ali's african adventures

Today is a sad day around these parts. I know I've tried to talk a big game and pretend like I'm good with constant change and people leaving, but I said all that before I realized just how hard this summer was going to be. There's a reason I've been silent; squeezing every last ounce of love out of the last few days with a lot of dear friends just hasn't left much time for blogging.

Over the past week we've seen a real changing of the guard. Maybe being home last summer with Zoe was enough to make me forget just how much the community changes during shipyard, but I never remember it being this drastic. One by one, friends are heading for the airport, back to lives and families across the globe, and whether it's for vacation or for forever, it's been a long series of brutal goodbyes.

Today is going to be the hardest one.

Becca and I have known each other since Benin. (That's how you measure time around here. Not in years but in countries. We met in Togo. The first one, you say, and everyone knows it was sometime in the first half of 2010.) We've worked together in the hospital and shared our love of all things pediatric. We lived through our pregnancies together, due just three days apart with our firstborn daughters. We've spent the last six months muddling through the crazy joy of raising infants on a ship, and at 4AM tomorrow, she and her husband and Zoe's best friend will join the ranks of the leavers.

I'm finding it impossible to put into words what it's meant to me to have her by my side for this part of the journey. Mamahood is hard. There's no denying that. It's relentless and exhausting and frightening, and it's not something I recommend doing alone. It's also the most wonderful, joyful, awe-inspiring thing I've ever been a part of. Also not things you want to experience alone.

Becca has been my cheerleader on days when I was too tired to get out of bed. She's listened to me complain and offered a shoulder to cry on when it felt like the baby year would never, ever end. She loves my daughter and rejoiced with me over Zoe's first steps, the first time she ate food, the first time she slept through the night. She's the guaranteed smile-getter and my number one baby wrangler for photo shoots.

And it's not just Becca's friendship that's been so sweet. Our girls light up when we bring them into the same room, crawling as fast as they can to get near each other. Zoe having a bad day? Go visit Hailey and all is forgiven. We joked when they were first born that they'd be best friends; it turns out that's exactly what's happened.

As they prepare to leave, my heart is heavy, knowing that Zoe won't have a single memory of these precious days with her first friend. We'll remember it for them, though. The Deck Seven play dates and market walks and trips to the park. The Saturday afternoon football watching and matching outfit photo shoots and pool parties in the hot, African sunshine.

These little girls have a lot of life left to live, and my prayer as Hailey goes is that all their friendships will be this sweet. I'm already looking forward to the next time that we see each other, and in the meantime, I'm considering getting this printed big enough to paper our walls with, just to make sure Zoe never forgets.



(There's too much cuteness there to fit in this blog post; you can click here to see the full-size version. Be warned: it's huge. Ship people, don't even bother.)

I've always laughed at the Husband of Joy when he claimed to be impervious to culture shock. Before meeting him, I'd always been completely undone by the abrupt shift in my world when I stepped onto unfamiliar streets in foreign places.

I so vividly remember the first time I sailed from West Africa to the Canary Islands. The shock of being back in the developed world after ten months in Liberia was almost too much for me. I can still conjure up the feeling of standing in the middle of the supermarket, overwhelmed by the vast number of choices presented to me in the yogurt aisle.

When we sailed into port in Las Palmas and were granted shore leave a few days ago, I suddenly understood what he's been talking about all these years. Maybe he's rubbing off on me, or maybe too much has happened between then and now, but I'm pretty sure I'm immune now, too.

I've travelled the circumference of the globe, visiting every continent except for Antarctica. I've ridden elephants in Thailand, ostriches in South Africa, and a water buffalo in India. I've camped under the stars in the middle of the Zambezi River, walked along the Great Wall, and spent enough time in South America that the signs and labels and passing conversations here aren't entirely unintelligible, and so this place feels as familiar as the streets of Conakry or the Amazon River or a playground in Scotch Plains despite the fact that I'd never set foot on this island before Thursday.

Which is to say that it feels everything and nothing like home.

My dear friend Joey recently wrote a song for Zoe that's been playing on repeat in our cabin ever since he sent it to me, and there's one line that I just can't get out of my head.

You'll have a travelling soul before you're five years old.

