Thursday, June 16, 2011

pre day 1, and ready to go


I’m going to consider this entry 1 of my trip, an emotion ridden one at that, though I’m sitting on my bed at 11 pm in St. Louis still.  I somehow feel I am already in Haiti.  Nowhere near tired, even though I am supposed to wake up in 5 hours ( thank you evening shift conditioning ), and just wired with wonderment of the coming days. 
I have been so stirred to pray about this trip and really prepare; more so than any other trip I have made to Haiti.  I feel as if I am already there, and honestly in my heart I have been there since last Friday.  I have spent the last 2 days trying to figure out what is different about this trip; thinking about past experiences in Haiti, past patient encounters, past miracles and clinic adventures.  And when I lay it all out, it doesn’t look much different than what I do each week at work, it’s still the medical needs of the day that walk in the outpatient door.  Some significant emergencies, most aren't an emergency at all, just a person or family need of help.  Albeit the people and the stories look and sound a bit different, but honestly, life in the ER is significantly more exciting and adrenaline charged. Both working in the US and serving in Haiti are equally challenging.   But amazingly serving in Haiti combines my two jobs into one, I get to be a medical provider and fully functioning nurse at the same time and educate my patients while I getting to openly share the love of Christ, provide for their medical needs and seek wholeness and healing in their lives.  As a result, this thing I do every year is like Dark Chocolate for my soul.   
As I have prayed I know there is honestly nothing I can do to prepare me for what I am going to encounter.  Each year there are different challenges and desperate situations, sick, sick people, who challenge me to hope, and seek the miraculous, and trust that sometimes God does know what He is doing with this world of ours.  I wish I could prepare for what’s coming this year, but all I can do is be ready to moldable and remember that my God is big and capable of much.  So instead I pray for the people, and for the faces I see in my dreams.  And I find myself stirred for a people who are desperate and in need of significant breakthrough, in need of something I can’t physically give them.  I am stirred to pray for this nation that is so corrupted and eroded and devoid of anything our world really needs.  I find myself hoping for strange things like the soil to be restored and fish to return to the waters and for them to find a GDP once again.  And I am moved by the empty stares of the mother’s who bring their severely malnourished child for me to help, as they sit there starving themselves. Strangely I know these stares all too well from my day to day work, just a different form of starvation from a different nation.  And while I love the patients I get to work with in the states, and the challenges they bring, these people, these Haitians, are so precious to me. With every child I encounter there it’s as if I get to feel the love that Jesus has for His children, and feels as if when we usher these families into the clinic I am getting to sit there at Jesus feet when He said, “let the children come unto me”. There is intense joy and satisfaction with each day, knowing I have completed a job or a task well done.
These are the times when I look at the direction my life has gone, comparing where I am now to where I thought I would be by now and stand amazed.  I am somewhat less accomplished and nowhere near where I thought I would be 10 years ago.  And yet I feel I have been divinely prepared, through my work in the ER, my love of serving and coordinating and being the missing piece in a system, through my masters training, my OR experience , my love for children, my love of the outdoors, my tolerance to extreme temperatures, my affinity for educating a family, my love of traveling and getting to know new people, heck even my straight hair that doesn’t require electricity for styling purposes.   And this causes me to know this what I am called to do, this is where my giftings Mwe adore' Ayiti
Bonswa,
Stephanie

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