Progress In The Casa Materna

Another week of adventure and making progress sometimes slowly, but definitely surely! This week hasn't been as adventurous as last week when Kennet was here; we took the opportunity to travel around the lake visiting other towns and hiking around the mountains (with my new Solar BakPak that he gave me!!)  and finding the places with the best food and coffee. Although he's now back home working in Honduras, he continues to be of help from afar with details such as finding the best pricing for lighting and curtains which he will bring to us next month.

 
Hiking the Cerro de la Cruz of San Juan and passing by the San Juan museum


Xela
This week I traveled with Merlyn and Lesbia about two hours away Xela where were were able to find a lot of supplies still needed. Although we are extremely fortunate to already have some big items in the casa such as hospital beds, cribs, and exam tables, there is a still a lot needed to complete our supply closet. We are almost completely ready now with just a few items needing to be bought in in the US for cost-effectiveness. A missionary team coming from Erica's church at the beginning of next month has been so kind to bring us these items.

Progress in the Casa
All of our areas have now been assigned and we are organizing each room. Right now the municipality is only giving us the upstairs of the clinic as they are claiming to use the first level as a new location for their Centro de Salud. We are still hoping that they will decide to give it to us in the future as their current location is sufficient for their needs and we could expand greatly our program and host teams that come to serve and educate the people of these communities. Upstairs we currently have the waiting area, bathrooms, a birthing room, a newborn exam room, the prenatal care room, the staff lounge, the administration office, the prayer room, the pharmacy, the storage room, and two postpartum rooms with three beds each. We are very thankful even for this space and the rooftop space that we have which we hope to utilize in the near future. As well we have beautiful gardens and as mentioned before, space for a kitchen and laundry area.

This week we were told that we would have electricity, but this has yet to happen. We have had a surveillance camera installed, and Kennet has helped us to purchase LED bulbs which are 90% more energy efficient than regular light bulbs, so once the electricity is actually working it will be pretty exciting.

We continue to work with the municipality to get approval regarding the legal aspect of the functioning of the Casa so that we can can work with the Ministerio de Salud to have everything in legal order.

Photos: Birthing room and the view from the windows- a small farm of cows and horses with avocado, coffee, and lime trees


















Jes
A new friend of mine and huge asset to the Casa project has been Jessica, a Physician's Assistant who works with Saving Mothers. Erica introduced me to her as she's been working here in Guatemala teaching birthing assistant classes to the comadronas ('midwives') here. The curriculum she developed is a several month long program and she has been working in different parts of rural Guatemala, San Juan being one of them. She is currently living near Xela teaching her new school, and has been a help to me with things such as where to find certain supplies, electronic records and patient documentation, contacts to many local people who can assist us, and much more including the best places to eat and fun places around the lake to visit on the weekends :) All of our casa staff have graduated from her school and the casa will be a place where new birthing assistants can come and gain experience.


Birth
This week we had a birth! Every time I attend a home birth with Lesbia (or in the Centro de Salud which unfortunately has near to no medical supplies) I am so thankful for the casa and its opening coming soon. Thankfully the mother and baby are both doing well now, but the birth was a little complicated. The first-time mother was having trouble getting her little one out despite the babe only being 6 pounds. Her heart rate began to drop dangerously low but we thankfully we were able to assist the mom to push her out just in time. She wasn't breathing upon birth but the Ambu bag came to the rescue and we were able to resuscitate her. Within a short time she was breathing and began to cry a little over the next hour.
The photo is with Lesbia shortly after baby was cleaned up and doing well.



Global Health Media 
In my last year of nursing school, my community health professor showed our class these amazing educational videos. They are available in many languages and free to download which is absolutely amazing!  I remember thinking to myself that day in class, one day when I'm a community nurse I'm going to educate the people with these. Now all this time later, I was talking with Jes in Xela this week, and she reminded be about the videos and that there are many available about pregnancy, birth, and newborn care. I am so excited about these and how they will serve the people here!


