Arrival in Raxaul
So we have finally arrived in Raxaul – the site of the first mission hospital we’ll be working at for the next three and a half weeks. We arrived here three days ago but have been in convalescence since because all of our children are ill. I’ll write in more detail about our trip so far on the next couple of paragraphs but for those of you who want the highlights here they are (pictures from our trip can be found at the bottom of the post as well):
Praises:
- Arrived safely in Raxaul after 24 hours on the train and 24 hours in flight
- No problems with getting through customs in Delhi with our medical supplies
- Big help from one of our family friends, Levi Paulos, who helped us navigate Delhi
- Extremely kind people on the train who went above and beyond to help us as we struggled with sleep deprivation and two very sick kids.
- Drs. Philip and Leeja have been great hosts and helped us immensely as we have tried to settle into life here at Duncan
Prayer Requests:
- Vivek, Luke, Karuna and most recently Melissa are all ill with gastroenteritis - pray for a quick recovery
- Melissa and I are extremely tired from multiple sleepless nights with sick kids and jet lag. Pray for recovery so that we can be useful here
- Christo would learn the hospital system at Duncan quickly since he will start taking call next week.
- Building relationships with the families here at Duncan so that we have a better sense of the community here and whether this would be a good fit for us long term.
For the longer version…we were able to get the second flight directly from Paris to Delhi after we missed our connecting flight to Bahrain. We flew on Air India and they were extremely helpful to us and moved seats around to allow us enough space to have a place to let our children sleep. After arrival in Delhi one of our family friends, Levi, met us at the airport in Delhi to help us get to the hotel. By the grace of God we went through customs without a hitch – in fact they did not even ask us to stop and just waved us through. That was a huge blessing in terms of being able to bring in the donated medical equipment we had with us. Also we had become a little wiser with regard to dealing with the porters in Delhi and so our total bill to get our bags from the luggage carousel to the car was a lot less than when we were in India last.
Departure & Going the Extra Mile
The day has finally arrived. After nearly a year of planning and preparation we’re on our way to India. We just arrived in Paris about five hours ago. Because our first flight from Dallas was delayed we ended up missing our flight to Bahrain and thus we’ll be flying out of Paris later tonight directly to Delhi. We’ll arrive there about 5 hours later that originally planned but it is a direct flight so that might end up being a blessing. This past week has been a busy one with lots of last minute errands to get finished along with packing quite a few medical supplies we were able to get donated from Parkland Hospital. A couple of big praises:
- Through the hard work of several people at Parkland in materials management we were able to obtain several boxes of newly expired or old equipment that they were no longer using. This was a huge blessing in that we were able to get almost 35 central line kits, some surgical supplies and lots of airway equipment. A huge blessing in that several roadblocks were overcome to allow us to take these materials with us.
- Melissa’s packing was excellent as always – with 9 checked bags between all of us, she still managed to get them all under the magical 50 lb limit (although several were 49.5 lbs!
). - We were able to enlist the help of some extended family in Delhi who will be coming to meet us when we land and help us navigate getting on the train there.
- Finally praise that India won the Cricket World Cup – the first time in 28 years – it should be much more pleasant to travel in India with people excited over a victory rather than angry about a recent defeat.
A couple of items to pray about in the next few days:
- Pray for an easy passage through customs. All of the items we are taking to the hospital are donated so it should not be too much of a problem but with rampant corruption it is hard to know who we’ll get as our customs officer.
- Travel to Raxaul. We arrive in New Delhi on Monday and on Tuesday we’ll take a train for 24 hours to get to Bihar. I suspect that all of us will be quite exhausted by this point in our journey so pray for extra grace as we travel.
- A quick turnaround from jetlag.
One thing that God has been teaching me over this past week has been an important lesson in trusting Him and relying on Him rather than my own strength to accomplish what He has called us to. In my quiet times this months I’ve been reading through the book of Acts and this week I read through Acts 12 and the story of Paul being thrown in prison by Herod so that Paul could be put to death. As Paul slept chained between two guards that night, an angel appeared, the chains fell off of him and he escaped out of the prison. It was a powerful story for me to reflect on to think about what type of God I serve. I was convicted about my own fears about this trip and the worry about traveling with three young kids to some remote parts of India. As I read through this passage, God used that to calm my heart and to trust that He was in control. I serve the same God who was able to cause an earthquake to open prison doors, raise the dead and even split the ocean in two so why am I so afraid of the unknown? What is the worst that could happen to us? Death? Illness? Loss? Even with the worst of those, to be absent from this life means being with the Lord. So as I’ve spoken with others this week – I have been less focused on the fears about this trip and more concerned about how God will use this trip to refine our vision. As I prayed this week it was in a spirit of boldness than fear because we serve an amazing God who is able to accomplish His will. The only question is whether we’re following His leading.
