ali's african adventures

The ladies danced today.

To you, that might not mean much. It might conjure up images of women in a club, dressed far too scantily for their own good, gyrating to repetitive beats from over-sized speakers. Here, it is so much different and so much more.

Our ladies are the ones forgotten. I flip through their charts and see their pain in black and white on their screening forms. When was the pregnancy? The answers vary. Five years ago. Seven. Fifteen. The baby? Stillborn. Stillborn. Died within one week. Very seldom is alive circled, and these women have carried their sorrow like a cross pressing heavy on their shoulders. Do you leak urine constantly? Yes. Yes. Yes. And with each yes, another reason to stay hidden, another board across the window and so daylight barely reaches their souls.

But today they danced.

Five of them gathered in an empty ward, a tray of makeup on a bed in the corner. Each woman donned a brand-new gown, the fabric still stiff with wax, the colours vibrant against their dark skin. Around their necks handmade necklaces, jewelry crafted while those of us not cursed to live apart whispered words of hope to their upturned hearts. Loving hands wrapped and re-wrapped headdresses, fabric formed into peaks that nearly brushed the low ceilings of Deck Three when they stood to admire themselves.

One by one, we held up the mirror. One by one, the women gazed into it, seeing, maybe for the first time in five, seven, fifteen years, their own beauty. Eyes bright with hope. New cloth unstained with urine. The chairs dry under their legs as they sat and stared.

I didn't have a chance to sit in B Ward while they danced, while they told their stories of joy and triumph. But I was there while they prepared. I was there in the quiet moments while they breathed deep and composed themselves before taking the stage in front of nurses and doctors and sisters still in bed, catheter tubing running from beneath blankets, hope growing with each hour that passes dry.

I was there. I felt the grip of arms thrown around my neck, the softness of freshly-combed hair against my cheek. I saw the smiles, first hesitant, but gaining strength the longer they looked at themselves, transformed. I shared in their joy and could not begin to understand the pain that made it so unbearably sweet.

For all of this, I count myself blessed among women.

Yesterday, the Husband of Joy was installed as Chief Electrician here on the ship, the job he'll be doing until the end of the outreach here in Togo. When he came to the ship, he had never been trained as an electrician. Over the last two years, he's learned and grown and now he's got three stripes on his epaulets. I don't know if I could be any prouder of him.




Today is his birthday, and I keep thinking about all the birthdays we're going to spend together. About all the adventures we have left to live until we're old and grey, and just thinking about being old and grey with him is like hot tea on a snowy afternoon.

Not that I really remember snow.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I love this guy, and I figured I'd mention it.


Also, I'd like to mention just how encouraged I've been by all of you. Your comments and e-mails and verses shared have honestly meant the world to me right now, and I find myself filled with something that feels a lot like peace.

Two days down, eight months and twenty-eight days to go!

I wasn't sure I wanted today to come. It's been hanging over my head for the last few weeks, ever since my routine skin test for tuberculosis came up positive. After a clear chest x-ray, it was determined that I've been exposed somewhere over the course of the last couple years here, but that the disease is currently in it's latent form. Which means I'm not a risk to anyone else, I'm not sick, but I have to start treatment to prevent it from switching to the active form someday down the road. Like, say, if I were to get pregnant. Which, while not in the immediate plans, is something I'd very much like to do someday. (Ever since about a week after the HoJ and I started dating and he turned to me up on Deck Seven and said, You know, hypothetically speaking? Our kids would be beautiful.)

I've been wandering around and cracking jokes and basically making light of it all, but somewhere deep down I've been angry at the whole situation. As if it wasn't enough that I got hepatitis, that the hepatitis went away, inexplicably came back and then went away again, a series of events that has left me completely unable to relax my guard when it comes to my health. But now, the fact that I live here in Africa (albeit behind the hull of a big, steel ship) means that I've been handed this, too.

And it's not like it's a huge deal. Yes, it's going to be annoying to remember to take my medication every day for the next nine months. Yes, I'm going to miss having a beer with my dad when I go home at Christmas. Yes, it's scary to realize that if I do get pregnant before my treatment is finished, there are huge risks to me and the baby. But at the end of the day, I'm talking about two little pills each night before bed. Pills that I can afford, given to me by a doctor I can visit if I have any questions. I'm so much better off than the vast majority of the world when it comes to my health.

