New Horizons

My patient sat still before me as I used the needle driver to wiggle my curved suture needle through his flesh to close the cut I’d made just moments before with a dull kitchen knife. Now you before you wonder just what kind of bizarre torture ritual I was completing let me assure you that my patient was in no pain - for he was only an orange.

One of the benefits of living on the campus where my sister teaches is the fact that I am welcome to sit in on any class that I’d like. So when a missionary doctor from Georgetown arrived to teach a class on suturing I decided to broaden my horizons.

Sitting in class with the sticky orange in one hand and the needle drivers in the other I carefully sutured in and out of the orange flesh. After learning the horizontal and vertical mattresses, the simple interrupted suture, the figure eight, and the sub-cuticular suture which completed in the flesh below the skin, I decided that the social work profession should defiantly include suturing. But since that’s highly unlikely that any social work giants will ever concur with that thought I guess I will have to satisfy myself with suturing fruit.

Unexpected Encounter

Bent in half I pushed through what could only be considered the “suggestion” of a trail, with generous swaths of razor grass hanging mere centimeters from my face. I could hear the grass and vines scraping the camelback I wore while I focused on following the sliver of sand at my feet. After crossing a swampy creek and winding our way through the underbrush Vernon and I broke into a wide clearing that housed several families in traditional homes on stilts– the object of our quest through the jungle.

It was Thursday, one of my favorite days of the week. The day that the students spend their time putting their education has health workers and missionaries to a practical use. Generally I spend my Thursdays with the students who work at the clinic, so that I can have an opportunity to utilize my social work skills, however this Thursday they needed one more person to visit homes along the river. I was a bit ambivalent about going visiting as students who go visiting offer basic medical care, hydrotherapy, massage, and bible studies, none of which I am well versed in.

I was matched up with Vernon, one of the oldest and quietest students. Vernon had a family in mind he wanted to visit so we sped 20 minutes up the river in our outboard motor boat to locate them. Upon reaching our destination we discovered that the family was not home so we picked another nearby home instead. Our boat pulled ashore and we climbed on the half submerged dock where a mother of four was doing her weekly laundry. After visiting her and her children we asked about getting to the next set of houses down the river. She informed us that there was no way by land except a swampy overgrown trail. After considering the fact we had over an hour left before the boat would return for us we decided to trek through the jungle.

As we emerged into the clearing we found a group of men lounging on an overturned paddle boat in various stages of drunkenness with bottles of alcohol and cigarettes scattered among them. It was only 9:30am. Vernon said “uh…” so I jumped right in and let the men know that we were visiting families along the river and asked if his family would like a visit. The man closest to me responded by stating. “I know you people, you’ve come before. My family would very much like to a visit. You can find them in the house, but I’ll not be able to participate” and then he indicated the bottle in his hand.

As we neared the house we were met by several women and small children. “Come in, come in!” they said, “We love it when the students visit.” Assuring us that they had no medical needs they asked for a bible study, stating that the children love hearing the stories. So we settled on the rug in their bare living room with three woman and ten children looking expectantly at us.

Vernon began while the group looked on, tried to answer questions, and asked their own questions in return. Half way through two of the men we’d seen outside staggered up the stairs and onto the porch. While one was seriously drunk the other was clearly not and fixing his eyes on me he said, “I have a question for you. I need to know if I can be forgiven.” A bit taken back I stammered out a response and then Vernon continued with the study. But the man was not satisfied. Five minutes later he broke in again, “What if I ask forgiveness for God, but then I do the same thing again, and again and again? I need to know, can I really be forgiven?”

While mentally saying a prayer and wondering what I’d gotten myself into I began to explain to the man, who introduced himself as Kendric, about the God who works with us and our mistakes. Who forgives and accepts us where we are but then shows us how to grow and make changes in our behavior.

Kendric took it all in and then proceeded to tell Vernon and I that he had been raised in a Christian home by “very good Christian parents.” As a young man Kendric had moved out to a larger town and that is when the trouble had begun. Although Kendric did not go into details about his past he let us know he had done a lot he wasn’t proud of. In between his story Kendric paused repeatedly to let us know how happy he was that we’d visited today because he knew he need to make a change in his life.

What followed was one of the most moving moments I’ve witnessed in a long times as Kendric and his entire family got on their knees and Kendric stammered out a simple prayer. Between his tears Kendric told God that he was sorry for the mistakes he had made, and for not being a good example to his wife and ten children. “I’m not a good man, but I want to be. Please help me. I’m ready to come back to you now,” he prayed.