I wanted to write one final blog post in my series of posts about themes in the ER – this time about going the extra mile. I went into medicine because I first wanted to do mission work. Over the years as God continued to impress upon my heart the need for many to hear the Gospel who had never heard it, it seemed a natural fit to choose as my profession medical work since in it there is a great opportunity to minister to people’s physical and spiritual needs. One of the qualities Melissa and I have tried to cultivate in our marriage is the willingness to be hospitable and take the risk of being involved in the lives of my patients even outside my job. These experiences have been extremely rewarding but have also caused their share of heartache.
Mistakes & Failures
First, a big praise. We got to 100% of the support we needed for our upcoming trip to India as of one week ago! Thank you to all of you who have been praying for our trip as well as the many who have so generously given to help make this trip a reality. This whole support raising process has always been an incredible process of faith building for us. It is amazing to see how God moves in the hearts of people to generously give to make this possible. Of course, I would like the whole process to work on my time frame but often God uses delays and frustrating days to continue to increase our faith and to trust HIS provision. Yet again we were amazed at the variety of people who gave and especially moved by those who gave who did not have much to begin with - a true lesson for us about sacrificial giving. We are also excited because we are now less a week away from leaving for India. We leave next Saturday, April 2nd. A couple of things you can be praying for:
- Travel mercies as we spend over 24 hours in flight and travel through Paris and Bahrain on our way to Delhi and then as we spend another 24 hours on a train on our way to Raxaul.
- Pray for supplies to be become available for us to take to the hospitals in India. We have hit several roadblocks with getting supplies donated from Parkland due to hesitation from the legal department and we need God to work to allow us to have several pieces of equipment to take to India.
- That our hearts would be in the right place and that we would rely on God and not ourselves as we make this trip
In my continuing series of posts on themes from the emergency department, I wanted to use this post to write about several patients where I made a mistake or did not pick up on a condition fast enough to prevent them harm. I think very few physicians want to speak about mistakes because they ruin our sense of infallibility but I feel like the lessons I've learned for patients where I made a mistake have been invaluable in my development as a young physician and have taught me to hold on to my humility. I'm human and will always make mistakes but sometimes these are hard lessons when they involve the life of a patient.
Humor in the ED & Support Update
It's the beginning of February and we are having a hard time figuring out if we are still living in Texas or Minnesota. We have had almost two weeks of sub-freezing temperatures along with ice and snow which have again reinforced for us why we live here and not a 1000 miles further north! Melissa was quite sick last week and spent 4 days in bed with the flu but she seems to finally have turned the corner. Appachan and Ammachi and Chrisly were gracious enough to watch the kiddos for several of those days so that Melissa could work on regaining her strength.
We are continuing to make progress on our support raising goal although it has slowed the last few weeks. Hopefully many of you got a reminder postcard in the mail to continue praying for us and to consider supporting us financially to make our upcoming trip to India possible. We are almost 60% of the way to our final goal but still need to raise about $5500 to make the trip possible. We trust that God will provide us with the resources to make this trip possible and we are excited that we are now less than 7 weeks away from leaving for India. If you would like to help us with our trip just click the donate button on the top right or send us a check made out to Crossroad Church with "India Medical Mission" in the memo line for a tax deductible donation. Vivek got his visa in the mail today which was one of our last administrative hurtles to make the trip to India and the other kids all got a series of vaccinations a couple weeks ago to make sure they are well prepared for our trip. Thankfully Melissa and I did not need to get new vaccines for this trip which was better than our last trip whenI think we ended up getting over 25 shots between the entire family!
I wanted to write about the lighter side of the ED. People often wonder how people can work day after day in a place as stressful as the emergency room. Although I do meet a lot of people on their bad days, there are always patients or stories that bring a smile to my face or sometimes have me on the floor laughing. I think it is these lighter moments in the ED, the ability to laugh about the little things, the ability to laugh with my coworkers that makes my job fun and keeps me coming back to the emergency department.