Which is why I hadn't told anyone that I was scared. That I've been lying awake at night worrying about a future hypothetical baby. That I feel like I can't trust my own body anymore. The practical side of me tells myself to suck it up. To stop whining and take the pills and everything will be fine.

The other side, the side that doesn't let me sleep at night? That's the one that starts to wonder what life would have been like if I hadn't quit my job and come to live on a ship off the coast of West Africa. I think about 2008 and how I wouldn't have felt sick the entire time. I think of the money spent on expensive lab tests that would have been covered by insurance if I still had a job with benefits. And sometimes I find myself wondering if it would have been better if I'd never come.

That thought lasts no more than a fraction of a second before I think of a hundred stories that I would never have lived had I never come. I think of Aissa and Wasti and Maomai and Baby Greg and Baby Hubie and a thousand more. I've borne witness to the depths of suffering and the extremes of joy, and I've done it, more often than not, with a little brown baby strapped to my back with a length of cloth.

If hepatitis and tuberculosis are the only price I've had to pay to be a part of all that, it's a small sacrifice indeed.

Now just tell that to the side of me that keeps the other side awake at night.


(The first photo was taken by Liz Cantu, the second by Grace Berry.)

It's funny, really, that I thought moving to D Ward would get me further away from the VVF ladies. Like I said, it's not that I dislike them or anything, it's just that I'm not the best at caring for them; little people are more my thing. So just imagine my surprise when the sheet of paper on my desk this morning listed sixteen of those women, all crammed into C Ward, the little-used ten-bed ward which also falls under the domain of the D Ward charge nurse. Sixteen, plus a caregiver and two babies; the ladies were sleeping in the AFM version of bunk beds, one on top, another on the mattress underneath.

The first thing you notice when you walk onto a ward full of pre-operative VVF women isn't that the place is inevitably overflowing with bags and blue pads and bathrobes. It's the smell. It hits you a little like a slap in the face, the stale urine flowing from broken ones, and it's impossible not to notice it. But there's more; there's always so much more when it comes to these women.

I waltzed through the room with a bucket of toothbrushes and couple of tubes of toothpaste and was greeted with smiles and handshakes and a shy arm around my waist as I passed between the beds. I checked name badges and made notes of surgery dates, realizing with a thrill of joy that every woman in the ward had been scheduled. In talking with the coordinator later, I learned that all but three or four of the women who came to screening yesterday received a date for surgery.

Fifty-five women were scheduled. It seemed crazy to us when we prayed it, but we've been asking God to send only the ladies who needed surgery to us. And that's exactly what He did. So when I wandered through C Ward, all I saw was hope. Not a single downcast face, just pure, unadulterated hope shining from their eyes as they held out their hands for a toothbrush.

We make such a big deal about the VVF ladies around here, praying and planning and waiting for their arrival. We use dedicated nurses and a dedicated ward and everything about their care is specialized. Which, at the end of the day, makes so much sense to me.

These women have been given nothing by the world. They have spent, some of them, entire lifetimes shut out of society, unable to go out in public because of the telltale wetness they leave behind. They have been devastated in every sense of the word. And then they come to us, and we sing them welcome, providing soft mattresses and loving arms to help them into bed. We look them in their eyes and tell them of Love, and they respond with the joy I saw this morning when I handed out toothbrushes.

So maybe I like them after all.

Today marks the beginning of a new era down in the hospital. Somehow, three days after the Buddy System came into play, I no longer get to benefit from it. Which is okay, because I've exchanged the absolute insanity of A and B Wards for the relative calm of D Ward. With the outreach half over, Hannah and I have agreed to swap turf for the rest of the time here in Togo.

This might have something to do with the fact that the VVF ladies are here again. Don't get me wrong; I love the women, but at the end of the day I'm a pediatric nurse. Which means that I'm not terribly well-suited to wards entirely full of adults. I need a healthy dose of kiddos in my life, and right now D Ward is the best place to get that.

All that being said, today felt weird. Every time I picked up the phone, I answered with A Ward, this is Ali! Hannah did the same thing up in A Ward, being totally convinced she was still in D, and everyone that walked through the door did a complete double-take when it was me sitting at the desk. (True story; the almost-falling-over was actually the first time I've ever seen Dr. Gary overreact to anything.) Things were just a little strange.

