A few pictures

Thanks for all of the encouragement this week. I am feeling much better and all of these challenges are making me grow. I have to say it has been an incredible, challenging, emotional, exciting, hopeful, sad, and amazing experience so far. Thanks for taking the journey with me.

I am getting baptized on Sunday. I am so excited to be taking this step of faith. This might confuse some of you and am open to any questions. It is something I have wanted to do for a long time, but was always too embarrassed or self-conscious to before. I actually felt God calling me to get baptized here as I was coming.

OK, here are some pictures of the community I am working into:

Some of the nurses I am working with

A fairly typical government developed home in the township

Another common home in the township

Love and Some Verses

This week has been a bit harder for me. I can’t pinpoint an exact reason, but I have had a general feeling of melancholy. I think that it is a combination of being sick at the beginning of the week, still feeling a bit unsure of myself in my work environment, and missing family and friends back home. I thought I wouldn’t have feelings of homesickness or culture shock this time because I have been here before and I’m thirty so should be mature enough to handle things, but I’m learning that age has nothing to do with it and experience only takes you so far. There is still the reality that I am completely dependant on other people to take me to the grocery store, work, and on any social outing. I am still in a work environment that is completely new to me in terms of nursing, but has the added complications of language and culture barriers. All of this is making me feel very insecure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still enjoying myself and have been blessed beyond measure by the people here, but I want to be honest in these blogs and being so far from home and people that truly know me is difficult. I think one of the biggest difficulties is cultural and many times it is only later that you realize there was a cultural exchange that was uncomfortable. An example was that I was recently at the store and I was trying to find something. I walked up to a employee who was shelving items and asked where the item was. She seemed taken aback that I was asking her and somewhat quickly dismissed me. I took this as her being rude and unhelpful, but my American friend Johanna who has lived here about 7 years pulled me aside and explained that you always greet someone first. I should have said hello and how are you or spoken to her a bit before asking her where the item was. Apparently, I had been quite rude to simply ask her where something was without these formalities. I’ve also learned recently that it is very rude to not place your knife and fork together on your plate when you are finished eating. I have probably come across very rudely in many homes and I only learned about this custom this week and have eaten with many people. Despite my insecurities, I am enjoying myself also. I saw the Broadway show Beauty and the Beast last night to celebrate my friend’s birthday. It was a fantastic show and Gaston in particular was fabulous.

The church here is currently diving into 7 weeks of love. This means that the sermons, worship, prayer time and everything is focusing on love and what love actually is. How amazing it would be if we could actually grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18) For if we truly grasped this, we would love freely without any need for approval or gain. It would be a selfless love. We have the ability to love this way because Christ first loved us in this way, but it takes courage and vulnerability to experience and give this type of love. And mostly it requires an intimate relationship with the God who created us because He is love and is the only one that can show us what true love is. I have to admit that this is a challenge for me, but I imagine what this world would be if we truly knew the certainty of God’s love. Imagine what people would do if we didn’t hold back or worry what others thought or lived from a place of hurt or insecurity. The amount of love and friendship and hope and integrity and selfless giving would be overwhelming.

Ephesians 3:17-19 “And I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love surpasses knowledge and you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”.
This is my prayer for you.

Learning Patience

I have been in South Africa nearly 3 weeks and although I am enjoying myself greatly and learning lots, some of the excitement and romance are wearing off and I am finding myself frustrated at the small inconveniences. This morning was especially testing my patience as I spent almost 2 hours trying to get my email to work. As of now, I don't have access to facebook and I have limited access to internet. It goes out quite frequently and I hear it will more and more with thunderstorms beginning. So, if I don't write you back it is likely because I don't have access to internet. Being used to getting online anytime I want and having it go quickly, this is requiring great patience on my part. But in the end, it will probably be good for me. I really shouldn't be complaining with how wonderful everyone has been and with it being such an easy transition.

OK, enought venting on to the important stuff...