Prayer Requests! 
-Permission for us to use entire clinic for our birthing center
-Electricity
-Legal aspects (working with municipality and Ministerio de Salud)
-Safety of the mother's and babies in these communities
-An emergency vehicle for the Casa
- Alvarez- Cholotío Family: Lesbia and her husband Juan and their three daughters Elena, Oneida, and Cana (and new Pit Bull/Dalmatian pup Dolly) have welcomed into their family as their own. They have taught me about perseverance, servant-heartedness, and contentment in ways that I never imagined. My prayer is that God continues to bless them more than they can imagine for their hard work and service to their people.

Return To La Casa Materna

As many of you know, I spent the month of June 2015 (see posts from that date) in San Juan of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, working on a birthing center project that was initiated by my friend Dr. Erica in partnership with her church, Christ Wesleyan, in Milton, PA. A year later we are now close to being able to open it. I am here for two months working again with Lesbia attending home births with her and working with her and her sister, Merlyn, who will be the administrative director of the Casa.

Right now we have two birthing assistants, Johana (Lesbia's daughter), and Wendy, who have been helping us immensely with the preparation and Cristina, a nurse from the Centro de Salud (local health center) who has helping us with some preparation as well.

Kennet has been here this first week and has been helping us with a lot. Among many things, he repaired half of our cribs which were broken, helped us purchase a computer, and repaired and rebuilt a storage closet (which we were told was unfixable and should be thrown out).
It's been so fun after being apart for 6 months to be able to work together and have fun exploring different places around the lake. The Atitlán region has so many beautiful places!

Return to the Casa after more than a year

Organizing the Casa with Kennet, Cristina, Johana, Merlyn, and Wendy

View from the casa which directly faces the Rostra Maya.
The tin shed is the future home of  our kitchen and laundry area.

Beautiful gardens surround the Casa. Some rose bushes are taller than me!

His Faithfulness Continues Through All Generations

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever
-Isaiah 40:8

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus
-Phil 1:6


    This month has been the month for which I have been waiting to come for the past four years. I have officially graduated Eastern University with my Bachelors of Science in Nursing. These have been four of the toughest years of my life, and they have also been the most beautiful and the most rewarding. I have seen God's faithfulness every step of the way throughout my life, many times retrospectively, but never so profoundly have I experienced His faithfulness moment by moment as I have during my time at EU, especially these past two years of intense clinical and nursing classes.
    Since spending a year working at a children's hospital in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, from 2011 to 2012, I knew that I wanted to be a nurse and work with undeserved populations. It was my dream since then to move back to Central America one day, and that dream is finally coming true. (Note: I have to thank CURE International [cure.org] for welcoming me to work with them for that year, because of them I fell in love with Honduras, and it is beautiful to see how God is working in the lives of thousands around the world through CURE).

    With the culmination of my undergraduate studies come many mixed emotions. I want more than anything to begin this next season that I have anticipated for more than four years now, to be a missionary and a nurse and fulfill the passion that God has put in my heart, and there is an inexplainable amount of more excitement on top of that because I know that my boyfriend Kennet is there waiting for me.
    At the same time, there is a loss to never again spending time as a nursing student with my nursing pals who have become like sisters to me. I will no longer live with my brother and sister-in-law and watch my little nieces and nephews grow up day to day. I won't be able to go to Bear Creek on the weekends to spend time with my sister and brother-in-law and their four kids, riding quads at the lake or jumping on the trampoline, or riding horses with my sister Mariah. My sister Emily and our best friend Lauren are both becoming moms this month, and to not be able to watch these little ones grow up is a loss to me; my nieces and nephews mean the world to me and it feels like an even greater loss than when I moved away from home after high school and my four younger siblings grew and changed so much, and I felt like I was missing a huge part of my life by missing their lives.