It might have had something to do with the fact that we were playing musical patients all day long, with only three patients in D Ward ending up in the same beds they were sleeping in last night. Down the hall, the drums pounded as the VVF ladies who were here to be screened sang out their hope, and there was a constant shuffle between the ship and the Hospitality Centre as we tried to fit far too many patients into far too few beds.

Through it all one thing kept running through my mind. I miss my babies. It's not that there aren't cute kiddos on D Ward, it's just that I don't know them like I know Sammy and Tani and Abel. So when I led a parade of patients out to the dock to wait for the driver to take them to the Centre, I was more than excited to see Aissa out there, too.

She caught sight of me and took off running towards me, throwing herself into my arms with her typical abandon, busy hands pulling at my keys and pens, proclaiming her love over and over, sounding for all the world like a little old Italian man. (She's mastered the v sound, so just imagine the guy behind the counter in a pizzeria, throwing up the dough and shouting, I love you! at the top of his lungs and you'll kind of get the idea.) Once we got her on the ship, she told Sarah that she wanted to see her old home, so I brought her into A Ward. A chorus of cheers greeted her, and she threw her arms out wide, taking up a stance in the middle of the floor that would probably have been better suited to a Broadway show.

Once we finally managed to corral her back into the post-op clinic, it was to be greeted by the news that our little Madam is going home on Thursday. While we entertained each other by throwing a magnetic cow toy at the ceiling, (much funnier than you might think, if her shrieks of laughter were any indication) the nurse printed out her final papers, officially releasing her from our care. I took her hand and we headed back down the hall towards the stairs that lead to the gangway, and I felt a suspicious knot in my chest.

I knelt down one last time before I let her go, and felt her arms around my neck. I love you, Aissa, I told her, and she pressed her brand-new cheek to mine before turning to give me a kiss. I love love love you, she told me, and then headed up the stairs, up to the promise of new life.

Everything changed today. I'm in charge in a new ward with new patients at the beginning of a new block of surgery. There are three ladies in their beds in B Ward right now who are going to start over tomorrow, who are going to be given the chance to come back into society with the rest of us. So is my sobaajo, my little friend Aissa.

I wanted to wait an extra day before I blogged about something that's come to the wards. I wanted to make sure I wasn't living in some kind of crazy dream on Wednesday, but since today was pretty much the same, I think it's safe to announce.

Folks, we've got a Buddy System.

I'm fairly sure you're sitting there with eyebrows crinkled in confusion, so please, allow me to explain. When I stepped into my current position (assistant ward supervisor), I was stepping into some very large and very capable shoes. I'm still not sure how she did it, but Laura, the nurse in whose chair I now sit, managed A and B Wards every day shift, making sure the nurses were okay, running interference with surgeons, writing notes and making appointments and dousing the myriad fires that crop up every single day. And she managed it with this calm grace that I have never been able to duplicate. I've chosen a more just tell jokes and everyone will think it's okay style, which works on a lot of fronts, but often leaves me with one glaring problem; it's not always okay.

Because when there are forty patients and almost as many caregivers and new infections are cropping up every day and new nurses are coming up the gangway every night and there just aren't enough beds because the ceilings are too low to stack them and it turns out the translators don't really speak English? When that happens, sometimes a silly face just doesn't cut it. Sometimes I don't have enough time to pee, let alone come alongside a new nurse when she's struggling. Sometimes I eat peanut butter and jelly three days in a row because there's no way to get to the dining room while the food lines are still open. Sometimes I have to choose which charts I have time to write in.

Sometimes I'm not a very good charge nurse.

However, as of Wednesday, I'm a good charge nurse again, because now we have the Buddy System. In the Buddy System, I'm only in charge of twenty of those forty patients. Someone else is next door with her very own clipboard, watching over the other twenty. And my trusty other half, Hannah (the other assistant supervisor) is at the other end of the hall presiding over her twenty or so.

It's a measure of how well the system is working when I tell you that I have time during the day to stop and marvel just how well the system is working! The B Ward Buddy and I pass each other in the hall, smiles broad as we boast of our latest achievements.

You know, it's nine thirty and I've already made my post-op appointments.
Yeah? Well, I've made my appointments and written them in the book!
Nice, mine aren't in the book yet because I was writing all my orders.
All of them?
Yeah, I wrote in everyone's chart. Even the one we didn't do anything with!