I worked with the TB nurse the past week at the clinic. I saw some very sick people. When you hear the word wasted to describe people with AIDS, it is very true. Many of the people I saw the past week looked like they were starving because their bodies were just skin and bones. They were also very weak. This made them look much older than they were and I was often surprised when I saw their date of birth in the chart and that they were in their twenties or thirties. I honestly thought one man was in his fifties, but he is only thirty. What is amazing is that many of them can improve greatly with TB and HIV medication. At times, I feel like we are only putting a band-aid on the problem because the real problems are poverty, stigma, lack of education, lack of women's rights, domestic abuse, multiple sexual partners and sex abuse, drug abuse and the list goes on. What people need more than anything is hope and to feel valued because without this, they give up and believe that their lives are worthless.

I also worked at the babies home on Saturday and it was great to get to know the kids. For those of you who knew about my work here 5 years ago, a quick update on the kids I previously cared for. All of them have been adopted except the four oldest who are living with a foster mom on the church property. They are doing amazingly and are healthy and happy. There is only one other child still at the babies home who was only 6 months old when I was here before and she will hopefully be fostered soon. I am hoping to start teaching the older kids swimming lessons soon. There is a pool on the church property. (I guess I shouldn't be complaining about inconveniences, right? :->)

Otherwise, I am getting know many of the people in the church and have been attending a few different life groups (home groups) and also getting to know the other volunteers better. Last night there was a scorpion in one of the other girl's rooms and so I am now shaking out my clothes before putting them on and examining my bed carefully each night.

Loving the people of Zimbabwe

We had an incredible trip to Zimbabwe. Thanks for your prayers, we could definitely see God preparing the way for us and guiding us through this trip. A quick overview of what has been happening in Zim (from what I know anyway, which isn't a lot). Zim has been on a downward spiral for many years and is now in a state of crises with its people facing starvation. Zim used to be the "breadbasket" of Africa producing tons of food, but in the 80's, white farmers were forced off their land with the encouragement of the government and the people who took over the farms did not know how to do the farming. This created a food shortage and a collapse of their economy causing great inflation. As more and more people became resentful of the government and started calling for change, the president began doing whatever it took to stay in power including threats and violence. Now, approximately 1/3 of all the population has left Zimbabwe and those left are facing starvation because of either lack of food or extraordinary prices for anything. Urban Life Church, the church I am working through and where I am living, is sending teams into Zim to different areas to try to provide some food relief. Food aid is not allowed by the government, but the church gets around it because each person entering Zim is allowed a certain amount of food to take to friends and relatives so we just say that we are visiting friends and have enough people to take quite a lot of food.

It took us about 14 hours to arrive in Bulawayo, Zim on Friday after a 4 hour delay at the border. They were checking everyone's trailers and trucks and there were many people trying to get through. We were up early the next morning though and first headed to a nursing home where we delivered food parcels and visited with the people. The doctor there has been practicing in Zim for 50 years and I would guess is around 80 years old. He took me to see a lady who had just had a hip replacement. I was able to pray with her and a few other people. An interesting thing is that when we arrived we went to the wrong place initially and met a woman running a soup kitchen. At first we thought this was the place and began unpacking the food, but soon figured out it was wrong. But, it was a divine appointment because we had 10 extra food bags and were able to leave some with her. She was very excited because they were down to very little.

After leaving the nursing home we traveled a very pot-holed road, with me bouncing along in the back of the truck to a town about 1 hour away. We delivered food to the church there and then the pastor led us to 2 small villages. It was amazing to see how the people live. We formed a chain to pass the food from the truck to the hut and I was standing inside the hut next to a woman who had been cooking when we arrived. With each parcel of food, her smile grew larger and larger and I could see her eyes getting wider. Then we passed in maize meal (their main staple) and she was obviously overjoyed. These villages are very out of the way so they dont get food brought very often.

Inside one of the huts, the woman is described above

In the villiage

We returned to the city of Bulawayo and showed a movie to a church to try to provide some joy. We showed Horton Hears A Who - a great movie by the way. We gave popcorn and juice and hopefully for a few hours they could forget their worries.

