Well, it has been a while since adding to my blog. Bad for me, I know. It has been a difficult couple of weeks. Ask any doctor who admits to Trinity Mother Francis what their week was like. The hospital is busting at the seams. There were, on average, 23 people spending their stay in the ER rather than in a regular room because there was no room in the inn. Three of those were mine during the week before last. It would have been four but the last one was 12 and we had to find her a room since she was a minor. (no pediatric trained nurses in the ER). In addition to that my online bible class at Harding continued pile on the work. I was overwhelmed by the work and it showed. By the grace of God I was able to keep afloat by doing 2 weeks worth of homework before I started call. This was going great until last Sunday night when I realized that I did not have a 10 question quiz over Colossians 3 and 4 on that Wednesday but it was "Test 2" with 100 questions over Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. Oh well. God granted me more knowledge than I needed. It is hard to settle for less than 100% when you've been to Medical school. I did have to settle.
We are nearing our trip to Uganda and Rwanda. We are flying to Uganda on March 10 and staying with the Cashes until March 17. We are going from the Cashes to Kigali Rwanda on March 17 and will be visiting the Jenkins, Shewmakers and hopefully the Beards while in Kigali. I hope to meet with some of the people in the Ministry of Health for Rwanda to see if there is a way for me to use my medical training in Rwanda. We will go to Ruhengeri for a couple days by car (kind of excited to drive in Rwanda, don't tell Kristin that I'm excited; it kind of worries her). When we get to Ruhengeri we will try to meet with Drs. Caleb and Louise King who are doctors in the Musanzi region. They are about an hour south of Ruhengeri. I want to see how their work is set up and by the end of the trip I would like to see if God wants to use me a pure church planting capacity or in partially or wholly medical mission manner. I truly have no idea how this will look later in the future.
We are excited about the whole trip but need prayers for endurance, especially for our daughter Grace. We pray that she will love it. She has no clear idea that we are going to move to Rwanda but she knows we have been talking about spending more time with the Koonces and Crowsons and we have asked her about whether she is interested in living near them. She seem skeptical but she is not stupid and gives us hints that she thinking about the things we have been discussing in "code" the last few months.
We really want to be blessings to the Cashes and we want to receive so much blessing from them. We hope God will show us a vision of the faith that keeps them in Uganda.
We have not started packing but will likely do so tomorrow. We are excited by the challenge of making all 6-9 trunks weigh 50 lb. It is like a puzzle. I hate puzzles.
We need prayers for
Endurance
self control
safety
vision of God's purpose for our mission
vision to see what is real in Rwanda and not let Satan cover our minds and the eyes of our hearts with false images of superficial contentment in the Rwandan people. We want to see the pain and the suffering, we want to see the emptiness and the pain that the genocide brought.
We hope that we will take your prayers with us and hope God will hear you and remind us of each person praying for us so that we can also pray for you.