And so it goes. With a Buddy always a phone call away in the next ward over, my days have become at least ten times more enjoyable.

For the nurse who thinks jokes fix everything, that's saying something.

In the first quiet moment of a new shift this morning, I noticed a small photo sitting on the computer in front of me. Without thinking, I picked up the slip of paper and half-turned to offer it to the girl I was so sure would be standing just behind my chair, waiting for her first job of the day.

Instead, my hand hung in the air for just a moment, unsure, until I remembered that Aissa wasn't on the ward anymore. She wasn't going to be hanging all over me while I tried to do my work, wasn't going to provide me endless moments of amusement by parroting back the words we teach her, wasn't going to be looking up to me, bright-eyed, to exclaim in wonder over her latest artwork creation. She's better now, and so she's not in the hospital anymore.

This morning, that victory felt a little bittersweet. I realize how quickly I grow accustomed to any constant in this place that is defined by change. Aissa has been our constant for over a month, and things felt out of place without her today.

Until I handed a new sheet of stickers to another little girl, who grabbed them from my hand and then grabbed my arm to make sure I was listening while she shouted with her newly reconstructed lip.

I love you!

And so it goes. Aissa leaves us, only to be replaced by Tani. Each one that goes will have another in their bed before nightfall and we will start all over again. Teaching, soothing, playing, laughing, crying, dancing.

Loving.

These are our constants.

If this is Monday, then I want nothing to do with the rest of the week. According to the rest of the nurses, this week has nothing on the last one, so it seems that I did, in fact, choose the best time to take a vacation; I just wish the palm trees and ocean breezes didn't seem quite so far away.

It all came down to simple mathematics, really. At the start of the day we had zero empty beds. By ten o'clock, we had found a total of five that could be discharged. There were eighteen in the admissions tent. For those of you not following, that's thirteen patients who were going to be sleeping on the dock if we didn't figure something out.

So figure we did. We sat in what should, by all rights, be a fifteen minute meeting for an hour and a half. We made deals and swapped people around and pulled coordinators away from their coordinating to consult, and by the end of it all we had managed to find space for every single patient. Provided two didn't show up, which we were pretty much counting on, since it was raining and over here, no one really likes to go anywhere in the rain. (Even, strangely enough, to get a free surgery. But I digress.)

One of those discharges was Aissa, and it broke my heart just a little to say goodbye to her. By seven thirty this morning, she was draped over my lap, gesturing to my iPod and holding the speaker to her ear to hear Audrey that much better. We hung out for most of the morning, and I got to hear all the new words she's learned this past week. This one! Cup! Ballooo! (She hasn't seemed to master the last n on that one, and usually doesn't even go for the word; sign language is more her thing.)

When it came time for rounds, we were near her bed for a while, hashing out the details of her transfer to the Hospitality Centre. When the crowd moved on and the doctors all left, Beth and I headed back to Aissa's corner. I pulled at the tape holding the end of her bandage, and she looked up at me with bright eyes. I nodded, and she reached up to start unwinding the gauze. A little at a time, she unwrapped her face until the last pieces of tape were removed. She circled her finger around her head again, asking me if I'd be the one to place the new bandage, and when I shook my head, her smile started to grow.

Little by little, with the help of Sarah, we explained it all to her. That she'd be going to a new place to stay, a place where she can go outside whenever she wants. That she doesn't need the bandage anymore. That she can eat whatever she wants now. She can eat rice, the one thing she's been craving for the last twenty-four days.

And then I taught her one more sentence. And when she headed out the door she shouted it us all of us.

I'm beautiful!

Aissa has a new face and a new life ahead of her. And for the rest of the day, when things continued to teeter on the edge of something that very much resembled chaos, I just remembered her little voice chirping back at me.

I'm beautiful.

Beautiful.

It seems only appropriate that this past week was one of the busiest I can remember. It's like everything around here was conspiring to make me absolutely need a vacation, as I would fall absolutely exhausted into my bed every night not too long after dinner.

Thankfully, a vacation is exactly what I'm going to get.

Tomorrow the HoJ and I celebrate our first anniversary. I can't imagine where the months have gone, but at the same time it feels like we've been married forever. He fits me, this man, fills up all the spots in my heart where I'm not whole, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather have by my side on this crazy adventure.

