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At midnight, I took a two hour break. When you work a twelve hour shift here at the hospital, you get a magnificent two hour midday lunch break, or since I have been working nights, a midnight lunch break. And I did what naturally everyone would do during their break, I went swimming.  For at 1 am it was still blazing hot and humid, and I’d been sweating constantly for several hours. So I warmed up my dinner, trotted over the pool, got all wet, and ate my philly cheese steak by moonlight with pool water dripping off my elbows into my salad. Just the slightest breeze cooled me down all over. It was wonderful.  It was also miraculously peaceful. At 1 am, no one else was awake except a few night birds singing a beautiful song and the moon, shining so bright that even the stars didn’t have a chance to twinkle on this night.  I dangled my legs into the pool and breathed deeply, resting in the peace and quiet and solitude of the moment. My thoughts turned to Jesus,...

On Wednesday, I went to prison. I’ve never been to a prison even in the United States, but I bet it wasn’t like this one.  “In American prison, people have it easy,” one African said to me. “They cook for the prisoners and bring them something to eat everyday. And don’t they have beds?”  At the prison that I visited here in Togo, they don’t have beds. They sleep on a plastic mat on the concrete floor, and they would consider having a bed a luxury. And all they get to eat is what their relatives bring them. What if they don’t have relatives who care enough to bring them food everyday? I actually don’t know; I didn’t ask.  I walked into the prison with one of the female chaplains at the hospital, as this is her normal Wednesday morning activity. She reminded me of Jesus words, “When I was in prison, you came and visited me.”  She was in prison once herself, accused of something she did not do. “God sent me to prison so I would find him,” she says with ...

I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat with her in silence, holding her hands as tears welled up in her eyes.  When I received report that morning, the nurses told me that she was in active labor and progressing normally. Yet when I went to assess her and find fetal heart tones, I could not find the heartbeat. I spent ten minutes searching over her entire abdomen, my own heart rate rising with each passing minute until I was forced to call the doctor, who did an ultrasound and confirmed what I had been so afraid of.  So the doctor and I shared the hard news that she had already figured out from our worried expressions and hushed tones. As tenderly as possible we explained the medical information to her and her family, and although I wanted to leave the room and escape the pain of it all, the doctor and I pulled up chairs and sat with them awhile in their pain. It’s hard to know what to say in those moments, even in English, nevertheless in French and in a different ...

He had a rough start to life. He was poorly positioned in the womb so that his face wanted to come out first instead of the top part of his head. His mom pushed and pushed for hours, but he just wasn’t going to turn and come out that way, so the doctor tried to deliver with forceps. Unfortunately, that did not work either, so the baby was finally delivered by cesarean section. And when he finally came out, he looked like he had been through it.  His little face was all red, black, and blue, swollen with open sores. His head was sorely misshapen from all the pushing and pulling, and his neck was severely hyperextended from his position in utero, so much so that the back of his head bent over and touched his back, and it was stuck that way. It looked terribly unnatural and uncomfortable, but if I tried to correct it, he would cry out in pain.  He needed resuscitation at birth from such a traumatic and long delivery, and we worked quickly to get him breathing, heart beat...

I was just one of those days when there should have been four nurses working in the maternity instead of two. But my coworker and I hung in there all day, even though I struggled to keep up with way too many patients and spent half my day trying to find  a blood pressure cuff when I needed it.  This is nursing in west Africa - a nursing shortage plus a supply shortage in a resource limited environment where the government health workers are on strike so we receive all the complicated maternity patients from every surrounding hospital.  When I was giving report that evening, I was so spent and tired that I mixed up two post-op cesarean patients, which made me kind of feel like an idiot. Then one of the oncoming nurses asked if my post-op cesarean patient had gotten up to walk, and I froze. Because, no. No, she hadn’t. I knew she was supposed to, but with the ten other sick or laboring patients that came in, I honestly just forgot. Then the aid who was making the b...

I waited. My hot breath felt stuffy as it was trapped between my face and the surgical mask. Sweat beads rolled down my face because even in this air-conditioned operation room, it’s hard to keep things cool when it’s 115 degrees outside. A sterile cloth draped over my shoulders and covered my outstretched arms. I watched the surgeon cut the uterus, pull the wet baby out, cut the cord, and then turn around and place him in my arms.  ~~~ I sat on the end of the bed, gently coaching her as she pushed. She was a champ, granted it was her fourth pregnancy, but she still did practically everything on her own. I kept a hands-off approach until the head was born, and then I gently received the rest of the baby’s body and placed her gently on the bed. She was already crying at the top of her lungs, so I just wiped and dried her off and then put her on her mother’s chest. “Congratulations! You have a daughter.”  ~~~ No matter how many times I watch it and no matter h...

As I rode my bike into work, sweat ran down my back and I couldn’t believe how hot it was at 6:20 in the morning. When I arrived at the hospital guesthouse and looked at the thermometer, it was already 96 degrees. It was going to be a hot day.  I started my day off with a hot cup of coffee anyway. Even though it’s stupid hot, I think drinking a hot drink somehow equalizes my interior and exterior temperatures.  I sat down beside the obstetrician, who is a beautiful woman of 70 years that has a contagious spunk and energy. I love working with her, and I so want to be like her when I’m her age. I told her that I was praying for a good day with lots of deliveries and no sick babies.  The day started out calm. I was working alone in the maternity with my one laboring patient, my four postpartum patients, and my two premature babies in incubators who liked to quit breathing when I wasn’t looking. All morning I gave feedings, antibiotics, checked funduses and fetal...

Pam, Pam, Pam . The rhythmic beating of the wooden mallets striking the wooden barrel was muted only barely by the “fou fou” that we were mashing. Obliterating might be a better term.  First, you boil the yams until they are soft and then cut them into manageable pieces. Next, you dump several handfuls of steaming yams into basically a hollowed-out wooden tree stump. Taking two long, heavy wooden “mashers”, you find a friend and stand on opposite sides of the stump, holding it in place with your right foot, and balancing the rest of your weight on your back left foot. Together, you alternate as you pound (aka obliterate) the yams, beating them into submission. You add water occasionally only when it gets too sticky, and you keep doing this until your arms can take no more and you have a nice, mashed potato looking substance.  The end result? Fou-fou. A southern Togolese delicacy served with goat soup.  Our Togolese nursing director had invited my roommates an...

I tossed and turned in bed, unable to go to sleep even after an exhausting twelve hour shift. It wasn’t because I was worried or anxious, but rather because I had something on my heart. I don’t think the Lord was going to allow me to sleep until I resolved it.  For the last few months, even during my time in the United States, the Lord has been building on a theme in my life. Personal evangelism. As the weeks have gone by, God has done nothing but build and build on this until feel like the prophet Jeremiah who said the word of God was like a fire in his bones.  I’ve prayed for God to send me to an unreached people group, and I now find myself in a primarily Muslim community. I work in mission hospital, and I can’t help but wonder if God beings people to us just so they can hear the gospel.  Yet another voice counteracts this passion of mine for personal evangelism, like it’s trying to fling water on my fire, and I hear it fizzling as I say to myself, Just do y...