My own life started with much more stability before I pulled up anchor and set out on these wild adventures, but after nearly thirty years and as many countries, I know how precious such a soul is. As Zoe gets older, closer to making memories, I wonder sometimes about whether we're doing the right thing by raising her on the ocean. Am I making her miss out on something vital with this constant moving from place to place? Will she be able to find her bearings with the ever-shifting mosaic of friends and faces on board? Will her sea legs be enough to support her if we ever find ourselves back on land?

But I want her to know the thrill of discovering a new place, the hunger for what's around the next corner or up the next street. I want her to know what the sunrise looks like over the ocean and how the air smells in the jungle and how it feels to be lost in the crush of a train platform in India at rush hour. I want her to see beauty in every stranger that walks past her and hear music in every language they speak.

I want her to find her home wherever her feet touch the ground.

So far, it seems, she's doing just that.

There's a tiny star tattooed on the top of my foot, a reminder of the places I've felt closest to God in my life. Summer nights on the beach in PEI, laying out on the soccer field at camp during meteor showers, a hilltop in the Zambian bush where you could see your shadow in the silver light. There's something about the stars that brings me to my knees more than anything else in this world.

So last night, in the wee hours of the morning when I had finished feeding Zoe, I tucked her back into bed, turned on the monitor for Phil, and found a sweatshirt and shoes for myself. Feeling a little bit like a teenager sneaking out her bedroom window, I left our cabin and made my way up to Deck Eight where I settled down with my back to a container under the upturned bowl of the sky.

The stars have always spoken love to me. They're as much a promise to me as any rainbow, a shining map in the darkness of the night when nothing else can show me the way home. In the vast symphony of creation, they're given just six quiet words, an afterthought, really. And He made the stars also. The Milky Way, smeared across the blackness, hundreds of billions of stars in that one long smudge? He made that also.

There's just something about seeing millions and billions of something so beautiful, knowing that one would have been enough, that makes me realize how much He delights in delighting us.

I sat there underneath them, listening to the wind and the hum of the engines, talking to God like He was sitting right next to me on the salt-crusted deck. It was a precious half hour, stolen from the busyness of raising a baby and the all-consuming quest for sleep.

I'd like to see a shooting star, I told Him. Or maybe I should just head inside. Right above me, a star fell, leaving its bright trail behind it as it went. Which would have been perfect, except I wasn't sure whether that meant He loved me or He was telling me to go back to bed. Our God has a sense of humour, it seems, since another followed close on its heels. One of each.

I love you. Go to sleep.

The stars will be here tomorrow. And the night after that. And the one after that. No matter where you are, whether you can see them or not, no matter what's hiding them, they're there, shining out My love for you. Rest in this.

I love you. Go to sleep.

So I did.

As of yesterday around noon, Zoe has hit yet another milestone unique to ship's babies: her first sail.

When I woke up to see the pilot boat circling outside our cabin and read on the captain's board that shore leave had been revoked, I knew our departure was imminent. We spent the morning making sure everything in the cabin was properly secured and participating in one last at-sea drill before the real thing.

Zoe is a champ during drills. The captain seems to have an uncanny ability to time them for just before her naps, so she usually just hangs out drinking her bottle, taking in all the excitement and then crashing once we get back to the cabin. It's perfect. Her balance is getting better every day, and she's mastered standing up in her bulky lifejacket. It's fun having a mascot at our abandon ship station.



My favourite thing about sailing day is the moment just before we cast off the last of the lines when the captain comes on over the loudspeakers and prays over our voyage. After a hearty amen, serenaded by the stereo blasts of horns from the tugs and the ships we were passing, we headed out past the breakwater and onto the open seas. After a short pause to check the lifeboats that had spent the last ten months hanging over the dock, we set a course for the Canary Islands.



I'm an indifferent sailor on a good day, so I was glad when the announcement was made that the bow was open. Along with pretty much everyone else on board, I headed out there for the fresh breeze and the sunset, joining the hordes of photographers bent on capturing some small part of the beauty that surrounds us.