A little later as we pulled away in the boat Kendric, with a huge smile on his face, stood with his arm around his wife and watched us go. "Thank you for coming!" he yelled to be heard above the motor. As our boat sped away I too had a chance to say "thank you." Thank you to the God of second chances, who forgives despite where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Thank you to the God who directs our steps despite our reticence to step outside of our comfort zone.

Bat Problems

Once upon a time there was a little house in the jungle that sat on stilts nearly 12 feet above the ground. A wide porch ran around three sides of it and there were rows of open windows allowing the breeze to cool its three rooms. The nine young ladies who shared it felt it was an ideal place to live. But perhaps it was a little too ideal, for various wild creatures also sought its comforts on a regular basis.

The girls to whom it belonged were generous, but the creatures did not return their generosity with equal respect. One species was particularly at fault – a dark creature that looked liked a winged rodent – but is also known as a bat.

At nights when they should have been out foraging and frolicking, they instead chose to hold nightly council meetings at which they chattered incessantly for hours in their rafter homes. At times their conventions would get quite heated and all out brawls would occur complete with screaming and thumps from bodies being tossed through the air. And to make matters worse, each morning the evidence of their gathering would lie in the middle of the floor, right outside of the girls mosquito nets, as none of the creatures could break from their meeting to use the restroom elsewhere.

Things were getting out of hand. Two of the young ladies, sisters, felt that something needed to be done. So one morning they set off on a mission to eradicate their unwanted visitors. A quick trip to the jungle supplied the girls with a bush of prickly thorns which they deposited in their room and then went for the ladder.

One of the girls climbed the ladder against one end of the room while the other girl climbed up a window, across the top of the showers and toilets, and then perched in the rafters.


Using the broom and little sticks they poked and prodded three sleeping guests along the inside of the peak of the roof and into the great outdoors where they belonged. Then they took turns stuffing the thorn branches they had cut into each end of the roof to deter their guests return.

In contentment and peace all the girls celebrated their first evening of silence in a long time.

g

Unexpected Delivery

Only twenty minutes to lunch, yet there she stood before us in a soggy shirt and a men’s rain boots that reached well past her nine year old knees and nearly to the hem of her ragged shorts. My second day at the clinic was shaping up to be interesting. “Please come Miss. My mother lost the baby and she won’t stop bleeding.”

She waited while we gathered our things and then followed us down to the landing explaining that she’d walked through the jungle to the clinic for help. After locating an outboard motor boat willing to drive down the creek we climbed on board and went in search of the nearest nurse. Half way to the main river we passed a group from the mission school and Elizabeth (my sister -the nurse) did a quick mid-creek switch from their boat to ours.

We stopped at the small three room shanty on stilts that the 9 year old indicated. Peering through the windows in our direction were at least four additional children in t-shirts and underwear. We found her in the bedroom of the three room shack. Crammed into the corner between the bed and the wall she lay in a pool of blood on the rough wooden slats of the floor wearing only a t-shirt.

With Liz lodged between the corner and the woman assessing the situation, the rest of us gathered around to help in whatever way we could. We listened while the woman, Roxy, gave us the brief details. Roxy was about three months pregnant. Earlier that morning she’d felt some cramping then two hours previous she had lost the baby, a little boy. Since then Roxy had lay on the floor bleeding unsure of how to extract the placenta which was not coming on its own. Although Roxy had not lost an inordinate amount of blood, she was none-the-less at risk should the placenta not be delivered soon.

Liz both looked and felt in the woman for the placenta while lamenting the fact that she did not have a speculum, forceps, or any other tools aside from the rubber gloves and an injection to control the bleeding. I soon found myself massaging Roxy’s uterus in attempts to induce contractions while Roxy tried to push the placenta out. Liz got into the action by holding the umbilical cord and gently tugging on it in hopes of dislodging the placenta from the uterus wall. After nearly an hour of very little progress and a lot of prayer we moved Roxy from the floor to the bed. Somehow the move was just what she needed and less than five minutes later the fully intact placenta slid out.

With Roxy cleaned up and resting we took a few minutes to examine the baby which one of the children had retrieved from the jungle where it had been thrown. While we felt sorrow for Roxy’s loss, it was awing to look at something small enough to fit in a single hand yet so beautifully formed. All the organs were visible through his semi-translucent skin and his veins and arteries snaked along just under the surface. Fingers and toes were separated and tipped with nails the size of a pin heads. Knuckles and kneecaps fully bendable and even tiny arches on the soles of his feet. David was truly right when he marveled, “you formed me in my mother’s womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made” Psalms 139:13, 14