Miracles
Thank you for your prayers for Melissa and her family. Melissa's uncle, Mark, went to be with the Lord about two weeks ago. Because of how my schedule worked out Melissa was able to fly out to Des Moines to be with her aunt and the rest of the extended family as they grieved their latest loss. We are grateful that Melissa was able to spend time with her family and have an opportunity to grieve with them. Please continue to lift up Melissa's aunt, Diane, and the rest of her family as they struggle with Mark's loss. We are also grateful that the kids did well with Melissa traveling and that I survived the first time in our marriage when I was at home with the kids without Melissa's ever-present help!
Praises:
- Opportunity for Melissa to travel to Iowa for Mark's funeral and to be with the rest of her family as they grieved.
- A second meeting with Denton Bible Church last week as we take steps forward to be sent by Serve International.
- New students and residents that have joined the Dallas medical missions group which we have been a part of for two years. They have been an encouragement to us and continue to spur us on to fulfilling God's calling on our lives.
Prayer Requests:
- Melissa's extended family as they grieve the loss of their grandmother and her uncle Mark.
- Clarity about where we want to go for language school once we return to India so that we can become fluent in Hindi.
During the course of the past few months God has been showing me more and more of His hand at work to bring about healing when I care for patients in the emergency department. Growing up in America, I was taught to view most things through the lens of science. The spiritual dimension was something that was pushed to the periphery and rarely acknowledged in the course of everyday events. However, as I've allowed myself to look for God's hand at work He has begun to show me how He provides healing in ways that I just cannot explain scientifically. As a Christian, I have to acknowledge that sometimes God works in mysterious ways - sometimes to provide healing, sometimes to just build my faith that He is ultimately in control. Over the course of the past year, I've had several experiences where things have gone much differently that I would have ever imagined and I can find no other explanation than God's hand at work. As Ambroise Paré the French surgeon once said, "I treat, God heals." What a burden off my shoulders when I realized that great truth - yes God expects me to provide the best care possible to my patients but ultimately He is the one that brings about healing!
Caring for the Mentally Ill
The months seem to go by quicker. Perhaps its the change of seasons, perhaps its the realization that life is fragile, perhaps it is feeling as though our time left here is short and thus we need to get as much done as possible in a short amount of time. This past month has been a month of sorrows as several of our dear friends experienced the loss of a newborn, Melissa's grandmother passed away and we received some unexpected news that one of her uncles has brain cancer. We have felt anew how short our lives on earth are and how we are as Moses said in Psalm 90, "In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away." Or consider the words of James 4:14, "How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog--it's here a little while, then it's gone." How can we live our lives with purpose so that the few days we have on earth and spent in a meaningful manner: investing in things of eternal value!
Praises:
- A good initial meeting with Denton Bible Church and the elder board as both of us prayerfully consider whether a long term partnership would be viable. They were encouraged by our desire to serve in North India and we pray that God would give us further leading as to next steps we need to take so that they can potentially serve as our sending agency.
- Staying on task. We had felt that this spring would be a busy season of life as we both took the Perspectives course and started a group that meets at our home every other week. We have been thankful God has allowed us to carve out time each week to get the required reading done and make preparations for different groups we are a part of.
- Rejoicing with Melissa as she celebrates her 34th birthday and with her brother David and sister-in-law Lacy who were blessed with a son just a few days ago.
Prayer Requests:
- Melissa's family as they deal with the loss of Melissa's grandmother and the unexpected news of her uncle who was diagnosed with cancer.
- Patience to wait on God as we walk through this season of preparation. Sometimes we wonder if we could just skip this phase and move on but we trust that God is teaching us important lessons on waiting on Him to give us further direction before we leave for India in fall of 2013.
I wanted to write some this month about caring for the mentally ill. It seems like almost every shift I have one if not more patients that come in with a primary psychiatric complaint - whether that be attempted suicide, severe depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, or undifferentiated psychosis. Caring for the mentally ill has not always been easy - they can often times be some of the most challenging patients I encounter but one thing I've been grateful for are the unique opportunities God has given me to bring a word of comfort into several of these lives as they grapple with hopelessness and sometimes just staying in touch with reality.
Best Saves…
It's feels like spring in Texas which means wonderful weather and plenty of time outdoors with the kids! We have been blessed these past few months with lots of time together and further leading from God with regard to several decisions that needed to be made before we leave for India in hopefully 18 more months.
Praises:
- Christo found out that he passed the written portion of his emergency medicine board exams. One of our big goals for the time after residency before we returned to India was to have the board certification process completed before our departure. Christo will be taking his oral board exams on October 27th of this year. Keep that in your prayers so that the last step can be done before we return to India.
- Halfway done with paying off student loans! Our goal was to have student loans paid off before we left for India because that would leave one less burden we need to raise support for and free us up with regard to which missions organization we will join to go to India. We thank God for a wonderful place for Christo to work that has provided for our needs and allowed us to work on these goals!