It's been smooth seas so far, which means that my stomach was settled enough this morning to have a little fun with Zoe. Pirates are a real concern along parts of the West African coast, but I don't think the captain will mind this particular one being on board. Avast, me hearties. Hand over the toys treasure and no one gets hurt.





This morning we heard the first overhead page that there were dolphins at the bow, so I bundled Zoe into her Boba and ran down there to see them playing in the spray. Yet another milestone for our little sailor girl, and one that I hope will be repeated many, many times in the days and years to come.



We have a few days to go before we reach Las Palmas, so we're going to kick back, relax, and enjoy the incredible beauty of the ocean. Please be praying for smooth seas; the skies aren't as blue as I'd like them to be, and sailing in an old train ferry isn't exactly the smoothest ride if the winds pick up.

Zoe's ready to wake up from her nap, and there's a whole rocking ship to explore, so I'll leave you with this video of the dolphins from earlier. I'm glad Josh Callow had the presence of mind to bring his iPod out to the bow; I ran out so fast that all I brought was my camera without its memory card. Not helpful.



(Thanks to Deb Louden for taking both the photos that I'm in; it's wonderful having friends who are photographers!)

It's our last Friday here in Guinea, and while storm clouds gather and threaten our planned walk, I'm going to take advantage of the fact that Zoe is sleeping through the night for the first time ever and blog a little early. I can't promise that this will be anything coherent; she might have slept, but this mama was wide awake most of the night. Thanks for that one, Murphy.

If you want to join in with this amazing group of freewriters, head over to Lisa-Jo Baker's blog. Mama friends, you should probably just click through anyway, whether or not you're planning to write, because she has so much truth and wisdom to share, that woman.

Today's prompt: Imagine.

Go.

Yesterday marked the end of an era around here. The ship's horn blew as a young woman climbed into a Land Rover and headed for the airport after eighteen years of life on board. The dock was crammed with people, lining up to wave her off, and as Zoe nestled her head into my chest in the afternoon heat, I could see her, my daughter, walking away from me just like that.

It takes guts to be a mama. It takes an almost unimaginable bravery to gather up all your hope and all your longing and all your love and set it to spinning like a top outside the safety of your own arms. I used to dream about these days when I was a child myself, just waiting to spend my life as the caretaker of another.

And now here I am and it's everything and nothing like I imagined.

She is nine months old and in five minutes she'll be eighteen, waving goodbye and embarking on her own adventures, and somehow the years in between will be gone. My thoughts are all over the place this morning. I want to run into her room, scoop her up and hold her close, but I know that she'll cry to be put down, eager to explore the world around her. I've been begging her to sleep through the night; last night she did, and all I can think is that I miss that blissful half hour where I hold her in the dark after she eats and she's warm and soft and plastered to my body, part of me again in a way she'll never allow when she's awake.

I've spent a lifetime waiting for her life, and I can't let it pass me by in a haze of early mornings and fractured nights. I want her to look back, eight or eighteen or eighty years down the road, and see nothing but my love for her.

We are in a season of leavings on the ship. It happens every year, every time we finish a field service and prepare for the next, and in our world we joke sometimes that our only constant is change.

We've been here long enough that the sharp edge has been taken off the whole process, knowing as we do that the next country will bring joys and sorrows and friends who, while not the same as the ones we leave behind, will become just as dear to us in different ways.

But it's still difficult, honestly. I'm a homebody and a root-sender, and it's not easy for my heart to be replanted in completely different soil this often. It's all well and good to say that I'm looking forward to the next country and the next set of people that will walk up the gangway, but there's still a dull ache that never quite goes away when you stand on the dock and wave as a Landrover turns the corner heading for the gate.

It's hard living like this, one foot on either side of the threshold in a house that's never where you left it last. It's tricky to find the right way to express all this, the way you feel pulled in so many different directions, wanting to stay and go all at the same time, never feeling quite sure where home is and who belongs there anymore.

So here are a couple links from friends' blogs who have written about this liminal time. Sometimes it's easier to let other people speak for me.

Krissy gives us a look at just what it takes to transform from a hospital to a seaworthy ship in just two short weeks.

I love Tracey's heart and the honesty with which she speaks about the last things.

