meal.. =)

Taking the BP in the entrance or uncovered part of the home of a patients in Blind Town.

The alleys of Blind town.

The the swarm of kids at Blind Town.

Helping dress a burn victims wound who had 20 percent of his body burned in a car fire.