Most recent update sent home...

Friends and Fam,



Chale! That’s greetings friend in Twi (pronounced Chree) a dialect that I am learning in bits and pieces from some of my Ghanaian friends on board. Well it has been quite a while since I have sent out a little update and I figured it’s time to sit down and try to put some of my experiences in writing. Funny how when you’re living somewhere long enough life falls into a routine and you start taking the daily activities for granted. For example, last night I was chatting with a friend online while sitting in the café and I couldn’t think how to spell the word nauseous (a word that frequently comes into all of our vocabulary I am sure) and couldn’t figure out the spelling, so living on a floating hospital I turned around to see if someone could throw this dog a bone and found myself surrounded by an physical therapist from the states, a missionary surgeon living in Cameroon originally from Ohio, a surgeon from Australia and another doctor from the UK. Needless to say, we figured out how to spell the word. One of my most favorite things that I have been able to witness first hand is the unity in Christ. It blows my mind that people from all over the world are led to this ministry, can serve anywhere from 2 weeks to years without an end in sight and come together to not only make a hospital function, but thrive to bring hope and healing to the lost and hurting in Western Africa. SO cool!

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon in the OR. For the first hour I was in with Dr. Glen Strauss, a long-term crewmember serving as an ophthalmologist. He has perfected the art of removing cataracts, a procedure that used to take at least 30 minutes he can now start and finish in 7! Ophthalmologists from around the world come on board to learn his technique of going into the eye and taking the cataract out!! I must confess I learned that I have no desire to work as an RN assisting with anything eyes, I was queasy for most of my time watching the various procedures on the eyes. There’s just something eerie about being awake and having scalpels cutting away and vacuums sucking at your eyes. Eeeek! But it was definitely something worth seeing! (even if it did cost me dinner)

After about an hour in with eye team I went into operating theater 1 and found myself staring at yet another eye… this one happened to be sitting on the surgeons’ tray with the eyelid, eyebrow and large tumor all still attached! Apparently this particular patient presented with a bulging right eye due to a tumor growing behind her eye and they had to remove her entire right eye. Over the next couple of hours I watched as the surgeons cut muscle away from the temporal area of the right side of her scalp and pulled the muscle down into her, now empty, eye socket to fill the void left from her eye being removed. It was one of the most fascinating surgeries I have ever seen and both of the attending surgeons were quick to answer any questions I had about the procedure and were both very kind.

Dr. Parker was the maxillofacial surgeon performing the surgery. He has served with Mercy Ships for 23 years and is recognized as one of the top, if not the #1, maxillofacial surgeon in the world!!! Surgeons from around the globe come to Mercy Ships to work with him and learn his techniques. When they were finished suturing up the eye I went to the tray with Dr. Parker and watched as he pulled apart and dissected the eye and the tumor and learned that he will have the tumor sent to the U.S. in a biohazard bag with a crew member that is departing back home! When biopsies are needed crewmembers carry the tissue back to the states and mail it to the lab that sends results back to the ship within a month! Pretty amazing to see what works to get the information they need to make the hospital function and thrive. As of October 16, 998 reconstructive surgeries have been performed on around 600 patients and an additional 261 general surgeries have been performed throughout the mission in Benin this year! Pretty amazing when you thing that each and every one of those peoples lives will be forever changed because every surgery here is such a drastic change for the patient and they can once again join society and not be looked upon as though they have been cursed.

For the next month surgeons, anesthetists, and nurses who specialize in gynecology and more specifically vesicovaginal fistulas have joined the crew onboard. Due to prolonged labors from a lack of healthcare availability these women have holes between their bladder and vagina and sometimes rectum and vagina and constantly leak urine and or feces. They are completely ostracized from society and often all family and friends leave them because they are always smelly and dirty and considered cursed. This is a condition that is rarely seen in the Western world because we have healthcare readily available and labor and delivery is not prolonged for 3-5 days as it can be here. These women have been brought on board and will have their fistulas closed up so they can return to the world whole and continue with a normal life. Before sending them back home Mercy Ships has a special ceremony where the women are given new African dresses to represent their new life and fresh beginning. I have adopted a VVF patient down on the ward and I am excited to get down there and spend time with her and be a part of loving on these women who have had to endure so much suffering and loneliness.

