Seven Days

Brant and Ryan were in the tribe seven days for Building Trip #2. Just a quick trip in to get Ryan’s foundation laid before Easter and all the festivities in town began. A far cry from the two week trip planned at the end of April; shorter than the ten days of Building Trip #1. How hard could seven days be?

Very. 

Day #1 - Brant had not been gone two hours... was still in the air, flying, in fact, when I got a phone call. Crying, my friend barely managed to whisper the words “There’s been a plane crash.” One of the old school missionary pilots, been flying here over 20 years, clipped the edge of a bridge in the misty morning as he struggled to get altitude on take-off. The plane exploded in flames... he was killed instantly. 

Day #2 - A flurry of activity - calls from all over the island; people looking for a place to stay for the funeral. Tears. People stopping to visit and hug and talk. I had just talked to his wife the day before the crash. I spend hours talking with the little boys explaining that Daddy is okay; that his plane did not crash. 

Day #3 - The funeral - a 5 hour affair with hundreds of people packing the hanger where he normally parked the now charred plane. Speeches and tears and his favorite music played. Tears.

Day #5 - We had a beautiful day - April and I dragged all 6 kids to the big city to watch “Rio 2” and eat ice cream. :) It was fun and relaxing and a perfect reset after a really hard week. On the way home, April spotted a sign that said “Decorative cut flowers” - not real sure what it could mean, we stopped and there were REAL flowers.... roses and tulips and daisies and Easter lilies. NEVER have seen flowers like that in our almost 7 years here. We screamed in excitement and bought ourselves bouquets. :) 

About two hours after we got home from the movies, boys in bed, flowers arranged in a makeshift vase, I got an email from one of our tribal missionary families. They needed a room at the guest house.... tomorrow. The wife was having some odd pregnancy symptoms and needed to get things checked out. When something like this happens, we (meaning Brant!) immediately we go into med-evac mode, calling flights and the doctor and leadership guys.... all of whom were off island at the moment. I had never done a med-evac myself and I was up late into the night trying to get all the pieces together. 

Day #6 - I did the med-evac for the family with the lady who was having problems with her pregnancy and it was a tiring, stressful day, running them to doctors and kids to baby-sitters (they have 5!) but praising the Lord we got through it and my little boys (who I had to drag all over town with me) did an excellent job and were such troopers! We found out that the baby had died, but the wife had not had any labor symptoms or any signs that she would deliver the baby, so the doctor advised they stay in town til then to make sure everything was okay. It was really sad and a hard day. Lots of tears. 

Anyways, the next night (Day #7 - Brant still not home) I wake up about 3 am to pounding on my outside door.... I thought it was a drunk guy, so I called the family we had med-evaced to get the husband to come check it out (they were the only ones staying at the guest house) and the wife answered the phone, crying and yelling for me to come help. The pounding on the door was a little local girl who had come to help take care of their kids while the wife was ill. Anyways, I get to the guest house (in my PJs - had locked my sleeping boys in our house) and the wife had delivered the baby - a little boy - in the night. The doctor had come and helped (I had slept through the whole thing) and everything had gone smoothly. The doctor had left about 2 hours earlier, but around 3 a.m. the wife started hemorrhaging and passed out. It was so, so scary. We really thought she was going to die. So the husband and I carry the wife down the stairs to the car and he rushes her to the hospital, where mercy of all mercies, there was a doctor in the emergency room (usually they have NO doctors at the hospitals during the nights here!) and the doctor was THE one OB doctor that the American doctor here had recommended. They immediately did a D&C and stabilized her. (I knew none of this til lunch time.) Meanwhile, I am at the guest house - with their 5 kids, this local girl, and my 3 boys back at my house (same property, about 100 yards away.) So the girl and I carry all 3 of my little boys in the rain to the guest house where we put them in a vacant room to sleep (of course they didn't - they all woke up right away) and I tried to sleep for a couple hours til day light... all the while going back and forth with a leadership wife trying to get blood donations sorted (we only use missionaries for blood donors.) Both of our head leadership guys were actually flying while this whole thing happened, so there was no way to get ahold of them! I was so scared and overwhelmed.... after I got my boys settled and their kids settled I lay down in bed and just sweat and sweat and sweat... it must have been all the adrenaline kicking in. Needless to say, I never went back to sleep that night, and my boys didn't either. The family's youngest (2 yrs old) woke up screaming and I tried to comfort him til I realized he still nursed and would not be comforted without mama. So I held a screaming kid for 2 hours solid. If I had ever thought about having kid #4, I no longer will. :) Somehow I got Elijah out the door for school. All 8 kids ate breakfast. I walked around in this "what in the world just happened?” fog and I prayed their mama would live. I cried. I called my dad and we talked and I cried and we prayed. 

As soon as the leadership guys touched down around 8 am, they headed straight up here, took all of the kiddos (mine included!) and sent me home to bed. Brant came home that evening and I just cried and cried and cried. Hard, hard days I've been through lately. By myself. 