    With this biggest change in my life (thus far) happening now, I have been reminded that with the change of seasons there is loss, but there is always something better ahead. To the church in Philippi Paul wrote, "I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us" (Phil 3:14). This is my greatest reminder of what life on earth is about- following God's leading to bring His kingdom to earth and living with eternity in mind. He will always lead us to greater places than we will leave behind. Following Him means to follow peace and no matter what mixed emotions I have with the changing of places I live, the changes of possessions I own- none of that matters. What matters is the fact through everything, God does not change. He is the constant, and throughout all of the change, I must keeping following the constant peace that only He can give us.

    In a very scattered and ever-changing world in which most of the time we have no control, feeling like a tiny boat being tossed about in a stormy sea, I want to encourage you to trust in God's faithfulness. Let Him be the anchor for your soul. Don't let the "potentials" or the "what if's" steal your peace from the unknowns of the future. God is our anchor here in this moment, giving us the grace for this moment, and He is faithful to do that in every moment.

Your faithfulness continues through all generations
-Psalm 119:90

my prayer these days

Where Is The Hope?

I recently experienced the most difficult of situations that I have had thus far in nursing school, and probably one of the most difficult in my whole life. Being a nurse means at times caring for people in the most sick and most vulnerable times of their lives and it is truly an honor, but it brings with it sadness and many times a sense of hopelessness. 

I had this experience very profoundly for the first time, where I truly felt hopeless and helpless. In this particular situation, the illness and complications that my patient had did not allow for any way of communication. This person could not speak nor use his hands to write. Although he was completely mentally capable, his current physical state prevented him from being able to communicate in any effective way. His primary nurse and other student nurses stood with me as we painstakingly tried to read his lips as he mouthed word by word what he was trying to communicate. In those moments I would have given anything to have a lip-reader come and save us. Among many feelings, this person was afraid, anxious, and frustrated as I stood there completely helpless, holding the hand of this beautiful soul. I could see the sweetness of his spirit as he always mouthed "thank you" with a smile every time I was able to understand and help him. The sadness of this situation was crushing me. I knew that his illness was terminal and I couldn't just hold his hand and tell him that he would be better soon.

At one point I was sitting at the computer and I began to cry. I usually can emotionally separate myself from my patients, but the realization of my lack of being able to provide for his needs profoundly affected me. I had never felt so helpless for a patient. I prayed in my heart that God would give this person peace, that he may know God's love and saving grace. For a brief moment I did feel peace, remembering that what I do is not by my might nor by my power, but by the Spirit of God (Zechariah 4:6). 
As beautiful as nursing is, it can be just as heartbreaking. Any field of work has it heartbreaks. To state the obvious, we are in a broken world, and who said life would be easy? No one. On the contrary, Jesus promised hardships and persecution and trials of many kinds, but He promised to never leave us. If there is one thing I want my patients to  know, it is that. And when I cannot communicate this, I remember that Jesus works through me on my behalf (Hebrews 7:25).
I can choose to live in hopelessness by what I see, or I can live in hope through faith in the One who is faithful from the beginning to the end of time (2 Cor. 5:7, Phil. 1:6).
More than anything physical healing, I want every person that I care for to have spiritual healing and know a hope that is greater than life or death.

I was able to care for this patient again the next week, and I was so happy to see his smile upon seeing me. He seemed more comfortable than the week before which was shortly after his admission and invasive procedures, and I was able to understand nearly every word he mouthed to me. I cried again upon seeing a sweet letter on his wall written to him by his daughter, but at the end of the day as he was getting ready to sleep, I was so thankful to have been able to spend time with him again. I knew that I had done all that I could have done and gave my best, and that, friends, is all that God asks of us. to walk in obedience to Him. He will take care of the rest.

Reflections of "The Suicide Tourist"

In my Nursing Capstone class, we are currently talking about ethics in healthcare. We watched a documentary called The Suicide Tourist, and these are my reflections written as a class assignment. I would love to hear your thoughts if you have seen this film or have had similar experiences.

