Recounting His blessings through hellos & a goodbye

Said goodbye to our lovely interns--Kaitlin, Hannahbeth, and Joshua. Their internship and friendship to me at GSF was such a blessing! 

Hannahbeth & Kaitlin 

Said hello to Katie and Cody—a new LT missionary couple who will be working at GSF.  Cody will be helping out at the MK school and Katie will be working with the children with special needs!

Said hello to one of our nursing interns—Teddy!  She’s an old GSFer and is currently in a program called Investment Year. For this term she will be working with us—the nurses. She’s interested in nursing and will be helping out at the clinic.

she took selfies on my camera....so now I have a picture of her to show you ;)

Said hello to MANY MANY medical trips! Trips for severe malaria, oozing pus, glasses, pneumonia, skin problems, ear problems, seizure problems, orthopedic problems, EEGs, more pus, and so much more I don't remember! It’s fun spending time with the kiddos when taking them on medical trips…although it leaves me exhausted.

Matthew got hungry while waiting for the Dr.

Matthew and Tom

Daudi...he screamed when he got on a boda…but we survived! I bought him a Fanta and some fish and chips. I think he enjoyed the rest of the day.

Took Chloe on a date to Jinja after her medical trip 

Esther and Sam

 Their first experience at KFC and an elevator ride(s) 

Said hello to village visits! Besides medical trips, I was blessed with the opportunity to take our kids back to their home/village for the holidays.  It was insightful and humbling meeting their relatives, seeing their village, seeing what their life would be like and will be like for a couple of weeks. I wish I knew what the kids were thinking. One of them cried when he left to go home.

Driving the children to visit their village

One of the girl's home

Dropping off Nikko and Silas

Said hello to intestines and jackfruit! Our social worker Loyce dropped me off with one of our kids to visit with her family and jokingly told me “I hope you survive”. I went with them and had my first intestines & jackfruit. It was fun. YES, i know Chinese eat intestines...but I never tried it until then. 

Said hello to vicious toddlers. For some reason the toddlers keep biting my butt! I don’t know why. I try to stop them but they don’t stop! But…I still love them

Toddlers

Said hello to my first game of “Scalping”. Got to run with one of our boys whose in a wheelchair in the dark. I also almost got peed on.

Said hello to my first world cup game in a small room full of about 15 people.  It was fun.

World Cup

Said hello to much much more acne. Everyone keeps asking me “what are those bumps on your face?” or  “is what you have in that book? (referring to the skin disease book they were looking at with me).”  Thanks kiddos. Not my fault your skin is flawless.

Said hello to many false alarms. The aunties call our on call nurse phone if they need us to check on one of the kids. One of the aunties called regarding one of the toddlers (one who has been sick) and I thought she said, "her heart!" so I rushed over there...and THANKFULLY  it was a misunderstanding and our poor toddler was just feeling sick. Another time she called about another child getting stung by a bee on the lip. She was telling me how the face was swelling and I thought --anaphylactic shock!  I asked her if he was breathing (while running over) and she said, "No, he's not breathing"...but thankfully, once again, it was a misunderstanding. 

Said hello to my first encounter with measles. One of our toddlers and another staff member came down with measles. We had to move around a lot of our kiddos.  I ended up housing our child with measles for a night. Please continue to pray that NO ONE else gets it. 

Said hello to a glimpse of a struggle of what it would be to be a long term missionary. It's hard being far away from family and friends. It's hard being away from important things going on in their lives-- especially if they are hurting or sick.   If it's been hard for me, I can't imagine how much harder it is for the people who are long term missionaries.

And said hello to a wonderful reminder:

I think God has been reminding me, once again, to fully rely on him. I was re-listening to a message by Pastor Kim on Jonah and I was reminded that if I fully relied on Him I would have greater dependence on Him and an application of that would be through prayer.

It was encouraging to see that dependency of God through one of our 6 year old boys, Silas. Silas got stung by a wasp on his head (not the toddler incident--different bee sting incident).  Now this boy is SEVERELY allergic to bee stings. Before one of the boys could rush him over to me, I heard the first thing Silas did was repeatedly call to his brother Nikko to tell him, “Nikko, pray for me!”. By God’s grace, Silas ended up being okay.  (it was scary because Silas' swelling was spreading rapidly throughout his face and I had no epipen or epinephrine nearby but thankfully his allergic reaction stopped progressing because of God (and with the help of Benadryl that I had on hand (heard the last time they had to give him epinephrine)).

I was also encouraged to see that dependency of God through one of our toddlers. One of our toddlers looked sick so one of our other little toddler boys ran up to him and started to pray, “Apart, together, Dear God, I pray for Richard, please heal him. Amen”.  Amen.

God’s been reminding me of dependence on Him through the means of prayer. Praying for the routine, mundane, little things in life to the big, important things.

I'm sure there's so much more that happened but I can't think right now! Life has been busy here and I can't believe it's been exactly 6 months since I left!

Thanks for reading!