- A great trip to Key West, Florida with our family and Kris (Melissa's sister). Christo gave a talk on High Risk EKGs for the EMC annual conference which was well received and we enjoyed getting to explore the Florida Keys and Everglades National Park
Prayer Requests:
- Wisdom with regard to choosing a mission organization to go with back to India. We are meeting with one prospective organization this week to help us with that decision.
- Our home group. We are co-leading a home group with some friends from church. Pray for God to draw the right people to come to the group and that we would be mutually encouraged through this group.
- Time management. We are taking the Perspectives course (which we highly recommend to those of you that have never taken it - its a semester long course offered at multiple churches around the country on the world Christian missions movement) which requires an intense amount of reading along with trying to keep up with home schooling and work. Please pray for us to get much out of the course but at the same time not feel too overwhelmed with all the other things that need to get done.
For the longer version...at the end of January we made a 3800 mile road trip from Dallas to Key West, FL and back. We enjoyed stops in New Orleans, Miami, Key West, the Everglades, and Tampa on this trip. Once I finish putting up all the pictures from our East Coast Trip (look at the end of the post for pictures from Boston and New York) I'll try to get the ones from Key West done. We especially enjoyed trying out wonderful seafood from the Gulf Coast and even got to be at Cafe Du Monde when they were filming a new movie called, "Now You See Me" with Woody Harelson and Morgan Freeman! We enjoyed Key West but really loved Everglades National Park. Since it was winter at Everglades National Park the weather was wonderful (in the 60s-70s) and because it is the dry season there all the watering holes were concentrated and so we would often see 10-15 species of birds hunting near each watering holes along with plenty of alligators - including an 8 foot alligator which was about 2 feet from us. Yikes!
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.
Travel – Eureka Springs & Birmingham
We wanted to post some pictures from our recent travels. We celebrated my mom and dad's 30th wedding anniversary with a family trip up to Eureka Springs, Arkansas in August. We had a wonderful time celebrating with mom and dad along with all my siblings. We enjoyed horseback riding, canoeing and watching the Passion Play together (Luke was quite surprised when Jesus flew into the air!).
We are on another one of our crazy road trips around the country - this time up the East Coast. We just reached New York City yesterday after having visited Birmingham, AL, Atlanta, GA, Athens, GA, Durham, NC and Philadelphia, PA. We are continuing onward to hit Boston, Maine, Washington D.C., Nashville and finally home (total of almost 5000 miles). Below is a map of our trip across the U.S. We'll post pictures of our trip as I finish getting them all edited. Click below to see slideshows of our trips or click the individual pictures below.
Travel Plan for Trip Up East Coast - 4500 miles in 3 weeks
Transitions
As evidenced by my lack of posts for several weeks, we’ve been in the midst of two busy months with the end of my emergency medicine residency and starting a new job working in the ER at Hunt Regional and Presbyterian-Kaufman. We do have some final pictures from our last days in Herbertpur and our time in Delhi posted along with this post – just scroll to the bottom to view the slideshow with music or click the pictures to see them individually.
My last month of residency was a bittersweet experience. I have loved my experience at Parkland and the wonderful staff who work in the ER. But I guess after 10 years of school and in training it was finally time to have the cord cut and be out on my own. Transitioning back to work and life in America has been with its challenges. Although we serve a very sick population of patients at Parkland who use the emergency room to get much needed healthcare in comparison to the dire medical need of the places we worked in India, the contrast was striking. We dealt with death on a far more constant basis in India as compared to the US. Here the expectation of most patients is that they come to the ER and they will get better – in India it is often that patients come to the hospital with the expectation that they could well die.
My last month of residency was a month of night shifts, which in some ways made the switch between India to America easier because I essentially stayed on the same schedule. In many ways caring for so many sick patients in India made me feel so much more comfortable taking care of patients at Parkland because I always thought – it could be a lot worse than this! I did find it somewhat amusing that my last night at Parkland was also one of the busiest nights we had had in a while – very similar to my last night on trauma call as a 2nd year resident when I had 5 gun shot victims show up in the ER within one hour. I worked a POD 3 shift my last night (this is the section that works primarily with the trauma team) and we got a call from Biotel (our prehospital EMS system) informing us that that a bunch of motorcycles were racing at around 120 mph and there was a big crash and that three of the people who were critically ill were coming to us. The first one to arrive was the worst, a young man in his 20s, ejected off the motorbike and then landed head first with no helmet.
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.
The Villages of Bihar
We are now at Herbertpur Christian Hospital in the state of Uttarakhand. We arrived here on Sunday night and will be here for a month before returning to Delhi and then on to Dallas. We had a wonderful week of rest in Hyderabad with my cousin Elvin and the kids got to heal up from all their mosquito bites. We enjoyed visiting several sites in Hyderabad along with some great food. We spent two days visiting a 4B hospital in Nandyal and then spent another day with 4B Serve to see how different ministries are partnering together to care for communities all across India. We’ll write more about our time in Hyderabad and the exciting things happening through 4B but wanted to share some final thoughts about our time in Bihar courtesy of Melissa (a guest post requested by many). But first some highlights (some amazing pictures we were able to capture about life in the villages are at the bottom of the post):
Praises:
- Safe travel from Hyderabad to Herbertpur with no lost luggage.
