Defense

Hey there, everyone

Once again it’s amazing how much time has passed since I last wrote an entry.  I almost feel justified in my tardiness.  Many events have passed by in order to warrant this very appropriate phrase by Sara “We are playing defense, not offense.”  Although I sit and write this on a word document as I watch Paul take on a neighboring village in basketball, that comment is not describing any sporting, but rather the nature of our life and ministry right now.

First, the Mulder’s urged Paul and I to take a vacation after our very busy spring season of teams before the early summer teams started to come, especially because the Mulders were planning on moving stateside this summer to work for Mission-Haiti there.  So, Paul and I headed to South Florida to leave on a cruise, taking our honeymoon two-and-a-half years late.  Our decision on a cruise was not for the normal purposes that people take a cruise, it was almost solely based on the question, “How can we take a vacation and get the most food for our dollar?”  A cruise was the clear answer.  We truthfully didn’t even care if it rained the whole time, which it did the first two days.  But we were content to eat, sleep, not answer to anyone, and sit on soft furniture and watch movies that are constantly streaming into our cabins.  We got off the ship in Nassau for about two hours and walked around, but then got back on.  It’s funny how living on a Caribbean island, given it’s not a resort, changes your perspective on island travel. Prior to our trip, I had a tooth pulled in Florida that had a massive abscess (thanks to Irene Brasington for being a awesome-fill-in-Mom, setting that up for me) so I was on a pretty high dose of antibiotics throughout the trip.  Even so, the last night of our cruise, I started to experience some of the old health symptoms I’ve been struggling with last fall and winter.  Paul and I didn’t have a peace about me going back to Haiti while still having this issue, especially since I would have treated it with antibiotics.  Therefore, I headed to South Dakota to get some medical attention and Paul headed back to Haiti to continue taking care of business there.

Within two days of being in South Dakota, I was in the ER undergoing a battery of tests and truly got what I needed, a doctor to really hear my saga of a medical history with these issues and put the pieces where they belonged.  We were so grateful for that!  They found something near my ovary that they couldn’t know for-sure what it was until they took a look inside.  A few days later I underwent a laparoscopic surgery in which they found and removed an abdominal ectopic pregnancy.  What they had confirmed later was the ectopic pregnancy that I apparently had last August, one of the reasons I was hospitalized in Haiti, was a true tubal pregnancy.  That little embryo slipped out from the tube and decided to take up residence-and-die in my abdomen for 9 months, making some scar tissue from an old appendectomy it’s hammock.  So that little bugger has caused a good amount of problems for me in the past year and I am so grateful for an answer regarding that.  However, even though I had great post-operative care (which just happens to by my Mom’s floor), the anesthesia didn’t set well with me.  As I’ve told a few people, they broke it like it was terrible news to me that they’d like to keep me overnight.  I was ecstatic, actually!  Are you kidding me?  After 3 days in a Haitian hospital, an overnight session at Sanford Hospital in South Dakota would be like a night in the Hilton!  And it was.  A nurse checking up on my pain every few hours, room service, little leg-pump-massagers to prevent blood clotting, and the biggest heat-pad I’ve ever seen – man, I couldn’t complain about anything!  Except that I wished my husband was there.

Meanwhile, Paul was in Haiti, handling the day-to-day.  We get near a hundred requests a week from anything from bags of cement to suitcases to houses.  The hard part is discerning the need from the request.  It can be an emotionally draining job filtering all those requests, looking to the resources we having, and discerning which needs to meet.  It was a difficult time for Paul and he wished he could have been there with me during that time.

All at the same time, we received word from Pam, our founder-and-director, who was on a sabbatical in Africa that she would not be returning to Haiti and would be resigning completely from the ministry.  That was big news to process and took a lot of prayer and meetings to game-plan as to how to move forward.  The Mulders had already felt lead and planned to move stateside, so they continued on with that plan, while our supportive Board of Directors named Tim as the US Director of Mission-Haiti while Paul was named the Haiti Director of Mission-Haiti. 

After about a month in South Dakota, in which I recovered, spent time with family and friends, had many meetings and – yes – I did do my share of working too, I was cleared by my doctors to go back to Haiti.  I returned in the beginning of June and joined my husband and the Mulders for a last month of running teams and tying up loose ends before they left.

But, as it always happens, you wake up one day and realize, no matter how much effort you put in denying the day would ever come, it was here.  We said goodbye to the other half of our team as they left to fill a very important roll stateside.  The support and friendship we had with the Mulders will be one that’s very hard to replace.  Paul and Tim were a dream team, always in cahoots of how to handle this situation and that.  Sara and I would dump on each other emotionally so we wouldn’t drive our husbands crazy.  And Paul and I can say, the 3 Mulder girls are truly special and we feel honored to have shared a year of our lives with them.  When it comes to communal living, I like to remind people to think of the people they work with, all the personalities and quirks.  Then think about never going home at night and having their job 24-hours-a-day: living, working, eating, playing with these people.  You see the best and worst of these people, nothing is hidden from the others.  And, after a year with the Mulders, living as closely as we did with them, we still think the world of them.  Well, actually, probably even more.

So that pretty much sums it up.  I’ve said more times than I can count: It’s a good thing I like change.  June 17^th Paul and I recognized the 1-year-anniversary of our move here.  It has been anything but dull, that’s for sure.  We covet your prayers as we continue on in another year here.  Paul’s job is one that comes with an incredible responsibility.  Pray for wisdom, discernment, and discipline as he deals with hundreds of requests a week and is learning how to be the director of a mission organization.  We’ve all said at different times, we didn’t ask for this.  But Jesus isn’t our waiter- he doesn’t take our order.  As long as I’ve known Paul, he’s been presented with different ministry opportunities.  They started small, but have continued to grow (sometimes it feels exponentially).  And every time this has happened, I’ve watched Paul step up to the plate and grow into the position and thrive within it.  I believe this new job will be no different.

We want to thank you all for your prayers this last year in times of fear, change, excitement, and joy.  It is not just words when I say that we couldn’t do any of this without your prayers.

With much love.