Picture of the Week #9

At the buffet table: Sashimi, the easiest dish to prepare ever! Just catch the fish, slice pieces thinly, and serve raw with rice, wasabi, and soy sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Picture of the Week #8

There was a mouse....'nough said. ;)

First Handle

I caught my first baby on Wednesday! Divina, a beautiful 19 year old girl, came into the clinic a 4:15pm. She gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl (named DiJeane)at 9:37pm. Her baby just barely weighed 5 pounds but otherwise was very healthy.



She was just a little unsure of how well she liked being outside of her mother. (Side note: ALL babies are born with white skin! It takes a little while for their bodies to produce melanin which makes their skin darker. Hmmmm....facts like that are SO amazing!)

My amazing charter, Rose.

An Email from an Amazing Brother :)

Hey Jordan, Well, the snow has come. And lots of it. Lots and lots of it. It's not so bad as I thought it would be. Although our ice skating is ruined, the snow is actually very beautiful. It simplifies our world by making it one color, a color that reflects our hearts when we are washed by the blood of Jesus. As I was walking back from taking some pictures of Jacob's buck, I thought of two morals that can be taken from this snowfall. First, every snowflake has its purpose. If a certain snowflake hadn't been there, the snowfall wouldn't have been complete. The same is with us. We are a part of God's kingdom. Without us, His kingdom cannot be complete. We are a part of the body. Without one of us, how can the body be complete? Without a hand, how can a body be complete? I Corinthians 12:12-31 comes to mind. (Sorry, it is a little too long to type out.) Secondly, I wonder at how someone could think that this snow had come by chance. "Billions of years, and there was the snowflake." or "There was a big bang, and then there was snow." When I walk through that snow, I can only see the marvelous hand of a divine Creator. Throughout my entire life, God has shown me hundreds of reasons that He is there. I've never found a reason that showed me that He is not there. I look at the world around me and see God's glory. I know that there are people out there that see the world around them, they see the glory so plain. Yet they do not know why it's there. They do not know who created it all. And I aim to tell them. I aim to be God's workman to show them the light. I aim to be a part of God's kingdom. If God can direct a snowflake in a snowstorm, He can direct my life.

Your awed little brother,
Micah

Picture of the Week #7

Posing for the picture...Filipino style....

Picture of the Week #6

Mmmmmmm...incredible...

Open Heart Surgery

The heart continuously heaves up and down as the surgeon pries at it with various tools. He delicately digs in with prickly forceps and razor sharp blades. Attentively he works, his bloody hands dipping down into the burrow in the patient's chest. All the while the patient lies prostrate, oblivious to the surgeon's working. If you have the guts to watch the procedure it can be fascinating.

While most of us don't need to endure open heart surgery we need heart surgery of another kind. What I mean is clearly stated by Jeremiah when he says, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" The illness of man's heart is also shown after the great flood when God said he would never curse the ground because of man "for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth." Obviously we need heart change.

Even David, a man after God's own heart, understood the need for heart surgery when he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God." But I think he understood not only the need for a heart change but who the surgeon must be. Only God can carry out a successful heart surgery. The procedure may be intense but the outcome is vital.

We need a heart change. Nonetheless, we recoil from the operating table. Most people would rather not have their chests ripped open and their hearts pricked at. We are obsessed with the magnitude of the operation, not because we want it but because we need it. If our dirty hearts don't kill us our obsession will.

Thoughts Today

"He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. "
John 1:2-5, 9

I guess I never realized before just how intense these words are. Darkness does overcome manmade lights: candles, lanterns, car lights, flashlights, street lamps. These barely touch the darkness; it consumes them. The SUN is required to truly conquer the darkness. The sun chases night away.

So the light of the Son of God, overcomes the darkness of evil and sin. The efforts of men alone are as nothing. But the SON prevails.

Outreach #2

Here are pictures from another awesome outreach. We spent a day taking tuberculosis medicine to a woman in a remote village. If you want the unabridged and complete story go to Tim and Bethany's blog . Bethany is one of the students in my class, and Tim (who is her husband) went on the outreach. The story is quite good...I'd encourage you to read it.

The sunrise on the way to the mountain

Attempting to keep off the pesticides which were raining down on us (blue tarp has many uses!)

Breathtaking...

One of the three rivers we drove through (not the one we got stuck in).

The river where we got horribly stuck.

The mountain water that causes so much pain:
not drinking it = pain from dehydration
HOWEVER
drinking it = pain a day or two later. :)

Getting stuck in some serious mud...

Finally the top of the mountain...now we just have to backpack down into the valley.

Hiking...

Whew...made it!

Mordegai explains the medicine.

Picture of the Week #5

This is the ambulance for Mercy Maternity.

Normal in the Philippines

Last week I got the amazing opportunity to go on a two day outreach with Laura (one of my roommates) and some people that she knows. We drove four and a half hours in the back of a truck to a town between the mountains and the ocean.