- A wonderful week to rest in Hyderabad before starting the second part of our trip.
- 4B Serve – a wonderful partnership between multiple ministries all across India that helps facilitate greater cooperation between organizations.
- Getting to meet and spend time with Dr. Varghese Philip – a man with a great heart and vision for meeting India’s healthcare needs.
- Elvin (my cousin) and the work that God is doing through him at the US consulate in Hyderabad to impact India and the US Foreign Service for Christ.
- A good start to life at Herbertpur with meeting new friends.
- Vivek is finally speaking – we were quite concerned about his speech (we had met a couple of times with a speech therapist before we left for India) but God has worked marvelously during the past month and he has probably tripled his vocabulary in the last month.
Prayer Requests:
- Quick integration into the team at Herbertpur.
- Provision of much needed staff for this mission hospital.
- Continued prayer for discerning God’s leading and direction regarding where to serve in India.
- Opportunities to challenge the junior doctors here to consider serving long-term in missions.
- Pray for Vivek’s sleep – he has been quite disturbed now by thoughts of lizards (or li-li’s as he calls them).
- Karuna and Luke’s understanding of life in India and the need for people to serve in hard places to that they can have access to good healthcare and opportunities to hear the Gospel.
Finally what many of you have been waiting for…a post from Melissa. Here are some thoughts that she penned together about some of the village work being done in Bihar.
One of our final days at Duncan Hospital was spent with the Chetna project which is the arm of Duncan that works in the surrounding villages. Altogether they serve in 152 villages in the East Champaran district and we got to visit seven of them as we caught a glimpse of how they are serving and transforming the area.
Changing Minds, Cultures & Lives
So we have finished the first part of our journey and are done with our time at Duncan Hospital. We arrived in Hyderabad, located in the state of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday night. We spent two days traveling by road from Raxaul to Patna with stopovers in Motihari and Muzzaffarpur to visit several Indian ministries that work among the people of Bihar to get their perspective on what God is doing in Bihar before flying to Hyderabad to commence on the second part of our journey.
We will be in Hyderabad for a week as we visit a second hospital in Nandyal (about 4 hours from where we are staying now) to see the work of an organization called 4B Healthcare which seeks to make mission hospitals viable again by infusing capital and management expertise. We will spend a few days visiting that hospital before traveling on to Herbertpur Chrisitan Hospital in the state of Uttarakhand where we will spend our final three weeks before returning to the US in June. I hope to cover some of the specific areas where there needs to be change in Bihar and about some of the work Duncan Hospital is doing to promote that change. Melissa will soon write some about the community development work that has been started in the East Champaran district of Bihar in the next post but first for those of you who want to get to the highlights (pictures are at the bottom of this post):
Praises:
- Safe travel through some very difficult roads from Raxaul to Patna.
- Great conversations with Indian missionaries serving in Bihar as we saw how powerfully God is working in Bihar to changes lives and communities.
- Safe arrival in Hyderabad with no missing luggage even after we barely caught the flight out of Mumbai since our flight was delayed in Patna.
- Wonderful time of fellowship with many families at Duncan to hear how they felt called to missions and to the work at Duncan Hospital.
- A wonderful farewell party where we got to spend time with the junior doctors and other friends we had made during our time at Duncan.
- An amazing time of worship with local villagers on Easter at one of the village churches near Raxaul.
- A great day of visiting about 7 villages with the CHETNA project to see the many ways Duncan Hospital is helping to reach the poor and marginalized in Bihar.
- Provision of an amazing place to stay and great company in Hyderbad as we stay with Christo's cousin, Elvin.
Prayer Requests:
- God would bless our time in Nandyal as we see a different model for medical missions and to see if this model might be a possibility for how we might be involved in medical missions in India.
- God would continue to increase the number of people that hear about Christ in Bihar and that He would transform the lives of individuals and their communities.
- God would use this week of rest in Hyderabad to rejuvinate us before traveling on to the third mission hospital at Herbertpur.
- Provision of much needed staff from different backgrounds to consider working at Duncan Hospital to make it a place of great training and teaching for medical professionals in North India.
Our second week at Duncan was largely spent working at the hospital during the days and during this week I took pediatric call every other night (splitting the responsibility with Dr. Blessy, the pediatrician at Duncan) so that she could have a break. We also had the opportunity to meet in the evenings with many of the senior staff at Duncan so that we could hear their stories and how they felt led to serve at Duncan. Those conversations were a great opportunity to hear about the myriad ways in which God has worked to put together an effective team at Duncan. The kids especially enjoyed getting to play with the many kids on campus and have stuck with this even after getting plenty of mosquito bites in the evenings.
The lack of good medical care in this region of north Bihar was especially impressed upon me during this past week. Although there are many so called doctors and pharmacists in the area, the medical advice and treatment given to a large majority of patients is suspect at best.
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.