Susan shares Carys' speech from last Thursday when she graduated from the Academy along with Lara and Michelle, girls I've had the honor of calling friends over the past few years. The ceremony had me in tears between hearing these women speak with such wisdom and imagining my own firstborn doing the same some day in a future that all of a sudden didn't feel so distant.

And here's a short clip from the celebration with our day volunteers last week as we said goodbye to them, too. This is why it hurts to leave Africa, even if it's only for a few weeks.

As the ship prepares to say farewell to the local day volunteers who have served alongside us during this field service, I've found a quiet moment here in my quiet cabin while Zoe sleeps. I love this exercise, this five minutes of pure writing without the need to rewrite and edit and make sure it's perfect. Need some free-writing therapy of your own? Join us over at Lisa-Jo Baker's blog.

This week's prompt: View.

Go.

I sat in the International Lounge last night, tears in my eyes as I watched three of my friends graduate from high school. The room was packed, probably more than than twenty different countries represented in the community that had gathered to see these women close a chapter in their lives and prepare to open a new one.

I didn't know it then, but there was a guest in the crowd that no one had expected. Thierno, the last patient left in the hospital before it closed this morning, had dressed in his own clothes and come up to bear witness to the turning page.

I can just imagine him, sitting straight and tall, his wide smile not quite symmetrical, singing with us and praying with us and celebrating with us. Thierno, the man who no one was entirely sure would even survive long enough to have the massive tumor removed from his jaw at the beginning of the field service. Thierno, the man who loves my daughter, who greets her as if she's every bit as important as the president coming to visit him in his corner of D Ward.

He left this morning. The wards are filled now only with the bustle and hum of the team of nurses who are cleaning and scrubbing and taking apart the hospital so that we can sail away in a few short days. Hundreds of patients have walked up our gangway this year, hearts full of fear and longing, and walked back down it with their stories rewritten.

The tears come again this morning as I realize all over again what an incredible community we are raising our child in. The road stretches out in front of the seniors, in front of Thierno, in front of each one of us and each one of them. Behind us are ten months and hundreds of lifetimes of struggle and pain and hope and triumph. And as we prepare to cast off the mooring lines and head out to sea, the view from here looks a lot like victory.

When you first find out you're pregnant, there are certain things you expect you'll be learning as a new mother. How to change diapers in the pitch dark. How to pack a diaper bag with one hand while feeding a starving child with the other. How to wrangle an angry honey badger into cute outfits. That sort of stuff.

One thing I didn't really think about was the fact that I was going to be setting sail with my baby.

I mean, I knew we lived on a ship, but since that ship only sails twice a year, it was easy to ignore the fact that we'd eventually be throwing off the mooring lines and heading out to sea. All the impending vomiting aside, there are a few things that you need to take into consideration when taking your baby onto the open waters.

Is everything in the cabin secured, or is it going to come crashing down on her when we hit a big swell? (I'd also prefer things didn't crash down on me, but I guess she's kind of the priority now.)

Is she going to be able to sleep, or will she spend all night every night rolling around in her crib like a little pinball? (Trick question; she does that whether we're sailing or not.)

What's it going to look like when she tries to crawl on a surface with an ever-changing incline? (This one's easy: hilarious.)

There's also a serious side to all this. I have the utmost confidence in our captain and the deck department who will be plotting our course to the Canary Islands, but as the at-sea muster lists go up and we get ready for the first lifeboat drills, I also have to prepare for the possibility of abandoning ship somewhere off the coast of West Africa.

When we head to our lifeboats for a drill, we are expected to bring our at-sea bag with us, a small bag containing anything we'd need to have with us should we forced to actually make use of those boats. Phil's on a lifeboat team, which means he musters with the emergency crew, so I'm responsible for myself, Zoe, and the bag containing all the stuff for our family. Since the lifeboats aren't exactly luxury cruise liners (you get just about enough room for your rear end; nothing more), it's essentials only.



Here's what Zoe gets to bring. Despite the fact that we're sailing in tropical waters, it gets very cold at night at sea, so she's got some fleece jammies, a blanket, some socks, and an extra onesie. The onesie maybe isn't totally necessary, but the mental image of us being shipwrecked on a deserted island and having my kid wearing a onesie appliqued with just that was too good to resist. Going clockwise, I packed a few pouches of baby food (pears and apples, her absolute favourites), along with a bottle of water and a bottle of infant Tylenol. With my luck, she'd end up cutting her first tooth just as we dropped over the side, and I'm not risking that sort of screaming. She's shrill.