I am happy to report I have had the opportunity to extend my trip for another week… in just 3 short weeks my time with Mercy Ships will come to an end and I will head to Ethiopia to join my dad on an e3 campaign in the Northern part of the country. I was planning on heading home just in time for thanksgiving, but I have had an invitation to join a dear friend in the Middle East who is loving on the people there and teaching English as a second language to college students with the hopes of being light and salt in such a dark and hurting place. Seeing as Ethiopia is just a hop, skip and a jump away I couldn’t pass up the invitation to see their efforts first hand and I have extended my ticket another week. J I am so excited for this opportunity and pray that in my short time there I will be an encouragement to the believers who are living in such a different world where Christ is adamantly rejected and Christians are persecuted.

Please join me in praying for my last month abroad... that Christ would be glorified and evident through all of my efforts, for safe travel and good health to finish my time abroad strong! Thank you for all of the letters, e-mails and prayers!! love to you all...




grace & peace.

katie



*If you would like to financially support me in my journey to the Middle East send a check made out to GCU Alumni Association with my name in the memo line to:
Office of Spiritual Life
3300 W Camelback Rd
Phoenix, AZ -85017

You can transport anything with a Zimmy Jhan!

Bottles:


Furniture:




A refrigerator:



Baskets:


Children:




It doesn't take very long to notice the streets in Benin are unlike any other in the world. Not only are they filled with the normal traffic, merchants, pedestrians and everything else you can imagine... but "zimmy jhans" (pronounced Zimmy Johns) are everywhere. Zimmy's are basically motorcycles, but they are dirt cheap to get a ride on and you do not need a license to operate one... so you can imagine the craziness of the streets here. Mercy Ships strongly discourages anyone from using zimmys as they are very dangerous. One friend of mine put it this way.... Katie I want you to come back in peace, not pieces. :) I have only found myself forced to take a zimmy 2x since coming to Benin and am not going to make a habit of it... both times being because of time issues. But hey! I have to experience all of Benin, right?? One of the times there were 3 of us girls at the market and we hired 3 zimmys to bring us back and one of them ran out of gas en route to the ship, so chelsea had to jump off of one zimmy and ran to another that was sitting at the light with us and told him to follow us! Apparently he understood because he followed and we made it back safe and sound.

Other perils on the roads in Benin:

Ghanananana..... The self-proclaimed Promise Land

Day 2 of arriving on the ship I met an African, when I asked him where he was from he replied: "the promised land" to which I replied: "Israel?" I soon learned that Ghana is the self-proclaimed promise land of Western Africa. Over the next several weeks I was told many times that I needed to make it over to Ghana and witness firsthand the beauty of the promise land and at the end of september I had a chance to go! :)

I am standing in Togo waiting to be processed to enter the promised land, Ghana, behind me...



There were 13 of us who made the 11-hour car trek to Wli Waterfall in NorthEastern Ghana. It was SO refreshing to get out of Contonou into the mountains and fresh air. We left at 4 AM on Friday and were able to stop at a missionary hospital in Togo on the way that reminded me of the small hospital in Axum, Ethiopia that Ashley and I worked in back in 2007.... I have always heard that your sense of smell has the strongest link to memories and let me tell you when we walked into the pediatric ward I was taken back to that hospital in Axum from the smell of the unit, kind of interesting. But it was neat to meet the doctors working at the small hospital and see their passion to use their abilities to love the people of Togo and spread the gospel. Pretty amazing.
Street in Togo


Saturday we ventured out and hiked Wli waterfall, a feat that took us about 6 hours, but I have to confess it felt so good to sweat and be outside for an entire day... but it also reminded me how much work hiking can be! Took me back to my good 'ol Taurnhof days, with some tropical landscape and humidity to change it up a bit. :) We had a guide who used a machete to create a path for us in the brush and lead the way and at the end we got to swim in and under the waterfall!!! It was so awesome.



Sunday we found ourselves hiking yet again, this time to "the best caves in the world" at least that's what our tour guide said about them, I think I would have called them caverns before I called them caves, but it was a neat hike nonetheless, filled with ropes and LOTS of bats.

Bat attack!!! - This picture was taken right as a bat flew right at me in my face!!!! -


Funny come Monday I was so ready to be back "home" and it was the first time that I realized the ship really is starting to feel more and more like home.... a realization that was a little bittersweet because I am happy to say I feel like I have finally settled here, but at the same time it made me miss California and all the comfort that your real home brings even more.

Some more photos...

Our Fearless Guide to the waterfalls....


In the falls...