And speaking of adventure, we're going to have one this week. We leave tomorrow to head to Ghana where we'll spend time visiting friends and relaxing at a hotel that bears no resemblance to a huge, steel box. We're going to hear wind and waves and rain on the roof. And I'm going to try my hardest not to think about the hospital.

That last one is going to be somewhat difficult. I stopped by A Ward earlier today to answer a question and almost had the breath knocked out of me by the force of Aissa's hug. She wrapped herself around my legs, squeezing as hard as she could, and when I bent down she threw her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. She lifted up her dress and pointed to the place on her leg where her dressing was coming undone for the thousandth time, and I peeked underneath the peeling tape to see fresh, new skin already starting to turn brown as it healed.

It's going to be hard to stop myself from thinking of her while I'm gone, knowing all the time that she's getting closer and closer to leaving us, her future as bright as her eyes when she grins up and me and professes her love.

I'll do my best, and I'll see you all on the other side of next week.

I know I talked about Audrey yesterday, but I have to mention her again, because she inadvertently ended up causing what might have been my favourite part of this entire week.

She wrote me an e-mail today, and one part of it rang so true with my experience here.

Man bears within himself a dignity he cannot lose, for he is created in the image of God. We all share this dignity, regardless of religion, race, or creed, and so we shelter one another, seeing Christ in every woman and every man.

I've thought this so many times before, just not in such simplicity. But it's so true. This afternoon, amidst the clamor of twenty patients, nineteen caregivers, three extra babies, and a whole lot of nurses, I realized all over again just how relevant those words are to our life here. We are the shelter for these kids; the wards are a sanctuary where, maybe for the first time, they can run and play and not worry about anyone laughing at them. No one shies away because the kid in the next bed over had her nose and ear and eye burned off in a fire. They just pass over the crayons and hold up their own bandaged limbs for inspection, because really, we're all broken, aren't we?

And then I got to the part where Audrey told me what to say to Aissa, who's finally been having a couple of spectacularly good days after a couple of spectacularly horrible ones. I pulled her onto my lap and delivered the message on the screen. Audrey says 'Hi.' Also, she says, 'I love you.' After thinking about that for a moment, Aissa turned to where she could look at me through her good eye, pointed right at my heart and shouted back at me at the top of her lungs.

I LUB you!

And then she rested her bandaged cheek on my chest, put her arms around me and said it again, quieter this time. I lub, lub, lub you. I lub you, while my heart threatened to burst into a thousand pieces and go spinning into every corner of the ward.

She has no idea what she's saying yet, but I've learned how to say it in Fulfulde, and so we're going to teach her the cry of all our hearts. We're going to tell anyone who will listen.

We love you, each one of you who comes up our gangway with all your hurts and all your fears. We see the image of God in your scarred faces. We see the Carpenter hands of Christ in your twisted fingers, His feet in your bent ones. We love you and we want to throw our arms around you and let that love break through your pain. We want to shelter you here.

We're going to tell them all.

It's Wednesday, and it feels like a week from next Thursday. The wards are full; every bed is occupied and A Ward is populated almost solely with children, which means the body count is nearing its maximum again. I've been running from the moment I wake up until the well after the end of each shift with hardly time to grab a bite to eat. (It's true; one of the new nurses, who's never known me when things are slow, saw me making a grilled cheese today and started laughing. But I thought you just lived on love and air!)

I know I wrote about O'Brien and Maomai yesterday, but truth be told, there hasn't really been much time to process everything. It feels like one thing after another since this outreach has started, and I just haven't found the space to clear my head and think it all through. This past week, though, I heard a song for the first time that speaks more deeply into my heart right now than anything else has.

My best friend forever from childhood, Audrey Assad, just finished recording her first full-length album. A preview of three songs will be on iTunes May 11th, the full album will come out July 13th, and I'm telling you this in detail because you're going to want to go download it the minute it's available. She sent a sneak preview to me here on the ship, and I've been playing it nonstop since it arrived. I think it's a testament to her music when I tell you that the second Aissa hears Audrey's voice, she stops screaming, runs to my desk, and starts to dance.

At any rate, one of the songs is called Show Me, and the first time I heard it I sat at my desk with tears just running down my face because it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Because sometimes we win. Sometimes there are miracles and babies are snatched back from the very edge of death. Sometimes I have victory in my shining eyes. Sometimes I'm the star set before the morning.