Sun protection is key, so I've got a hat, some sunscreen (we could all share that) and sunglasses for her. The sunglasses would be good for at least four seconds of enjoyment as she threw them overboard. A bored Zoe is a screaming Zoe, so she gets to bring a few small toys; Sophie and her Indestructibles book were easy picks, and it's convenient that she thinks pacifiers are toys, too. You can never have too many of those in an abandon-ship situation. A few wipes, a couple disposable diapers, and her waterproof swim diaper round out Zoe's stash. Not that she'd be doing any swimming. A washable diaper just takes up far less room than the number of disposables she'd need if we're out there for any length of time.



Here's the bag all packed with Zoe's stuff. Once I got hers in there, I realized there was plenty of room for the grown-up things, too. Which is nice, because I don't really want to be wrangling the aforementioned honey badger into her lifejacket while worrying about keeping track of a whole set of luggage.

Phil and I each get a hoodie, plus a pair of knee socks for me. (My feet get cold easily, and I'm a pansy about that. I'm not ashamed.) He has a baseball hat, and I have a scarf that works as a sun covering or a nursing cover. Phil has asthma, so his extra inhalers are essential. Sunglasses are an obvious pick, and my real glasses are there so that I can see the stars at night. Seriously. I'm not going to miss out on that. Also they will help me be the first to spot help on the horizon so I can be the hero.

They encourage you to bring something to pass the time, so we've got a pack of cards in our bag. Watch out people; our lifeboat is totally going to be the fun one. I've also got my Bible, which is like a Kindle in that it has many, many books in it, and it's not like a Kindle in that it doesn't have batteries that need to be recharged. Rounding out our stuff is a small notebook and a pen, because if we actually get shipwrecked, you'd better believe I'll be taking notes so that I can blog about it for you guys later.

You're welcome.



Here's Zoe with the fully-packed bag, just to give you a sense of the size of it. (She's exactly twenty-eight inches tall, if that's helpful.) She's clearly on board with safety, and fully approves of all these preparations.

This is a drill.
This is a drill.
This is a drill.

Bring it on, Captain Tim. We're ready.

Zoe is nine months old today, three quarters of a year gone and I have no idea where it went. (To be fair, the fact that I had to check my math on that four or five times would indicate that much of it has been taken up by sleepless nights. But I digress.) Since last month, her mobility has increased in leaps and bounds. She's cruising everywhere, pulling herself up with almost no effort, climbing stairs like a champ and even standing unassisted for a few seconds at a time. Thankfully she seems to realize that crawling gets her anywhere she wants to go, so she hasn't made any serious moves towards walking yet. I'm not ready for that.

Eating still isn't her favourite thing to do, unless it's the aforementioned middle of the night. We're trying to discourage that, but have you ever woken up hungry? I can't blame the kid for not being able to fall back asleep with an empty belly! We're on a slow track as far as solids go, since anything with more texture than a thick puree inevitably ends in a tray full of barf and a sad mama bemoaning the fact that we're heading for yet another wakeful night. I've been getting a bit obsessed with the feeding thing, honestly, desperately trying to figure out a combo that will get her sleeping better at night, and the pressure I put on myself when she won't nurse for the magic number of minutes that I've decided will do the trick just isn't okay. To that end, we've started a slow transition to formula. The sheer relief I felt when we made the decision was enough to show me just how unhealthy my thinking about the whole thing had become. I'm hoping to have her transitioned fully within the next month, and then if she still isn't sleeping, at least it's not 'my fault' anymore.

She seems to be focusing on physical skills rather than the verbal side of things, but just in the last few days she's started to imitate sounds we make. (As a side note, the fact that she chose wow as her first 'word' is pretty funny when she decides to practice it right as you go to feed her. At least it's funny to me. I'll take what I can get at three AM.) She's working hard on sign language, and signs more and water occasionally. All done is her favourite; I get to see it at least four or five times every time I try to feed her. She can wave hello and goodbye, but reserves that particular skill for when she feels like it. Not a performing animal, my child.