I feel so priviledged that I was able to be a part of this amazing team and do something to try to make a difference in this region.

Preparing for Zim

I have had a very sweaty day. I am currently covered in sweat and mealie meal flour. We just packed the trailers for our trip to Zimbabwe tomorrow. Several bags of mealie meal and each family gets a bag filled with oil, beans, flour, sugar, matches, dish soap, peanut butter, and a few other things. We leave bright and early tomorrow at 5am and I am so looking forward to it. It will be a long road trip to be able to get to know my fellow travelers better and get to experience much of the South African countryside as we head to the border. Please pray for safety, ease at the border, and mostly that we will be a blessing to the Zimbabwean people.

We will come back late Sunday night so I will write more on Monday. Otherwise things are going well. I worked in the creche (day care) today and took out my first sutures on a little boy. The creche is quite an experience that I will have to share more of later.

Love and Blessings!

Sister Molly

I have begun my volunteer work at the clinic in the nearby informal settlement area. I feel like a new nurse again and very inexperienced. Partly, this is because the diseases and treatments that are frequently seen are not very present in the US, but mostly its because the nurses here are AMAZING! I am so impressed with them. I have been shadowing a Sister (nurse) who is in charge of PMTCT (Prevention of mother to child transmission) of HIV. She has such a nurturing and compassionate quality about her and I can see how much she cares for each of her patients. And she stays so optimistic and joyful. I have been feeling convicted about my attitude toward the world at times.

Whenever a woman comes to the clinic and is pregnant (they usually don't come until well into their pregnancy so no need for a pregnancy test), they strongly advise that she be tested for HIV. They take them in a group of about 5 to test them and then they get called in privately for the results. I have been doing the tests which is just a quick finger stick and the result appears in a few minutes. For my nursing friends, it looks similar to a strep test, but even quicker. They have an HIV counselor who gives the result and if it is positive they are sent to the nurse that I have been working with to get additional blood draws to determine how immunocompromised she is and to discuss how to keep healthy and what treatment will be needed to keep the baby from getting HIV. Without any treatment, the risk of the baby contracting HIV is up to 40%, but with treatment it is drastically reduced to around 1% (I think). So, it is very important work. In the past 2 days we have probably tested around 35 people and I would guess that 40% are positive. This is a decrease though from what it used to be. The biggest difficulty to me besides everything being so new is the language barrier. Although most people speak English, the nurse usually uses the patient's native language. The nurse I am working with speaks upwards of 6-7 languages fluently. She speaks English, Zulu, Sutu, a few others that I don't know, Afrikaanse, and Tswana (her native language). She told me that when the patient says hello to her, she can determine their native language. So, I am missing a lot of what happens because of this, but they intermix English a lot so I am able to have a general idea of what is being talked about. I hope to take photos of the area at some point, but I need to get a better of idea of how to do this appropriately because I don't want to be offensive.

Otherwise, things are going amazingly. I feel so comfortable and have become involved with a lot of the church members. The other volunteers are great too. So, other than missing family and friends it is going great. I do miss you all and think of you often.

Here are a few pictures:

My room looking quite clean.

The area the clinic is located

Striving to make a change

It is early in the morning here and there is a flurry of activity around me. In fact, I am feeling a bit guilty that I am sitting here on my computer eating breakfast as everyone is running around preparing for the day. Today is Urban Market day at Urban Life Church. They set up a market that has vendors selling crafts, food, clothes, etc. and apparently the turn out has been about 2000 people. The hope of the church is that it will encourage people to come to the property and hopefully become more comfortable with this setting and maybe attend a service. Also, it provides an opportunity for more people to become aware of Botshabelo, the NGO that the church runs which is what I am working through.

