Movies on the porch and dinnertime surgery

The full moon illuminates the sea in a silver glow. It’s bright enough to walk the path tonight.  I’ve had the privilege the last few weeks to work alongside a doctor not only getting to learn more how to help those who come to the clinic, but also enjoying the opportunity to sit and chat with more people along the path as we made rounds daily into the community to see those who have a hard time making it to us.  So we’ve drained boils, sutured severed fingers and pulled a bullet from an ankle.  One of the fingers was the worst.  First time any of my suturing learning opportunities has almost made me queasy.  It didn’t help that it came directly on the tail of a going away dinner for the family who has been with us these last few weeks.  Nonetheless it is a joy to serve here.  Officially finished the 10 week training and study portion and now have moved into a staff position, which in actually means very little change in daily life.  I just don’t have hours of reading due each week...though come to think of it I think I have a paper I need to still write...

I think a few of my favorite moments the last few days have been having a little boy fall asleep in my arms while we watched a movie out on the open air deck.  With Zookeeper projected on the side of the building, there was nowhere else in the world that could have been better than sitting on the floor of the wood deck with this little guy.  Double joy when a few nights later he once again nestled in during Nemo.  This evening while a group of children played games on the deck I found myself sitting with a lady I hadn’t yet met, and we just got to talk and laugh together for a while enjoying a cool breeze and the beauty of the night.  That cool breeze is much welcome.  It gets a bit humid and hot from time to time, but I am grateful not to be too bothered by this.  We’ve been having some generator trouble for which you can pray, but so blessed that there is a fan at night.  My house becomes more and more home day by day.  

I’d been meaning to post something and wanted to share with you some things that Jesus has been showing me lately, so I kept putting off a post until I could put all that together coherently, but alas, that does not seem to be happening; the weeks get away from me. So here are some tidbits and the deeper reflections will just have to come later; too tired for that now.  

In the last few weeks another new adventure would be the English classes we are leading on a nearby island.  The 25 of so Honduran men who attend vary greatly in their English skills, but all are eager to learn more, so gracious to help me with my poor Spanish when I try to explain something, and all and all it’s a wonderful time.  We go through our usual full day and twice a week rush off right when the afternoon school gets out, going over to the island by way of a small boat.  Some nights the sea has been quite rough. We usually leave with the sunset behind us, then return under a canopy of stars, phosphorescent algae or something of that sort being stirred up in the wake of the boat like fireflies diving in the waves.  Other nights the sea is still and the moon so bright you can actually see the different shades in the water made by the black coral or white sand underneath as we go skimming through he shallow water inside the reef.  In the daylight these same areas turn the most brilliant shades of turquoise.

Well, time to call it a day.  I haven’t been sleeping much, but feel very sustained, praise the Lord.  Some visitors leave tomorrow and other folks arrive; every day is new and things are always changing and in flux.  I’ve been overseeing more and more of the kitchen administration during visiting groups.  After putting in the inventory to the director today I’ll wait to see what is available down-island when he shops tomorrow; then it’s time to create a menu for the next 42 meals with whatever items are available and come back o the boat.  

Life on a Monday

April is coming to a close and every day continues press us further to trust and know Jesus, to live another otherwise unpredictable day, and join God in what he is doing in, around and through us.  Today Hosea 6:3 is on on my mind “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord”.  I default to striving.  I so often can default to trying to live the life I believe I “ought” to live.  Trying so hard to obey a rule, please someone, achieve something, be something.  You don’t arrive at being something by doing something.  The doing comes out of your being, not the other way around.  I am also so prone to forget things I learn.  I want to obey God, but trying to was wrought with frustration and it seemed burdensome, joyless... But once again, I had it backwards; and so, ever so patiently, the Spirit is reminding me: know the Lord. Press on to know him.  To know him is to meet his character and in knowing we begin to trust which leads us to love him which leads to doing what he desires.  Obedience, then, is the fruit of knowing him.  It begins with who God is and what he does.  Then, as Acts 17:28 says “In Him we live and move and have our being”.  Finally, lastly, we get to what we do, how we live, the actions of faith.  But we can’t just go about in our own effort to do something in order to prove our worth, love or faith to God. He invites us to know him, to abide in him, to find our identity in Him; then He will lead us to live the life for which we were created, the one that is most satisfying, true and right.  There is then this amazing effect, that in as he leads us to obey, and we do so, we come to know him even more and the relationship deepens ever still.  

