Today in photos

Today in photos:

Abbi just about flipped out when she saw this photo of her "passies." It was just too much for her to handle.

Lots of surgery these days. I try to keep my camera on hand, just for opportunities like this. John was working with Dr. Roland Stephens here. I think they were fixing the femur (leg bone) you can see below on X ray. I did one just like it on Friday. Dr. Stephens was kind enough to let me do most of the surgery.

OK, so the hut on the right has a satellite dish on the "roof." No power. No water. In the middle of nowhere. But, hey, they've got Sports Center.

This kiddo has Hydrocephalus (the fluid around the brain doesn't drain correctly). We put a shunt in his head a few days ago. He'll do well, whereas he would have died without the surgery. We do lots of these here.

The blurry thing in the man's right eye is a huge tumor. We have lots of eye tumors here. So, we take lots of eyes out. HIV does a lot of terrible things to people. For instance, cancers like this one.

Broken Femur.

Pulmonary TB, picked up on chest X ray. This is a classic appearing X ray. We see this most every day in the outpatient clinic. Yet another common finding with HIV.

Kaposi's Sarcoma. Yet another HIV associated disease.

I've decided to try not to blog too much more than a couple of times a week. The nights are just too precious with my family and the internet takes so long to upload these darn photos.

This week has been a good week of growth for both families sharing the guest house. We continue to wrestle through challenges and work through issues as they arise. I guess I thought when we arrived on the mission field, I'd find answers to some of life's big questions. That is, in following God here, that maybe I'd find myself content, full of purpose, or at least gain clarity of insight into life. While I am certain that the intentionality of our work here lends itself to very purposeful work, huge questions still loom for us. It is clear to me that this time period, like each day, is only a stepping stone. That we must still must pursue God in His Word in the hope of knowing and loving Him

-How is our work influencing others for the gospel?

-What is this training for (i.e. we are learning great skills, but how will they be used in the future?)

-What will regular mission work look like as part of our lives?

-How will we best use this training to serve people both here and in our community in the U.S.?

-How can we best become involved in both communities?

Abigail is enjoying helping April cook these days. We make a lot of stuff from scratch using the book below. It is full of inexpensive and delicious meals, usually made from scratch. I heard about it from some savvy folks who have spent time overseas:

You can see her here helping make some banana bread. We buy bananas from people that come to our door selling them. they cost about 1 dollar for 20 bananas. Right now, I'm making some ice cream in the deep freeze. I hope that the power stays on for the next few hours! We'll have to see how that goes. We're getting used to "the daily grind" at home that consists of making food, cleaning up, repeat times three and raise kids in between. It seemed overwhelming at first, but we sense that we're always getting nearer to our goal of growing in depth of relationship as a family and deeping our walk with God.