But sometimes those babies go back to Jesus, and I need to just cry. To simply be and know that there's a way forward, even though the path before me is anything but clear. It's like, for the first time, I feel like I have permission to fall apart. And, strangely enough, I find that I don't need to. Because I know that God will stay closer to me than my own ragged breath catching in my chest.

It's like I'm getting a glimpse of this deeper beauty, grasping at the edge of a truth as deep as time. It doesn't matter if tragedy finds me steady and unmoving or if it knocks me flat on my back; it won't change anything about Him. I'm wrestling with angels and at the same time knowing that the fight has already been won and I can just rest. Knowing that whichever path I choose, He'll be right there.

And He won't love me any less if I cry.

Show Me (Audrey Assad)

You could plant me like a tree beside a river.
You could tangle me in soil and let my roots run wild,
And I would blossom like a flower in the desert.
But for now, just let me cry.

You could raise me like a banner in the battle,
Put victory like fire behind my shining eyes,
And I would drift like fallen snow over the embers.
But for now just let me lie.

Bind up these broken bones.
Mercy, bend and breathe me back to life,
But not before You show me how to die.

Set me like a star before the morning,
Like a song that steals the darkness from a world asleep,
And I'll illuminate the path you've laid before me.
But for now just let me be.

Bind up these broken bones.
Mercy, bend and breathe me back to life,
But not before You show me how to die.
No, not before You show me how to die.

So let me go like a leaf upon the water.
Let me brave the wild currents flowing to the sea,
And I will disappear into a deeper beauty.
But for now, just stay with me.

God, for now, just stay with me.

(Photos by d'art photographie and Christina Lafferty Photography.)

I'm sad right now. O'Brien's going has left a bigger hurt in my heart than I thought it would at first. I keep thinking about him, about his poor, broken mama going home with empty arms. I can't stop replaying those last few moments of his life while he slipped away and we just watched him go. I still have the photos of him on my computer, and I keep stumbling across them and a wave of pain just washes over me again.

And then yesterday. I heard my name shrieked from the ward where they were doing a surgical screening, and I stuck my head in to see Antoinette, a patient from last year in Benin. I sat down to talk with them, as far as we can talk with my few words in Fon and her few words in French. We hadn't been there long when mama beckoned over a translator. We usually muddle along just fine without one, so I wondered what she needed to tell me.

She spoke a short sentence or two, and the translator turned to me with no preamble, nothing to prepare my poor, bruised heart. She says that baby from last year died. I think the one named Maomai? No explanation, no other information. Just a baby who was fat and happy and smiling in my arms the last time I saw her, and now for some unknown reason, has died.

I don't even really know what to write. I'm sad and I'm discouraged, and I can't see my way forward through all this. I know I won't stop loving; that's not an option. But if loving means I get hurt like this, I have to be honest - it's hard. It's hard to know that giving my heart to a baby here in West Africa means there's something like a thirteen percent chance of that child dying before it reaches its fifth birthday. (To put it in perspective, in the States, it's more like 0.78 percent. Not even close.)

How can I love in the face of all that? How can I just open up my heart and invite the pain that's almost certain to come?

I guess it's because Maurius went home yesterday. Fat and happy and smiling in his mama's arms, and before he went, we stood in a circle and we prayed over him. Prayed that he would be the one to prove all those statistics wrong. God, not another Maomai. Not another O'Brien. Let this one live. Let him live.

Last night as I was falling asleep, I saw an image of an old man, sitting on a wooden bench, children scattered at his feet, asking him for their favourite story. And so Old Man Maurius smiles and tells them the story all over again, the one where God saves his life and he grows up fat and happy, smiling and holding his grandchildren in his arms.

I don't know if that's really what God has in store for Maurius or if it's just the cry of my own selfish heart that can't bear to hear more bad news. I do know that it's what He wants for Maurius, for each one of these precious children of His. And I know that He's entrusted me the task of loving them while they're here.

So I guess I won't be stopping any time soon.

We have a winner!


Congratulations to Kara! Check your e-mail and we'll figure out a way to get it from here to there. Kara is halfway through an RN program, and is thinking of coming to serve in Africa some day. I pray this necklace will remind her of her heart's desire. Who knows; maybe our paths will cross as we serve on this beautiful continent.

I needed something fun like this today. Let's do it again soon, shall we?