Every day, I see less of my baby and more of the little girl she's becoming. She's strong-willed and silly and independent and beautiful, this one. In Liberia, her name means powerful woman; I think we've chosen well.

I fell off the Five Minute Friday bandwagon for a couple weeks there, what with market trips and a baby who's decided that she needs constant attention lest she damage herself with one acrobatic stunt or another. But she's happily playing and so I have the five minutes I need to join up with the freewriters over at Lisa-Jo Baker's blog to (as she perfectly puts it) ...write in shades of real and brave and unscripted. At least that's what I hope will happen.

Today's prompt: Song.

Go.

Three flights down, the operating rooms are receiving their last patients for this field service here in Guinea. Cleft lips and little lumps, I'd imagine, the small sorts of things we can do when we know the hospital will close in seven short days.

Over the last ten months, though, we've seen the big things.

We've seen faces torn apart by disease rebuilt in surgery after careful surgery and long months on the wards. We've seen women walk hundreds of miles fueled by nothing but the promise of a new life. We've seen babies pulled back from the brink of starvation grow impossibly fat and healthy. We've seen the lame walk and the blind see, and this is nothing new for us because we see it in every country we visit.

But for the people here in Guinea? For the forgotten and the broken and the hopeless?

Theirs is a new song. Instead of sitting on the fringes and hiding in shame they can dance with straight legs and heads held high and faces fit to to turn to the world. It's a song of renewal, of light in the darkest places.

And as we go, each of us here echoes back that song to them, singing our part in the harmonies that God has so lovingly composed over these past ten months, honored to find our place in this song.



(Photo: Ruben Plomp)

My boss is awesome.

Okay, if we're getting technical, as a PCG I fall under the auspices of HR, so this guy is actually my boss these days:



I'd obviously be lying if I said he wasn't awesome too. Bow ties are cool, people.

But when I say boss I'm thinking of the Ward Supervisor, Kirstie. She was here to welcome me when I started this journey with Mercy Ships back in 2008, and after a rough beginning to that field service, I can safely say that her sweet encouragement and strong leadership are a couple of the reasons I'm still here. (The HoJ and my insatiable love for this work might also have something to do with it.)

Every week on our intranet, we have a column written by someone in leadership. Kirstie wrote this week's, and she does such an amazing job of capturing not only the way it feels to live this life but also the importance of keeping our focus in the right place. As I read her words, I thought of all of you, out there somewhere (or maybe just down the hall) and how God has placed each of us where we are with infinite care and purpose. Here on a ship or there in your living room, He is at work in and through us. And that is good news indeed.

Here's part of what Kirstie had to say:

I’m wondering if you feel known? I’m thinking pretty much everyone who works with Mercy Ships can relate to the feeling of not feeling known – we've all stepped outside of our comfort zones and come to work in places where no-one knows anything about us or about the experiences that have marked our lives; the bits that make us passionate and the bits that make us mad; the good bits and the bad bits. All the bits that have been part of forming who we are.

I went home a few weeks ago and entered an unexpected journey of discovery. I've been going back and forth for a few years now, so you’d think I’d know what to expect but for some reason, as much as I was blessed by going home and filling up on all that home means, I couldn't help but feel unsettled somehow.

I realized that I didn't feel known. And it grieved me.

Here I was with people who have known me all my life and yet I felt so unknown – I felt like no-one understood who I was – not professionally – I mean how do you explain what we do here? How do I explain what my days look like? And not personally - How do I explain that my excitement comes from a trip to the market to buy 4 mangoes and a carrot because I haven’t eaten one in months? And how do I explain that the diet coke I just drank was the first one in 4 weeks and the caffeine made my head spin? Seriously? This place is weird!! And how do I explain the Spiritual journey I have been on here? Or the intimacy with Jesus that I find in this incredible Community? I mean seriously? How can you explain that? How do I explain that one of the VVF ladies who was really really sick, got better a few hours after we prayed? I can’t. And even when I try, I don’t do a good job. No wonder I felt unknown… but yet it’s something I long for so much. I want to feel known. I need to feel known. I need to know that I’m not just a nobody and that who I am does make a difference. I need to know that I was created for a purpose and I need to know that I can live a life in all its fullness.