Saturday I enjoyed a very pleasant birthday.  Missed friends and family of course, but so blessed to have a relaxing day and at the end, two new friends surprised me with cake and gifts, the most precious being their offer of friendship and the few hours we spent together laughing, sharing in life and getting to hear a bit more of each other’s stories.  Be praying with us (and for me!):  we have been invited to a neighboring island to lead some ESL classes.  Now, I am not fluent in Spanish by any means, but since I know more than 75% of my team I get the privilege to be the point person for this.  I’m very much looking to it.   I expect it to be a challenge, for that is how we grow and where we recognize the end of ourselves and get to see God do great things.  I also hope to improve my own level of conversational spanish, and to see God raise up a unified community.  There are multiple tensions between different people groups and families in this eclectic part of the world and we watch to see God’s plans unfold.  As a team we were talking this morning with a pastor from the area:  the gospel is about the arrival of the kingdom of God.  Life lived as it was meant to be lived. Life in this kingdom extends into every part: culture, art, science, politics, family, society.  So our daily life includes restoring communities through practical means of medical care, education, clean water, job training, English classes.  Just some musings as I start off this Monday morning.  Praying for your day.

The heart is not a brownie

“But you, Oh LORD, know me; you see me and test my heart towards you” Jeremiah 12:3

I read this the other morning. It was one of those beautiful, delicious times on the deck. The dog and two cats were lying on the patch of sunlight coming through the trees. I’d been praying and enjoying time with Jesus over a cup of coffee when these pictures started to form in my mind as the Spirit spoke to my heart.  Perhaps you can identify with this. 

Sometimes (in error) I have conceptualized God’s testing of my heart like he is trying to push me till I break; finding all the weakest and most vulnerable places. Deeply I was believing a lie that God isn’t good nor does he act for my good, as in this scenario He has little involvement other than putting me through the hoops (sure there are all those verses about the good stuff that testing and trial produces, but if you start out believing the lie that God isn’t really that great, then none of those promises sound all that great either).  Then this other picture: God’s testing of us also isn’t like sticking a toothpick in the brownies while they are baking.  “Is she done yet?”  Like at some point the beating and baking, trials and testing, will produce something he will find pleasing (which might be true, but I was in error on the process and his involvement).  What then instead filled my mind was a picture of the most brilliant of engineers and inventors in the middle of sparks flying, molten steel, hammers crashing, huge beams being raised up on cranes and giant machines groaning as they lift massive loads from white-hot furnaces...He’s attending to a billion and one things, and yet at moments he’s looking through a magnifying glass making fine adjustments on a delicate piece he holds in his palm.  The air is electric with the passion, dedication and joy of this artist.  With each test he runs, he’s making his creation a little closer to perfection. With each trial, he is finding out where it breaks down and then actively removing that point of weakness to make it all the more magnificent.  He has this glorious end in mind and his project requires that things be melted and molded, then refined down and hammered, pressed and polished, cut and fine-tuned.  But all of it is done because he loves what he does and loves what he creates, all with a great, good, and perfect end in mind.  

"Oh taste and see that the Lord, He is good!" Psalm 34:8

The delicious morning tasted that much sweeter. I encourage you to hang out in Psalm 63 as a post script. 

Sunrises and Sunsets

“From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praise.” Psalm 113:3

On a sunny Caribbean morning rushing about getting ready for the team, this Psalm was on my mind.  Excited to meet the people God was bringing to our island and to see what he would do among us and around us, I thought is was a fitting verse given the name of the church, that they were coming from the west coast to our little place on the Point where you see the sun rise over the sea. From sunrise to sunset, the Lord shall be praised.  Seeing God work in so many ways as the week unfolded, hearing of God’s work in the individual stories of each person as they live within God’s great story of redemption,  laughing my guts out at times, weeping at others.  

Those words, however, of praising and trusting God who is good and faithful, from sunrise to sunset, took on another layer of meaning this week.  The doctor, who God graciously sent here for this week, and I were called to the see the baby of a friend.  Despite doing what we could, even sending her off-island for further help, this week we read in a church program her sunrise and her sunset, the days of her birth and her death.  To attend the wake, to sit together, to cry, to listen to her mother sing at the funeral, to walk down the path along the still sea behind the coffin and up the long hill to the cemetery.  Even in these moments, we rely on the love of Jesus, the comfort of His Spirit. So on Good Friday I kept thinking of a Father who knows the suffering and pain of losing a son, who gave his only son, who also watched a walk to a tomb.  

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned -  every one - to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  Isaiah 53:4-6

Cockroaches, Monkeys and Fire Alarms

I’ve just plopped down into a big chair in my living room.  Thankfully the wind has picked up outside to cool down a rather hot day. It feels so amazing to sit down! It’s been a busy week. Anyone else glad it is Friday?  We are prepping for a big team coming down. They are in route already and will arrive sometime mid-afternoon tomorrow.  So excited for their arrival, but also savoring the night: A walk into one community to pick up some dinner and chat at a little cafe, then dinner conversation and hanging out before topping off the evening with The Princess Bride.