Three main thoughts I brought away from this film:

1.   To live is to be a part of beauty and tragedy, of happiness and sadness.  I believe that the only one who can give hope to anyone in any circumstance is God. To be a nurse and to so often care for people as they are born, as they journey through some of the hardest times in their lives, and as they die is of highest privilege, but it is also to be a part of such happiness and sadness all the time. I believe to lose a loved one is one of the greatest pains a human can feel, and to be the one dying, well, I cannot speak from experience, but I would imagine that without hope in God it could be sad or depressing or scary. To see a loved one dying or to be the one dying with a sense of hope and greater purpose than just this life on earth can bring a sense of peace and hope that goes deeper than human understanding. It was a very good experience to watch the videos about the two men with ALS. The videos showed the difference in the way they lived with their disease. To see the positivity of the man with ALS was a reminder for me as one who will care for the sick to intend to bring a sense of hope to everyone I care for.

2.   Knowing what is right and wrong in any situation dealing with death is so tricky- it is so complex and so not easy. I want to have the opinion that as humans we have autonomy over ourselves—that is if one doesn’t believe that God should be the only one who gives life and takes life (and I can’t force someone to believe that)—but then if someone with ALS who is suffering has an estimated some months or a year to live and wants to kill him or herself, why is it not okay for a teenager who is depressed and suicidal for him or her to commit suicide? Who determines what kind of suffering makes it acceptable to kill oneself? And we are all going to die one day- and no one, not even someone with ALS or cancer or any terminal disease, knows exactly when they will die. Who determines that it is okay to kill oneself if he/she only has a certain estimated time to live? It all gets so fuzzy, and although I want everyone to have the hope that I have and the belief that God is the only one who gives and takes life, and that every day he gives us on this earth is for a purpose and to be used to honor him- I cannot make anyone believe that, and that is when I have to let them have for themselves the autonomy over their own life. But if I claim that, then I am saying that I believe I must let anyone take their own life should they choose to; this is hard to swallow, but I don’t see another way that makes sense.

3.   To lose a loved one is sad, even for someone who has hope. Even to see someone else, with whom I may have no relation- such as the family in the first ASL documentary that we watched, is sad. I think that everyone who experiences loss or sees someone else experiencing it know that this is true. It is hard to watch people suffer and it is hard to watch them die, but we must not shy away from these hard things. It is good to cry, to be sad, to search for answers and to be challenged. We can find deeper meaning in life and become more whole people through these experiences. God made life and death the way he did for reasons not known to me, and he doesn’t make anything bad or make mistakes. Maybe the sadness and loss we feel can bring us closer to him. I know that that has happened to me. I believe to be a truly good nurse and to be able to offer holistic care, we must see and know and experiences all of these aspects of life, embracing all of the happiness and sadness and everything in between, being grounded in a faith that goes deeper than circumstances.

happy 2016 to all

(note: i wrote this blog as this semester was just beginning, before anything actually began.. but then i hit the ground running with classes and clinicals and more work hours, so i never got around to editing and posting until now!)
 
i did have the most simultaneously relaxing but busy and FUN holiday season. i traveled to rwanda for christmas and then to honduras and nicaragua for the new year. i was able to see almost all of my family during this time (everyone except for my west coast brother, jon!), and as well i spent time with kennet and some of my dear latin america friends. 
 
as i took time to relax and enjoy the time as well as reflect on the past semester and prepare for the (last!) upcoming one, one theme was consistent throughout- God's grace is sufficient. that is it, no and's if's or but's. He was faithful from the beginning, and He is faithful every step until the end, because that is who He is. De is faithful and His grace is sufficient. 
 
i want to share a few reflections from my last semester.. it was by far my best semester not only educationally, but for me in my personal growth. there were a few "firsts" that i experienced which i could have allowed affect me negatively, but instead i saw God's grace in my life through them. I more consciously desired to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, that all these things shall be added unto me (matt. 6:33).
 
-first, i locked my keys in my car while about to leave for my first day of clinical! and let's just say that getting late to clinical is a big no no.. i was house-sitting, thus i didn't have my spare set of keys, so it was an instant panic. i was calling people to no avail at 5:45 in the morning. thankfully the homeowners had an extra car, and in the end after a frantic search i found their keys.
spare set of keys permanently live in my backpack now.
 
