God is even in the details

   So I thought that I would write a quick testimony of how God even cares about the trivial things in our lives. My two favorite fruits are not existent here in Ghana. I love fresh peaches and strawberries! I have missed them so much. We are able to sometimes get canned peaches or strawberry jam, but it's just not the same. Sometimes I convince myself that a good ripe mango is like a peach, but there is not any fruit here that is anything like a strawberry. I had been told that people are able to grow strawberries up in Burkina Faso, but we had not been able to get any until last week.
   We have many wonderful neighbors that God has brought to BMC. All of them hold a special place in our hearts. One such neighbor is a Belgian family that God brought here in September. They have had to go back and forth between here and their home in Burkina, but they have brought such joy and unity among all of us. The wife restarted the women's Bible study and the family began Sunday afternoon Ultimate Frisbee that gets many of us on campus out and interacting with each other. They were gone through out the month of February and were greatly missed. However, when they returned, they brought back around 7 kilos of strawberries for me (and my family):) Of course, we thanked them, quickly washed the strawberries with a soak in bleach, and consumed as many of the precious red fruits as I would allow. We cut up and froze most of the rest to save for special occasions and January birthdays. What a surprise and blessing.
    Just to top everything off (you know, whip cream for the strawberries), God has blessed us with amazing weather for a few days.  It is known to be hot and dry during the dry season. We had been having about 120F for a couple of weeks. The heat just drains you of all energy. Well, in the midst of dry season, God sent a couple of days of rain to cool things down a little bit.  We had no rain but clouds and temperatures in the 80s and 90s for those days. Yesterday was a beautiful day and the girls were actually asking to go outside!
   I know that the strawberries and weather are not eternal things, but just an evidence of how much our God loves us. How he is in the details of our everyday lives. He is not a far off God who does not have time for me and my silly concerns. He knows how much I like to eat strawberries and that they are not here in Ghana. He sent them to to me. He could have sent them right when we first arrived to Ghana, but He didn't. If He would have done it that way, I think they wouldn't have tasted as sweet and I would have missed the small but beautiful display of His love. How is God showing you how much He loves you?

 

Birthdays and volunteers

Our princesses

   January is always a busy month for us. Not only did we just finish celebrating Christmas, but then we turn around and have 2 birthdays. We are happy to announce that I have turned a year older and Rebekah is now 4 years old.  We enjoyed celebrating as a family and a small party with friends here in Ghana.The two princesses dressed up with their 

Rebekah's butterfly

sack races

Christmas gifts to celebrate Rebekah's birthday in style - with glittering crowns, shiny necklaces, and click-clack shoes. Rebekah enjoyed having people over, face painting, playing games and eating cake and ice cream. Rebekah wouldn't let us wash her face for 2 days, because she was so proud of the beautiful butterfly face. With the help of family and friends, we were able to attain enough strawberries to make the famous strawberry cake that we missed last year. Tim did a great job making the yummy cake! We are very grateful for all the friends we have to celebrate with here in Nalerigu. 

face painting at the party, thanks to the VanDingenen's

three-legged races

Rebekah's birthday cake

Rebekah and I celebrating together the day after the party

Rebekah opening presents

volunteers at Nakpanduri

Cahills with Dr. Jim

Cahills with Chelsea and David

  

            During the months of January and February, we have had quite a few volunteers here at BMC. We had the tail end of Drs. Shumpert and Dr Walter. We had several wonderful medical students, Curtis, Kristen, Jennifer, and Alex. We had a resident, Chelsea, and her husband, David. We also had a veteran volunteer, Dr. Jim Howard, return. Lastly, we have also had 3 German nurses working in the hospital. We enjoy meeting new people and love having familiar faces around. They have made these past 2 months a joy and much more pleasant for Tim to have the help in the hospital. Thank you for your help!

 

 As Tim mentioned on the last post, our time with World Medical Mission as Post-residents is drawing to a close at the end of April. We have been praying and have decided to return to Nalerigu as volunteers with World Medical Mission/The George Faile Foundation after a visit with our families. We will be around Ft Worth, Memphis and Knoxville during May and June. If any of you happen to be in the area and would like to see us, please let us know.

   Since I haven't been able to post many pictures, I thought that we would add a few pictures of us doing daily tasks, like going to buy bread, grinding wheat at the mill, girls playing. We also had a lot of home 'renovations' done this past month (aka we had to have a lot of plumbing work done). I am grateful for running water and toilets that flush!

Tim and Rebekah at Nakpanduri

My little stars all dressed up

the girls dressing up fancy for a pretend picnic

the guard helping with a guinea fowl gift

Our backyard dug up to fix plumbing

with kids at Aquiya's house (where we buy bread)

Different kids at Aquiya's house

with Heidi at a grinding mill

The grinding mill where I grind wheat

more time as princesses (they like to pretend to be Elsa and Anna)

getting ready for bed with dad

falling asleep in a laundry basket together

Merry Christmas and Happy 2016

   Merry Christmas to everyone! And Happy New Year! We are so blessed to be able to celebrate our Savior's birth along with friends and family. It's a wonderful time of the year to reflect on how much God loves us and God's amazing plan to rescue us. I hope that each of you had some time to sit in awe of God and praise Him. He is worthy!

  

  Our Christmas this year was a little busier than last year. We did celebrate in many of the same ways, and we added a couple more. We went again this year to First Baptist Church to give gifts to the widows. They sat quietly listening to Tim explaining why we celebrate Christmas, mostly through a translator. We are thankful for your support, so that we have the opportunity to share with these grateful women. The girls even enjoyed helping us put the rice and oil in bags and give them to the women. We love to get our girls involved in giving to those who need help.

