7/17/2010

So this week has been a little rough, but really good. We have been working on painting the building we’re renting, but the people that own it keep changing their minds about the colors and different things. They’re driving me crazy and making us double work. So we're waiting on the right paint to get here to finish.
Monday, my back/neck were hurting more than normal, so at our staff small group, I mentioned to Lucy that we should have prayer for anyone in physical pain. I think there were only 5 or 6 out of about 20 that were not in pain. Wednesday, I woke up in horrible pain. I lifted up my head to look at my clock and almost cried from the pain. I don’t know what caused it to flair up so bad, but I didn’t like it. I told a few people about it, but I didn’t want to be a baby about it, so I didn’t tell everyone about it. I said something at dinner about it and Volter (our amazing Brazilian chef) said I could have one of the pain reliever shots he has for his knee. I was going to have Kristen (an EMT, that has since gone back to Canada) inject me with it, but it was in Portuguese and she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. We have a PhotoGenX team here right now, and when some of them heard about this shot, they wouldn’t hear of it. They prayed for me and one of the guys got Matthew 11:28 for me. Which says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” I had started crying when I was being prayed for. When (boy) Dani read that, I started laughing. Everyone was wondering why I started laughing, and I said, “Remember this morning when (girl) Dani was looking up what our names mean and mine means ‘weary’?” I don’t know why it struck me as funny, but it did. I have been praying about why I still have this horrible pain, and it has been alleviated some. One of the PhotoGenX girls learned some chiropractic stuff so she’s been doing that on me and it’s helped. Also, when I told Lucy my pain level was a 12 on a scale of 1-10, she told me to take it easy for a few days. So I have been. There is a Swedish girl here til Thursday that knows how to give massages. We have not utilized this yet, but we will be. And Lucy said I’m on the top of the list. Sweet!!
I got to go with a team to a hospital to pray and give out bags of food this week. It was really cool. I hadn’t been to the hospital before. A lot of the patients are outside in tents because part of the hospital was damaged by the earthquake and they have a lot of patients. My group had Vogly as our translator, and like 3 or 4 more of us. We went to a tent that had a bunch of sick babies. It broke my heart. A lot of them had fevers, some heart problems, stomach problems and a few premies. The premies were so tiny!!! It made me cry. But then, another one of our staff, Amy, said that it gives her hope to see all those babies there getting medical care that they wouldn’t have had access to if the earthquake hadn’t happened, so that gave me hope for them as well.
Kristen had been working with the PhotoGenX team, but since she left, (girl) Dani and I are going to be tag-teaming them a little bit. That will help with me being able to get off base. I think I am going to one of the tent cities with them on Monday.
We did a feeding program on Friday for about 600 kids. That was pretty cool. Quite a few of us had to go earlier than needed because our lack of vehicles and drivers. I just walked around and played with kids most of the time. Vogly wanted to show me a little tent city that is at the end of the street that we were at. So I had him translate when needed. It was a pretty small one, but he said it is a lot better than it used to be because they used to have just sheet tents, but now they have actual tents.
Please pray that our vehicles would stop breaking and that we’d be blessed with another one and with more drivers. Also if you could continue to pray for my back I’d appreciate it!!!