Pages from the Philips Seeking God's leading in medical missions

Worst Losses…

We've clearly not been doing the greatest job on frequent updates, however we do have new pictures, some exciting developments and stories to share in this update!  We have enjoyed a few months at home after finishing our tour of the 13 original colonies (you can find some pictures from our trip at the bottom of this post).  We had an enjoyable time traveling from Dallas to Maine and enjoyed seeing dear friends and family members and some amazing historical sites.  We enjoyed some amazing ethnic food at several hole in the wall places in New York, Boston and Washington D.C. and had fun hanging out with Kris, Melissa's sister, who joined us for about half our trip.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family where we had almost 70 people come to my parent's home for the annual flag football game, Thanksgiving meal and post-meal Cowboy game watching - accompanied by plenty of cheering courtesy of my aunts!  The kiddos took their annual break during the time we were traveling up the East Coast but have since resumed their homeschooling.  Karuna continues to amaze us with the vigor with which she devours books - often requiring multiple trips to the library each week to keep up with reading material for her!  Luke has started working on learning to read which has been exciting for him since he desperately wants to read now that Karuna is always reading.  Vivek of course tries to destroy the house as Melissa works with the older two in their schooling.  We have also enjoyed this past month because Melissa's sister, Kris, moved down to stay with us at the end of November as she is searching for a new nursing job in Dallas - the kids have definitely enjoyed having their aunt here and enjoyed her two dogs and cat.

After much prayer and discussion we decided in the last few months to commit to serving at Duncan Hospital in Bihar, India with the plan to return to India in the latter half of 2013 after my board certification process is done along with student loans being paid off.  We are excited to have committed to Duncan Hospital because it gives us a greater sense of direction as we prepare for our return to India.  We felt that strategically Duncan is located in a part of India where we can be part of a team to help train young physicians while at the same time use the hospital as a platform for sharing the great news of Christ by providing compassionate and loving care to the poor in northern Bihar and southern Nepal.  

Final Two Weeks at Herbertpur

The following is a delayed entry from a day ago...we could not find a way to update the blog prior to us arriving in America this afternoon. We have safely arrived back in Dallas this afternoon with all our luggage and children! Will write more about the trip once we get over jet lag.

So it is our final morning in India. We arrived in Delhi two days ago from Herbertpur Christian Hospital and have been exploring the city a bit before we head back to the US this afternoon. The day feels bittersweet – we are excited about being back in the US to see our families and getting back to home but also sad to leave India and the tremendous needs it has – both spiritually and physically. Thankfully this is not a final goodbye but instead it is the beginning of a process whereby we will, God willing, be back in India in late 2013 to work here long-term. In this post you will hear about some of the patients at Herbertpur and our time in Mussorie. There are also some pictures from Hyderabad and a village church we attended in Bihar at the bottom of the post (I’m still several weeks behind with regard to getting picture edited so hopefully by early next week you will be able to see the pictures from Herbertpur). Here are the highlights:

Praises:

• Safe journey from Dehradun to Delhi.
• Thankful for relatively being healthy – most of the serious diarrhea is gone and we seem to be improving.
• A very good clinical experience at Herbertpur with lots of sick patients and procedures
• An amazing opportunity to teach several great residents and share with them about our life and call to missions
• A wonderful weekend to rest in Mussorie and get to know Joe and Sima Weaver

Prayer Requests:

• Prayer with regard to making a decision about where to join staff in two years
• Wisdom with regard to where to do intensive Hindi study when we return to India
• Pray for us adjusting to life back in America after being away for several months
• Endurance to finish a month of nights and lots of paperwork when we return with regard to Christo’s residency before he graduates at the end of June

Our last two weeks at Herbertpur were better than the first two weeks in terms of our health and all of us seem to have recovered from whatever bug was causing us to feel so bad. I’ll start off with a story I shared with the residents prior to us leaving. The last few weeks have been difficult for the kids especially because they have been missing our families, pets and just the normalcy of their life back in Dallas. For two weeks in a row we have had several nights where both Karuna and Luke have gone to bed bawling their eyes out for 20 minutes with nothing being able to comfort them because they missed family so much. We tried multiple things to calm them but nothing seemed to work – by the end I had tears in my eyes as I heard them cry. Then a few days ago I was working in casualty when I heard the sound of women wailing.

First Week at Duncan Hospital

We’ve now been in Raxaul almost one and a half weeks and life finally seems to be getting into a routine. Melissa and kids have settled into a daily routine and I’ve settled into the work at the hospital along with teaching the junior doctors. More details in the paragraphs to follow but I’ll highlight our first week at Duncan with the following praise and prayer requests.

Praises:

• The kids and Melissa are all feeling much better. Gastroenteritis seems to have run its course in our family and the kids have gotten their appetite back.
• The kiddos are all over jet leg and sleeping well through the night which means better sleep for us as parents.
• I’ve been getting some amazing opportunities to see clinical cases that I’ve never been exposed to in my emergency medicine training including measles, organochloride and organophosphate poisoning, TB meningitis, pericardial tamponade necessitating pericardiocentesis, and neurotoxic snake bites.
• The opportunity to teach many of the junior doctors some key emergency medicine principles and to share with the staff some of my insight to their clinical problems from an emergency medicine perspective.
• Getting to meet with several families on campus so that we could hear about their call to missions and their vision for Duncan Hospital.

Prayer Requests:

• The town of Raxaul – one of the least developed and polluted cities we have visited in India. Pray that Christ’s redeeming work would also extend to this city and transform it.
• Work/life balance – it can be very easy to get completely overwhelmed by the work and lose time with our families and time with the Lord.
• The plight of women in Bihar – there is little societal value to women and thus their lives are filled with sorrow and grief.
• The opening of the new hospital – happens in early May, pray that all the necessary details would come together to make this a reality.
• The junior doctors at Raxaul – that God would give them a clear sense of calling so that they might seek to serve Christ long term.
• Strategic vision – pray that God would use Duncan as a strategic center to train providers for many parts of North India.
• Provision of some more ventilators to care for intubated patients in the ICU so that they do not have to be hand ventilated.

Now for the longer version – we spent the first few days at Duncan with sleepless nights and sick kids. Thankfully in a few days the GI bug we had picked up had left our family. Karuna and Luke adjusted fairly quickly to sleeping through the night but we continued to have problems with Vivek waking up at 3 AM until we finally converted our kitchen into a bedroom to allow him to sleep there and he finally seems to have gotten into a routine with regard to his sleep.

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.