-second, when i was house-sitting again, i arrived late at night and forgot to fill my gas tank on the way. i have never run out of gas before, so i always assume i have enough fuel to get to the gas station. well, the early clinical morning rolls around once again and i go out to start my car to no avail. an orange light comes on: "please refuel." in disbelief and frantic again, i have no time to wait for AAA to come and save me. i cannot find the keys to the homeowners car anywhere, but then i notice gas tanks in the basement! i grab one and run to the car, and not so gracefully manage to put a few gallons in. Sweating and reeking of gas that i spilled all over my hands, i am off to clinical again.
i always find a gas station now, no matter the hour of the night.
 
-third, i slept past my alarm on a friday clinical, and woke at the moment that i needed to leave. i threw on scrubs and went out the door, and the frequently stopping school busses  on my way were the only reason i was five minutes late. 
alarm now always set with plenty of time to hit snooze.
 
-fourth, one evening during finals week, i spent all day in the library. i went for a quick dinner with my friend, leaving all of my things in the study room, and when we returned, the library was locked and dark. my heart sank as i got my cell out to call security. after all these years how do i miss the closing time?! security came to unlock and allow me to get all my things.
 
-fifth, one night when i was going to house-sit, it was late and i was tired. i stopped at a red light, looked both ways. no cars on either side. i had a momentary lapse in remembering where i was, and i pulled a honduran move and used that red light as a stop sign. i proceeded through the intersection and at the very moment when i realized what i had done and that there was no going back, i saw a police car. i have had my license for seven and half years and i've never been pulled over!! sooo frustrating. this police was nice enough to only give me a warning. 
my police radar is now on point. 
 
-sixth, i had to sleep at home alone once, and in this big house of my brother's where i live, it's not really fun to be home alone. i was feeling particularly afraid this night, having been talking about recent burglaries and sexual assaults with my special agent police brother. when i finally managed to fall asleep, a deafening alarm woke me. i was sure it was the burglar alarm and i couldn't move. i called my brother and praise God he answered his phone at three in the morning. he gave me the alarm code and told me to down stairs and turn it off. i had no other option. shaking, i ran down. turns out it was a malfunction of the fire alarm.
 
- seventh, i trained for and ran a sub two hour half marathon with my brother during this crazy semester!
this was the one good crazy thing that happened; it kept us in shape and kept me sane on many days.
 
all of these things (except the half marathon) happened to me for the first time this semester. these are supposed to be newbie mistakes, right?! and although on many days i thought am i losing my mind?!, i had more peace and more smiles on my face throughout each day then i ever have had before. i experienced the truth written in the scripture of 2 corinthians 12:9 more than i have before. He said to me: 'my grace is sufficient for you, my power made perfect in weakness.' therefore i will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
 
the difference was that yes, although i had little moments of panic and fear and worry and other such things that come when i lose focus, i ultimately sought to trust God more deeply and saw His grace in my life each step of the way. furthermore, instead of focusing on people's opinions of me and trying to please certain people, i spent time with people who spoke life to me and encouraged me in my faith, and in turn i was able to encourage other people. 
when life comes at us with things that strike fear, big or small, we have the choice to live in that fear, or to believe in the God who is in control over all. if we trust that He is using whatever situation we find ourselves in to bring glory to Himself and bring us closer to Him, we will see His faithfulness and have His peace, one not from the world or earthly comforts, but one that can only come from Him (phil. 4:7). 
 
these examples i gave are in fact little things in the grand story of life and quite comical in retrospect, but the point is this: in such a broken world filled with sin, everyone is living through life that is hard in some way at some time.do we have a hope greater than ourselves and circumstances to carry us through?
in whatever place you are right now, physically, mentally, spiritually, in any sense of the word "place"- i want to encourage you in the way that i have been encouraged: to see a grace and a hope that going even deeper than anything life can bring you. 
Remember, He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (phil. 1:6).