Laura and I took way too many blood pressures to count. After taking one woman's pressure, I told her, "Normal. It's normal." But, just before I said that, a man leaned over her shoulder and asked me my name. All he heard was me saying, "Normal. It's normal." So then, he thought my name was "Normal". He proceeded to tell everyone that I was named Normal!





We met a lot of Filipinos.





Also, we watched Mordegai (the missionary doctor we went with) extract 167 teeth in just one afternoon. Ouch!! I don't have a picture of that now (I was too busy watching him to bother taking pictures :), but if/when I get one, I'll be sure to post it as picture of the week. The infections underneath some peoples' teeth were horrible, but they'll feel better now...once their gums heal.

After the teeth pulling, someone gave their testimony to the crowd that had gathered, and Mordegai showed some videos (pictures of other outreaches he had been on, the Filipino Jesus film, a National Geographic movie about the ocean, and others).

We ate a lot of rice, kinilaw (a mixture of raw tuna, cucumber, onion, ginger, and hot chilis...very good!), fish eyeballs the size of golf balls (okay, so I didn't eat a whole one), fresh coconut juice (my favorite!), more durian (it's starting to taste almost good), chicken, and banana cake.



So, now you know a little more about being Normal in the Philippines.

Picture of the Week #4

This is the whiteboard in our living room. Technically, it's only for announcements, but sometimes those announcements get a little, well, shall we say "out of hand". :)

Outland Adventure

Last Saturday, all of the new students and a few of the old students spent most of the day at the Outland Adventure ropes course.



The McNeils use the camp as an outreach for children in the schools here and for other groups in the area. They use the challenges to teach teamwork, trust, and communication. Many kids have come to Christ through their outreach.

So, they gave us the opportunity to experience the camp, putting us through some of the challenges.



We did a lot of climbing, jumping, balancing, and hanging from harnesses. It was an awesome time to build our teamwork and to get to know everyone better.





I can't wait to do it again with the new students next year!

Picture of the Week #3

Just remembering good times. :) Hmmmm, I miss my most awesome bodyguards.

Baby update

Josiah has been settling into his new and chaotic large family culture.



Being the most popular dude, he has had to transfer from total solitude to the epitome of popularity.



At some moments he seems to be quite startled at his new environment....



But after some hard thinking...



I think he will learn to love it.

Picture of the Week #2

Babies born in one 8-hour shift.

Boring Shift = IVs!

During our shift the other night, only one woman came into the clinic, and she had to be transported to the hospital less than an hour after arriving. So, the rest of the shift was quiet and slightly boring, but we managed to make it interesting by practicing IVs. The following story and pictures are taken from Tiffany's blog . (She's one of the students who has been here for a year already, and in the pictures she is the one wearing the pink scrubs.)

With six babies over the past 6 shifts, I was ready for our dead swing shift on Friday. I was working with Carmen, Holly and Jordan, along with Ate Steph, who spent most of the afternoon hanging out with the other Filipinas upstairs. This left the four of us to entertain ourselves...

...Ate Steph was completing another baby check of mine. The mother showed us her sons mouth, and we realized that the back of his throat was not completely patent (open). It's like he was swallowing from a straw. No wonder she said he was vomiting a lot, and having a hard time breathing. So sad. So we wrote a referral, and she went straight to the hospital. When Carmen and Jordan were on a transport later in the evening, they saw her, and her son was already admitted. She told Carmen that the doctors would do surgery as soon as he was strong enough, so that made me happy. I'm also going to go visit her soon too, and keep in contact. I'm just so glad she realized it...I guess mom's have that instinct and know their babies! Good thing. :)

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, after Carmen's transport at least. The woman came in with a blood pressure of 130/90, and it steadily climbed to 160/120 over the next 40 or so minutes. Yikes. By the time she got to the hospital she was fully dilated, and Carmen thought she was going to catch the baby in the ER. Thankfully, she was able to breath and resisted the urge to push.

After Carmen and Jordan came back from the hospital, the four of us just sat on the couches talking. I asked Carmen if I could try an IV on her, and she was willing! Sweet. So I pulled out my equipment, and quickly failed. It squirted blood everyone, and I screamed, causing the new students to laugh and I'm sure they thought I was a lunatic. Then Carmen inserted a smaller needle into my foot, which we later found out increase the risk of an air embolism. I was quite thankful to wake up this morning :)



Then I asked Jordan if I could try one on her, and she surprising said 'Yes'.



She's a quick fainter, so we were all surprised.



Needless to say, I failed again, and after I pulled it out, she proceeded to pass out about a minute later. Only, it was freaky, because she didn't just pass out...she seized! Her body went completely stiff, and we thought she was having a seizure. She pulled out of it about a minute later, and remembered nothing, of course. It was quite the experience. I was shaking after, but we were all able to laugh. Poor Jordan...she felt so bad! I should be the one feeling bad...I poked her! Oh well..now we all know for next time!

Now, I did not think I would pass out this time, otherwise, I would not have let Tiffany stick me with that needle. However, I was wrong. On the bright side, no one wants to practice IVs on me anymore...they're all too scared. :)