I kinda accept life as it comes and don't really question God much... firm believer that what happens He ordains, so I need to just get over it and accept it as good from His hand. But I really, really struggled with this past week. Death, chaos, more death. Why was I by myself for those things? Couldn't the Lord have timed all those things a bit differently? Not even was Brant not around, but neither were our leadership guys. I was all alone. All alone with 8 kids and a screaming baby. Scared. 

In that dark night as I lay sweating, I flipped to Hosea. Funny assignment the Lord gave Hosea - go marry a prostitute. I am sure he wasn't thrilled with his job and had a lot of questions for the Lord too. But he did it and God gave grace and God used that really hard assignment to spread His message of grace to His people.

And really, God gave grace to me too. He gives such grace. I had my beautiful Easter flowers. Little boys who thought they were on a grand adventure getting to have a sleep over at the guest house.  No fancy meal or dessert to welcome Brant home, but we got yummy fried yellow rice as take-out and we all love yellow rice. All grace. And a husband and good night’s sleep and a new day. 

Not Quite World Records

March.... will go down in the record books in our house....

First trip into the tribe as a family.... (already wrote about that one!) 

First time we ate blueberries and strawberries in the same YEAR here....

After a really fun girls' grocery shopping trip to the big city with my teammate (yes, life is that exciting here) I ended up with FRESH strawberries AND blueberries AND cream... all in the same day. I wanted to make a Flag Cake :) but ended up settling on berry shortcake for dessert... and breakfast... and lunch... :) It was heaven. 

First broken bone playing sports for me.... (soccer injury - snapped my big toe all the way across the joint... yes, 3 weeks later, still painful)

And then... and then.... and then, as if the excitement of fresh berries and tribal visits and broken toes was not enough....

My darling Ezra decided to try to jump over the tent fort in one great flying leap... and landed on his shoulder with lots of screaming and tears. I was a good, compassionate mother and rocked him for about one minute and then said "Shake it off." Five days later, when he was still refusing to use his arm, even with us yelling at him and threatening to spank him, we decided maybe he was still really hurt. Yes, I am quick sometimes.

So when Brant called from the hospital radiology department saying "His collarbone is definitely broken," I cried I felt so guilty. I made an appointment to have his shoulder braced later that afternoon with our American doctor here in town.

First broken bone for Ezra....

But poor kid, never got a second glance from the doctor. About 10 minutes before we left our house for his doctor's appointment, we got a call from Elijah's teacher... he has a fever - of 104 - and is really sick. Could we come get him?

As the school and the clinic are on the same property, I headed right up, dropping Caleb with our teammates. Brant was prepping his flight into the tribe and couldn't get away from the airport. I dropped Ezra in the clinic waiting room and ran to Elijah's class where he was laying on the floor asleep with a pillow and a blanket. Have you ever seen your kid asleep on a classroom floor? Gives you horrible mother guilt... almost as bad as threatening to spank your kid for not using a broken bone. :)

I carried Elijah to the clinic, where his fever registered 105 and he began throwing up uncontrollably. It was horrific to watch. The nurses and doctor totally ignored Ezra and immediately started working on Elijah.

So tests and more high fevers and lots more throwing up and a hospital trip later and Elijah is diagnosed with Typhoid.... a very dangerous bacterial infection of the intestines. You get it from contaminated drinking water or food.... like in a tribe where no one has clean water. We had all been vaccinated against it, but the vaccine isn't 100% effective. I had never had any experience with Typhoid, but the "Where There is No Doctor" book says "Of all the tropical fevers one can get, Typhoid Fever is the worst." And they were right on....

First Typhoid Fever case in our family (and hopefully the last!)....

For those who care, Typhoid basically destroys your white blood cells so your body can't fight infection. They put Eiljah on very strong antibiotics, but because his WBC was so low, it took a long time for the drugs to even kick in and for us to even see a bit of improvement... like 5-6 days. We had to give him meds every 2 hours around the clock for several days to keep his fever down and to keep him from throwing up (yes, even through the night.)

So to say we've been reeling a bit the last few weeks is an understatement. Brant left for the tribe just 3 days into the broken collar bone/Typhoid fever saga and I was totally exhausted. But with tons of people praying, and nowhere we had to go (or could go!) we made the best of our forced stay at home....

There were crafts... (aka "Use up all the random supplies we don't want to fly interior)

There were TONS of books and some doughnut making as a result (from Homer Price's "Doughnuts")

And there was lots of quiet time coloring and painting.... I love this picture.

I know these pictures look like we've had a vacation the last week... I didn't take a picture of all the laying around that happened the other 23 hours of each day and the nonstop watching movies and shoving pills into clamped close mouths and the tears (both the boys' and mine!) ....I was trying to dwell on the positive. :) 

Has been a tough few weeks... but by God's grace and with endless prayers and help from friends, we can do tough. As the doctor (who finally got around to seeing Ezra!) said as she prepped Ezra to be a "soldier" with his brace on, "You have to be a tough soldier when you wear this pack." And he's been a tough guy pulling imaginary guns and swords from his "pack" ever since. 

First boy who's become a soldier...