I have been thinking a lot of Moses and the plagues in Egypt the last few days.  My living space here is alright, but it was time to treat the downstairs for bugs...so over the last few days the floor has become littered with roaches each morning, particularly in the kitchen. Lovely.  So as we clean from top to bottom in preparations, I spent the morning in the kitchen attending to the carnage and other business.  I’m not sure if from all the rearranging going on or from the pesticides, but we had a huge scorpion in the living room late last night in attack mode.  Successfully defended my roommate, however I then proceeded to yell and flap my arms while hopping about the house as a means of debriefing from that situation. Those critters give me the heebie-jeebies!

In other things, God walked me through a later night in the clinic resulting in 12 stitches in an arm.  Branching out of my usual assigned tasks this week also took me into the school where I was helping with some testing.  The teachers are evaluating new students for placement and there were some beautiful kiddos from the Spanish school that needed some help so I got to be back in the classroom for a little while. I look forward to more of that; such good times past. I was also on smoke-detector duty this week, installing and testing all the alarms.  There were two that none of us could get to sound when tested and the manual said in such cases to discard the detector.  Well, when the trash went to the burn-pit today, we found out they did, in fact, work.  Too late for the smoke detectors at that point, but how we laughed while the burn pile shrieked to let us know that yes, there was indeed smoke out there.  It helped brighten our mid-day moral (that and giant spoonfuls of peanut butter all around).  In the afternoon, you’d have thought it was Christmas.  I was cleaning out the clinic (I’m so nervous to open cupboards for fear of creepy-crawlies sometimes) when I happened upon a number of items that we had been needing.  Oh I was so overjoyed to find things like gloves, coban and tongue depressors.  It’s the little things in life! 

So to close out this week, I wanted to share a little story with you.  We’re discussing our way through Cross Cultural Connections.  I find the book great for much more than moving to another country and community. There are so many points that are applicable to even being around one’s own family!  Sometimes I wonder about what is it exactly that I’m doing, what is really of eternal significance you might say, when so much of it is just observing and absorbing, learning about the culture.  This happens any time I move, but I’m more acutely aware of it here, in part because we are daily discussing things that come up or just getting doused with a situation that arose because of not understanding something. I am so prone to be a “doer”.  Check things off lists, finish tasks, do something.  But sometimes God tells us essentially, “Don’t just do something, stand there” (Henry Blackaby).  Sometimes we really need more than anything else to stop doing and just be.  To stand still with God, to be with him. To let him work in us what we are becoming.  Also, how can we hope to speak life and encouragement to a group of people when we don’t know what would be meaningful to them? How do we put the Gospel into context if we don’t take time to learn what context we are in?  Perhaps you’ll travel somewhere, maybe be part of an outreach team of some sort, stay with someone in another country or meet someone right at home who comes from a different context.  I’ve enjoyed this story and I will, I’m sure, be looking for ways that I or others portray the “monkey” in us; here you go:

“A typhoon had temporarily stranded a monkey on an island. In a secure, protected place, while waiting for the raging waters to recede, he spotted a fish swimming against the current.  It seemed obvious to the monkey that the fish was struggling and in need of assistance. Being of kind heart, the monkey resolved to help the fish.  A tree precariously dangled over the very spot where the fish seemed to be struggling. At considerable risk to himself, the monkey moved far out on a limb, reached down and snatched the fish from the threatening waters. Immediately scurrying back to the safety of his shelter, he carefully laid the fish on dry ground.  For a few minutes the fish showed excitement, but soon settled into a peaceful rest.  Joy and satisfaction swelled inside the monkey. He has successfully helped another creature” (Duane Elmer).

Lots of application, I think.  So take some time to just be - experience and enjoy God, listen and engage with people around you with an open and genuine heart, and let’s see how this goes. 

Month 1 and random bits

In the middle of the night there was a commotion out on the path somewhere that abruptly pulled me from a deep sleep. I honestly was waiting for someone to pound on the clinic door and yell that there was an emergency.  But soon the voices faded away. It was good that I was awake though.  I was all jittery by then and was not going back to sleep easily when I heard my name faintly through the breeze.  Someone was down below loudly whispering my name.  It was the neighbor; there was an emergency.  Down to the clinic.  In that hour or so between being wakened and hearing my name called, I had been praying.  Last week when I was off island there was a big medical issue but it was taken care of down-island since we weren’t here, and due to the issues involved, that was best by far.  On this night though, I was praying, telling my mind and heart to trust.  Jesus knows what I can handle, and I feel it’s often less than he thinks I can. I just asked for a lot of grace in the clinic. And there was. Turned out to be a small thing medically, more than anything an opportunity to just love on a neighbor and pray for her baby.  Nonetheless at 2am I was rather awake so spent some time with my sketchbook and journal over a bowl of coco-puffs.