Support Raising & December Update…
We were blessed this year that my schedule worked out so that I was able to have Christmas day off - the first time in about two years. We celebrated together with our immediate family on Christmas and the kids had a great time enjoying time with some of our cousins and with Appachan and Ammachi. The kids of course were spoiled by the rest of the family and they were excited to receive the presents we had made for them which were books of pictures of their last year. We had noticed that the kids loved the books we had made for them in the past because whenever we have guests over they always want to bring out their books. They had lots of fun showing off their books to the rest of the family over Christmas. I've posted below the three books we made for them:
We are getting ready to drive up to visit Melissa's family in Nebraska on December 30th. We'll be there for several days as part of my week of vacation, celebrate Christmas with Melissa's family and rejoice at Melissa's grandparents 59th wedding anniversary! What a blessing and a testament to their love and commitment to one another.
We also wanted to give everyone a quick update about where we are in our support raising process for our upcoming trip to India (you can read more about our trip by clicking here: Medical Mission Trip to North India). We have received about 30% of the support we need to raise out of the $13,000 we need for our trip. It has been a slow and faith building process so far but we trust that God will provide the support we need to allow for us to go in a few more months. If you would like to partner with us as we prepare for this trip you can make a check out to "Crossroad Church" and write "India Medical Mission" in the memo line and send it to us and our church will send you back a tax deductible receipt. We are excited about our upcoming trip and pray that we would get a clearer sense of where God would have us serve long term in India and that it would be a time for us to continue to refine our vision of reaching India for Christ through medical missions.
I'll try to get back to my series of blogs on different themes in medicine hopefully in the next couple of days. We wish everyone a blessed New Year!
Medical Mission Trip to North India
First a couple of quick updates. We just attended the Global Health Missions Conference (GHMC) that gathers together every year during the 2nd week of November in Louisville, KY. It was a time of much needed spiritual encouragement and a time to meet with several organizations that we have been considering partnering with in order to facilitate our return back to India. The conference is the largest of its kind in the US with over three thousand medical professionals that have a heart to serve in medical missions here and overseas. The last speaker we heard yesterday, Dr. Carol Spears, was especially encouraging to hear about how God has worked in her life and through her sufferings to call her to a life of mission service in Kenya.
We also wanted to let all of you know that we have set into motion most of the things that need to happen for us to go to India in early 2011 to work at two missions hospitals that are part of the EHA network of hospitals.
Finally an Update
No we have not disappeared to the ends of the earth or gone missing. It has been many months since we updated the blog mainly because of the demands of residency and taking care of three very active children but don't worry we're doing well...maybe I should rephrase that...surviving my second month of all night shifts in the ED.
A quick overview of the last few months:
- Vivek is now 9 months old, we cannot believe how interactive he has become
- Karuna and Luke started their second year of homeschooling and are loving every minute of it
- I finished one month of night shifts in the ER, a month of day shifts in the ER, a month in the ER at Baylor Dallas and am now on a second month of nights at Parkland/Childrens
- Melissa helped to start up a Side by Side chapter in Dallas three weeks ago and they are going through the book Sacred Marriage
- We harvested our crops from the past year incluiding 4 honey dew melons, lots of raspberries (they are still bearing for us) and strawberries, and ate our first pomegranate from our tree
- I traveled to Boston for a week to attend the annual American College of Emergency Medicine conference
- We traveled to Nebraska for a week to visit Melissa's family
Some Pictures From Our Last Few Days in India
We are still working hard on getting projects done around the house before Christo starts his residency orientation on June 22nd. The big things we have done so far have been to put in new ceiling fans in all the rooms (did you know that a ceiling can make a room feel 10 degrees cooler and uses a fraction of the energy compared to running an AC unit?), picking out applicances for the home, putting in new programmable thermostats to make our AC unit run more efficiently, and putting in wood blinds throughout the house. Our big project that we started tackling today has been adding built-in bookshelves similar to the ones we had in Rochester because we still have hundreds of books and right now nowhere to put them. We hope this project will be finished by this weekend so that we can tackle our next project of painting the house followed by landscaping work for the third week.
Last Week and Return to America
Just wanted to give all of you a quick summary of our trip back to the US and our first few days back in America. We left Makunda last Wednesday to start our journey home back to the US. Before our departure, the staff at Makunda threw us a wonderful farewell potluck dinner and so we were able to visit with most of the campus families before we left. We were sad to leave so many new friends who have such a passion for serving Christ through medical missions work but we we were consoled with the thought that we will soon be able to return to India to labor with them to reach people with the Gospel.
Melissa’s Post From Week 3
Because of the problems we had with our internet connection, we were not able to put up this post from Melissa. Continue to lift up Luke in your prayers as he has still been suffering from diarrhea. The kids are having a difficult time with jet lag...they were up this morning about 1:30 AM. We hope that they will be able to re-time their body clocks soon. We've also put up some pictures from our third week along with this post.
