Church Report

I have always wanted to go abroad for missions. I loved doing all the mission work with the GAs  and going to TN and West Virginia with the youth group here, and when I got older I heard about all the trips abroad groups would take and was hooked on the idea. While I was at college I got involved at First Hattiesburg church and every spring we would do a section on service called To Hattiesburg With Love. During one service I just felt extremely called to go and serve.  So, (against my parents wishes) I signed up to go to Haiti for about a month to work with All Hands Volunteers building sand filters for their water purification project and building schools for the children in Leogane. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for All Hands, the number of volunteers signed up for the project exceeded the number needed to complete it and I was wait-listed. I felt so discouraged, why would God call me to go and then keep me here? I kept feeling that call though, and looked on the website for All Hands where I found a link to a site where millions of NGOs post volunteer opportunities. That is where I found Love Volunteers and where I saw the listing for the medical program in Cameroon. The minute I read the listing it was like I was hit by a ton of bricks. He wanted me to GO, but He wanted me to go to Cameroon not Haiti. After much prayer, debate and stress on my parents I applied for a position in the program and was accepted.
But how was I going to afford it? How was I going to get there? Was I even going to be a help? Did I know enough medicine to do good? What if they didn't want to hear about God? What would I even tell them if I had the chance? Would they want to hear it or just want to get medical help and go?
But for some reason, when I started having those doubts something inside me knew it would be all taken care of. I was doing the right thing.
When I'd read my Bible, I couldn't help but continually stumble upon verses like:

Jeremiah 1:7-8 
“God told me, “Don't say 'I'm only a boy,'
I'll tell you where to go and you'll go there.
I'll tell you what to say and you'll say it.
Don't be afraid of a soul,
I'll be right there, looking after you.”

And you know, the whole time I was there I wasn't scared of a person or a thing (save for the tarantulas).  I was shouted at by the nurses, I was doubted by the patients at first, I was judged by many many people but I was never harmed or threatened by a single one. Even when we left town to go to Limbe for several weekends, the other volunteers always seemed a bit hesitant and told me to bring bribe money and my real passport because the cops would see a car of whites, stop it and harass them. It was like I had a bubble around me. In three months I took over filled cabs hundreds of times and passed through countless roadblocks and only once were we ever stopped. He didn't even look at my passport. I was only bitten by midges or mosquitoes a total of ten times the entire trip. Every other volunteer caught malaria at least once. Other people noticed it, too. They said I had Ju Ju, but I knew better. Your prayers and God's strength kept me safe and sound in one of the World's most corrupt countries. 

So many times I was tempted to just accept the ways of the culture, the abrasiveness, the abuse, the disrespect but in James it says: “Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” and God helped to keep me aware of the corruption and not to become numb to it. I wasn't scared to be there because I was supposed to be there and that security He gave me helped me to stand up for my beliefs and my convictions. As respectfully and kindly as I could, of course (my parents raised me better than that). There was a time I was walking with Nathan to the street to film something for his project when the herd of children that always played around my house came storming past. But something was wrong. Instead of cheers and laughing, I heard desperate screaming and crying and jeers from the rest. A boy had a one of the little girls by one of her arms and one of her legs and was dragging her down the street accompanied by the jeers and cheers of the rest of the children. A few feet back a tiny little toddler was running after his sister screaming “PLEEEAAASSSEEEE!!!” I couldn't take it. I turned around and marched over, the rest of the kids scattered by the time I got there but the boy had started hitting the girl with a shoe and hadn't noticed me. I scooped her up and told him to go home and not to ever come back to my house for stickers, balloons or other whiteman prizes, he was no longer welcome there. The rest of the kids came back and as I carried her home and held her brothers hand they mocked her. I stopped and told them she was my friend and anyone who hurt her had hurt me and weren't welcome in my house either. It wasn't right to hurt each other. One little boy, the one who always asked me to trace my flight route on our map, stepped up and offered to walk her home. He said he was my friend and he would be her friend too. It broke my heart and melted it at the same time. There was such hope for those children to learn and break out of the corruption of their culture, but it's their examples and their home lives that ruin it. God did something special for that little boy, I know it. He has plans for him. Now that I'm home and you aren't worried about me, pray for him. Pray for those kids. They can't help what they were born into or how they're being brainwashed to repeat the cycles. But God can help that.

I worked in a hospital called St. Luke's Medical Centre. The nurses were very much like a high school clique. If you did what they said and acted the way they wanted you to, you were in. You were “cool”. But if you didn't, you were treated with a slight disconnect. When I first got there it was like I was going through a medical version of fraternity initiation, just with less alcohol and more blood. Most of the nurses were fluent in English, but when I was instructed to do things they'd start in english and switch to pidgin and I'd be scolded when I did the wrong thing or asked questions. I received different instructions from everyone who told me what to do and was reprimanded by whoever had told me differently. By the third day I was told to do the most complicated dressing in the hospital on my own. It was my first independent dressing I've ever done. When the head nurse saw me flying solo she reprimanded me in front of the entire ward for being the “arrogant white man” who comes to their country and tries to show everybody up but doesn't know anything. The nurse who had told me to do his dressing was sitting right there and denied ever telling me to do the dressing. That's when I knew I was on my own.
Then I witnessed them yelling at a patient. He was about 78 years old and had had external fixtures in his ankle and we were cleaning the wounds left after taking them out. He was sitting up holding a flashlight for us so we could see better, he was trying to help, but he couldn't see either...possibly from the cataract in one eye or the angle he was sitting at, but either way the flashlight was pointed at the wrong place. The nurse yelled at him for being in the way and that he needed to stop moving. That's when I knew I wasn't on my own. I was on the patients' team. I made bracelets for the patients using the beads we use at VBS that tell the salvation story. They were so thrilled! It was like Christmas, they showed them off and wore them the rest of my time there. One man said, “Oh doctor I will get well now. I have the healing power! Dr. Amelia gave me the healing power! Do you know what her power is? It's love.”


The hospital did do the best the could with what they had. There was no running water and the electricity was unreliable, yet the entire time I was there we had one fatality. Infections were minimal and many many surgeries were successful. The patients were awake many times during surgery, paralyzed by Ketamine and made drowsy by a concoction of other drugs, but no one died on the table. I witnessed several patients walk for the first time in months. I watched people get well. It was amazing. My last few weeks at St. Luke's God moved through the place like wildfire. Patients who had been there for close to a year were discharged left and right. Patients people thought wouldn't make it, much less use their legs again, were discharged and walked out of hospital.

My last week at St. Luke's we admitted two elderly men. One had external fixtures placed in his ankles. The other had his leg amputated below the knee. The amputee seemed somewhat demented. He was unresponsive and talked to himself in whispers. The entire time we changed his dressings, he talked to himself and went in and out of sleep, but when I went to leave the room he snapped out of it and called me back. He told me he felt me there and he wanted to thank me and may God bless me. He didn't feel me there, he felt God there. God's hand was on me the whole time.

I've prayed many times for God to use me as His sock puppet. I want Him to be alive in me, to use my mouth to speak, my hands to touch and my feet to go.

 1Timothy 4:11-16 it says:
“Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don't let anyone put you down because you're young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed –keep that dusted off and in use. Cultivate these things. Immerse yourself in them. The people will see you mature right before their eyes! Keep a firm grasp on both your character and your teaching. Don't be diverted. Just keep at it. Both you and those who hear you will experience salvation.”

This summer I was God's sock puppet, and you helped that happen through your love, support and prayers. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!