So one of my favorite movies when I was a kid was the Newsies. There’s a line in there, “I spent a month there one night”.  Well my roommate and I can identify. It is unbelievable where the days go.  I’m not sure why I am always so exhausted.  Life in the moment, taking whatever comes up those steps or down the path.  This first month seems to have flown by. My hope and prayer is for opportunity to graft into the community more.  Doing things is all well and good; there’s always more to do and it’s good stuff. But my heart is to be in relationship with people. Work in the clinic, helping in the school, doing classes and Bible studies - it is all great stuff, but the goal isn’t to check off a bunch of tasks each day. My heart longs to be in community; to do life with my neighbors to whatever extent possible. I want to hear their stories. I want to share meals or walks down the path. I want to know their names and family tree.  Had an interesting conversation with a pastor from another Caribbean island last night. So interesting to see this culture through his eyes.  So much to learn.  

In the training portion of life, we are going through some amazing materials.  I love the congruity of the Spirit: similar themes appearing in multiple sources, even one’s from other places than here.  For example we spent two hours Saturday morning going through a class/discussion on world view, truth claims, postmodernism, and assumptive language.  I came back to my room for a little rest time and listened to a sermon from a church back in Phoenix. The content was so parallel to the morning.  Good stuff. 

Looking at the upcoming weeks:  We have this week to prepare and then a big group coming in for a week to do various projects around the community. It’s wonderful but tiring to have a team here.  We have later nights, busier days, and very little personal/down time.  Along with that, I am very blessed to have a doctor also coming in that same week.  I want to spend all the time I can in the clinic and pray to absorb information in a supernatural way.  That means that this week I hope to get ahead of my usual curriculum requirements so that I can devote as much time as possible to the clinic during the doctor week.  So it’s going to be a bit busy.  But in all that, always ready to stop and sit and spend time with people. Prayerful that I am on God’s agenda each day and not my own.  

The wind is gusty tonight.  Wish I could share withe you the beauty of this night. Sunset from the prayer deck was fantastic.  Took a walk to the far end of the island (about 4 miles round trip from the clinic).  It was gorgeous standing at the end of a long dock as if walking off into the edge of world over turquoise water, the gentle tide blowing the sea grass in the shallows. The generator has been running great, thanks to a new bank of batteries and generous hearts.  It’s amazing how sometime so simple as dependable electricity in the clinic or even my home takes off a little pressure.  I’d be happy if I don’t have to do any more stitches by flashlight, although it does make for a story.  Thank you for your prayers, letters and generosity.  You’re faithfulness is invaluable. It’s powerful and encouraging. Love to you all.

Thoughts from a boat

I found myself sitting on the bottom of a small boat racing towards Roatan and the hospital. The ride seemed to be taking so much longer at that moment.  A sheet covered my patient who was laying next to me on the floor of the boat on a small mattress. Every now and then I’d pull back the sheet that was shading him from the unfiltered sunlight to see if he was still conscious.  There was very little else to do as the boat slapped against the sea.  I stared up at the hot sky and prayed. How to I process this?  How do I respond! Injury had been caused to another out of anger.  I ached deeply, knowing that the blow was dealt by someone familiar and the painful sobs I’d heard from this boy spoke more of the injury to the soul than to the head.  Jesus? What do I do with this? How do I respond? I felt angry and overwhelmed.  

And then Jesus answered.  He knows what it is to have those near him turn against him and cause horrific pain.  He bore a crown of thorns and then men took clubs and beat down the crown upon his head, bashing those thorn into his skull.  Jesus took this moment in time upon himself.  He accepted that piercing crown, his head bled, so that the hate and hurt that caused this boy’s head to now bleed could be dealt with and forgiven. So that sin and death could be crushed. Jesus took this.  I was still sitting in the boat.  But the anger towards the one who inflicted the injury was resolved. I still hate that this happened, but I sensed a deep compassion and ache for the one who caused this.  Later that day I heard these words: “I just want to be cherished”.  Oh the things our souls were made for but from which we are so far; deceived by lies and our self-will, we abandon the safe place where things are True and right.  Only grace lets me put my arms around the one who did this, and pray with them that they might realize the love of the One who does cherish them.