   We also were able to go caroling again this year in the hospital on Christmas Eve. We were able to purchase some oranges to give out to the patients, their caregivers, and the nurses. We sang in each of the wards, in the outpatient clinic area, to the theatre staff, and to the guards at the front gate. It was wonderful to see that there were so many fewer patients who had to be in the hospital on Christmas this year. It was a joy to bring a little bit of truth and happiness to those who were in the hospital. After caroling, we all gathered together at our station meeting to eat, sing, and read the Christmas story from Luke 2. It was a great time of fellowship and worshiping God. 

   There were many of you who were so generous in sending us gifts for Christmas. Thank you! It was wonderful as a parent to have something special to give to your kids for Christmas. The girls truly enjoyed opening their stockings and Christmas gifts. Christmas morning is always so fun with little kids who are wide eyed with wonder and excitement. 

  

   We added some things to our Christmas from last year. We were able to go as a family and give a little something to the people who had to work the day shifts in the hospital. We wanted them to know that we were thankful for their work and to bring some cheer (who actually likes to work on Christmas day?). We also invited over all the families on the compound and volunteers for some fellowship and games in the afternoon. 

   For New Years Eve, we had station meeting (since it was a Thursday) with several visitors and volunteers. We were able to enjoy a bonfire, ice cream, and a few fireworks. We worshiped our Creator, finished reading through the accounts of Jesus’ birth in the New Testament and spent some time in prayer. I understand that many stayed awake to ring in the new year, but we brought our two little ones home early to get some rest. It was good to spend a little time reflecting back on where God has taken us the past year or so and how we are learning to depend more on Him. We do not know where God will be taking us this next year, but we are anticipating that it will make us love and trust Him more. Please be praying for us as our commitment with the Post Residency Program through Samaritan's Purse will finish in April. We are waiting for God's guidance on where He is calling us next, but it will likely be here in Ghana for at least a little while longer.

      

  

Thanksgiving 2015

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!-- and sorry the post is a few days late!
We wanted to share about some of the things that we are thankful for:

- first and foremost, our Savior and God's Son, Jesus Christ, coming to the earth to die on the cross for our sins, resurrecting to life, and giving us the hope of eternal life through belief in Him
- the privilege, through faith in Jesus, to come blameless in prayer before a holy God because of what Jesus did on the cross (2 Corinthians 5: "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.")
- Squanto (the Indian that helped the pilgrims- amazing background story of Squanto: http://www.joyfulheart.com/thanksgiving/squanto.htm)
- our family and friends back home that love, support, and pray for us
- our friends here in Ghana
- our girls (just celebrated Abigail's 2nd birthday and about to celebrate Rebekah's 4th) growing well
- our health
- electricity and running water (both of which were out for a period of hours on the day before Thanksgiving :)
- ceiling fans that help it not feel quite so hot
- the opportunity to serve the people of northern Ghana at Baptist Medical Centre for the past 1.5 years
- the extra doctors that we have now at BMC (3 long-term Ghanaian medical officers, a Belgian general practitioner, an American general surgeon, as well as US volunteers that sacrifice time with family over the holidays to be here to help us out at the hospital)
- Samaritan's Purse and World Medical Mission for supporting us and making it possible for us to serve at BMC
- turkeys, cornbread dressing, sweet potato pie, etc.
- and many more!

                                                   

                                                         Thanksgiving night at BMC          
        Countries represented in this photo: Belgium/Burkina Faso, Ghana, Germany, and the US

The Wilderness

   I will start off by saying that we serve a good God who loves us dearly. I have known for many years that God wanted me to serve Him on the mission field. That did not change when I entered medical school, got married, or had children. I still knew that was what God had for me and my family. It has been exciting to watch how God has brought our family here to Nalerigu to serve Him. I have to admit that I did have an image in my mind of what things would be like for us here. Tim and I had been here once before for a month, so I had seen the town and ‘knew what to expect’. We were so excited when we arrived. It was almost like having a baby, waiting and anticipating what is to come and being overjoyed when it arrives. Then the reality sets in. You have to get up all hours of the night to feed and change the baby. You need to make dinner, but she keeps crying every time you put her down. You just changed your clothes and fixed your hair to go somewhere, and he spits up all over you. Well, that is a little bit like how things have been for me here. I know that God has brought us here and I know that it is a blessing to be here, but sometimes I have to ask why. Why did you bring us here to this wilderness?

   A large part of our first year has been filled with ups and downs and frustrations to the point of complete exhaustion. I have often felt like I was in a physical as well as spiritual wilderness. At times, it felt like God brought us here and just dropped us off. I would look for God and couldn’t seem to find Him. Things just seemed to sink more into a valley of wilderness. We don’t know the language; we don’t have many friends; we don’t understand the culture; we can’t find a church to be a part of; Tim seems to be working all the time; the girls have a talent for finding new ways to frustrate me…. Finally, I see it through all the distractions… what God was doing. He is bringing me into the wilderness for me to learn more about Him. He has brought out ugly character flaws to purify them. He has shown me His faithfulness in walking with me and giving me strength through this time. He loves me as I am, despite all this ugliness, because of Jesus. It is similar to the Israelites going through the wilderness on their way to the promised land.

   These times of wilderness can be seen as unpleasant when we focus on our pain or losses. Or we can choose to focus on the fact that we will know and trust Him more at the end and find great joy in spite of our circumstances. I will not say that I have weathered this wilderness well or that I am completely out of this time of learning, but I can say that I am grateful that He has brought me here. We serve a good God who loves us more than we can understand.

Visit to Paga's Chief Crocodile Pond. You may be able to tell that Rebekah and I are pretty unsure of all of this.
 And yes, the crocodile is alive and awake and others are directly behind us in the water pacing back and forth as they eye their next lunch.