Whenever I come here it becomes so apparent how involved the church is in this community. They are constantly making changes to try to improve the lives of those that are deeply hurting here. This includes several things from the market, the babies home, home-based care, working in near by day cares, to trips into other African countries.
Sidenote: I will get to go to Zimbabwe with a group from the church leaving this Friday. We will depart Friday for the 12ish hour drive to Zim (as its known here) and once there visit an old age home, and deliver food to many people. If you do not know about what is happening in Zim -please learn about it. It is a horrible crises with the entire country starving and dying because of a cruel dictatorship. I recently read that about 1/3 of the population has fled to other countries-many to SA. The church has done multiple trips like this to bring food to people and I am very excited to get to be a part of this. Many of you may be wondering about the safety, but I hear that it is fine for us. In fact, SA is probably much less safe so I do request your prayers for both our safety and that we will be a blessing to the people there, but know that it is not something you should overly worry about my safety-(This was especially for my mother :->).

Anyway, it is exciting to see God's people making a difference in the lives of others and I am sure to see many more examples of this as I am here. It can become easy to be pessimistic about this country and the amount of poverty, disease, and crime, but there is tremendous good here as well. God will not desert his creation and will bring all things to his Glory.

Reunion

It is 7:30 am here and believe it or not, I've been up since 5am. Crazy the things jet lag does to you. The sun is already shining, birds are singing, and chickens are pecking around. I love this place!! It feels like I've been here awhile already even though its only been 2 days. I'll give you a quick run through to what I've experienced so far. Marc, Rebecca, and Abigail picked me up at the airport. Unfortunately, they only had 2 people working in passport control so it took about 1.5 hours to get through. I didn't arrive on the property until midnight. I have wonderful friends that they were willing to wait for me with their 3 month old.

Quick sidenote: Abigail is beautiful and sweet. I am so happy to get to spend time with her. Things are much easier this time having dear friends and being familiar with the property.

There are currently 7 other volunteers and several more people living on the church property so I have lots of people to talk with. I have my own room and share a bathroom, kitchen, etc. I will take pictures in the future. Last night we had a braai which is a bar-b-q and it was nice to get to know the other volunteers. They come from Germany, UK, Brazil, and Holland. There is another American as well. Yesterday I went to the clinic where I will be working and met the nurses. They are called sisters here so it is king of funny with my Catholic upbringing to call all of these nurses, Sister Sarah, etc. The clinic is going to be an incredible experience. It is located only about 5 miles from here and is in what is called an informal settlement. Basically, people started squatting there and building shacks to live in. It has grown to around 40,000 people now. Some live in government housing now that are small concrete houses with a few rooms, but many are still in tiny shacks of corrugated metal, wood, etc. I'm not sure how many clinics are in the area, but I know that this clinic sees LOTS of people. There are no appointments. You just show up and take a number and wait for it to be called. I would assume this process would take hours from what I could observe. There were probably about 75 people waiting when I was there. They have a specific area for HIV/AIDS testing and counseling of pregnant women and their babies. They also have a specific area for TB which has become a tremendous problem here. TB is the number 1 reason people with AIDS are dying here so they are trying to work hard to combat this.

I was very relieved to learn what I would be doing while working there. I will be buddied with another nurse the entire time which is reassuring because things are very different. I will be with the HIV nurse who works with women and children first, then I will work with the nurses who are doing general sick visits, then work on vaccinations, then work in the pharmacy a bit to learn about the medications. Something interesting is that the head nurse took me to introduce me to all the other nurses and she would just barge into the exam room while there was a patient and leave the door open to introduce me. We woud have a quick conversation while the poor patient is just sitting there. The hallway has lots of other patients too that could easily see in. So, privacy is a different matter here.

There are no doctors in the clinic. I don't know if they come in on certain days but for the most part the nurses do everything. They diagnose, prescribe, etc. Of course, if it is something that needs more involvement, they refer the patient to the hospital. My first day will be on Monday so I'm sure my blogs will become much more interesting.

Today, I am spending time with Rebecca and Abigail. Going to a market and maybe to another friends house this afternoon who has a pool. Crazy the extremes of wealth here.

I am a bit limited with internet because everyone has a cap and the church has a lot of people using it so we are pretty limited in posting pictures etc. I will try to post a few soon though. Also, they have been shutting it off in evening so skyping may be more difficult than I thought. We will have to see.

Love and blessings to you all.