Do you want to be all that God created you to be? Do you want to know that you are known? In Proverbs 29 it says that without vision, people perish. This is so true and it’s where I went when I went home. I felt like a wobbly jelly and I didn't know who I was for a while. I felt like I didn't even know what to hold on to. I totally lost my vision because I put my focus on who everyone at home thought I was and in so doing, I lost who I was. You see, when you know who you are and you know whose you are, nothing else matters. When you don’t know who you are, everything else does seem to matter.

The beauty of knowing who YOU are means that you’re released from being who you are not. I feel like that’s what happened to me when I went home and in the days following. It sent me to a place where I had to answer – who am I? I needed to define it some more so I didn't feel this wrench of trying to fit in or be someone who God didn't make me to be – or even be someone I once was. It came with a release as I realized GOD KNOWS ME.

Do you believe you’re significant? Do you believe you have a part to play in this body? Because you do! You were created for a purpose!

- Kirstie

I went down to the office last night after Zoe was in bed, hoping to tackle the pile of Smile Train charts in my box. I've got my system down to a science now, which is good because the end of the outreach means lots and lots of cleft lips.

When I pick up a new chart, the first thing I do is go into our database of before and after photos to pick out the pre- and post-op photos that I'll need to upload along with the patient's information. It's my first contact with the patient, and I love watching the little faces that pop up. Alseny was no exception.



Big brown eyes and a milky mouth; my kind of baby. Alseny was here to have his cleft palate repaired, but when I opened the chart, another photo fell out, one from before his cleft lip surgery. As I started to look through the rest of his paperwork, Alseny's beautiful story unfolded in photos and graphs and page after page of careful notes.



This is Alseny and his twin when he first first came to be admitted to our Infant Feeding Program (IFP) on November fifteenth. At four months old, he weighed just over six pounds, his cleft lip and palate preventing him from getting the same nutrition as his sister. It's one thing to see a tiny baby, malnourished because of a cleft. But put him next to a twin, next to a baby who is getting all the same milk he is, just without the broken lip and palate, and the true impact of this birth defect is thrown into terrible, sharp focus.

Thankfully for Alseny, his mama loves him. She saw past the curse, past the lie her culture would seek to tell her that one healthy baby is more than enough, and she fought for his life. Instead of letting him starve to death, she brought him to us, and Jess, our IFP coordinator, got to work making a specialized plan for fattening little Alseny up.

Twelve days later, Alseny weighed in at over nine pounds.



Let that sink in for a minute. He gained over half his body weight in less than two weeks, simply because his mama was taught how to feed him and provided with supplements that she wouldn't otherwise have had access to.

And it didn't stop there. Over the next two months, Alseny kept on growing until he was more than ready for his cleft lip surgery in February.



In case you're wondering, that's him on the right, putting his formerly big sister to shame with those rolls.

In just two months, we went from not knowing whether Alseny would survive to walking him into the OR for his lip to be repaired. And because he did so well, we were able to admit him for a second surgery to close his palate, too, something that wasn't even on the radar when we first met him. We serve a God who does more than we can ask or imagine. And in Alseny's case, we actually have photographic proof.



Surgery finishes on Friday, and the hospital closes next week. This Field Service is coming to an end, but when we sail, we leave behind stories like Alseny's, the promise of life when the future looked anything but hopeful.

I love this place.

One of the things I miss most about North America is the changing of the seasons. Facebook is plastered with photos of trees in bloom and brand new leaves and that shocking green grass that only comes around one a year, and I sometimes feel a little bit like I'm missing out.

Here, we have two seasons: it's either dry or it's raining. (Hot is a given.) When we first came back to the ship at the end of October, we were at the tail end of the last rainy season. Not much in the way of precipitation, but amazing lightning storms every night after sunset. Since November, we haven't seen a drop of rain, and we've been enjoying the predictability of knowing that you can plan a walk to town with no chance of needing an umbrella.

Last night, all that changed.

I headed to bed early last night, desperate to get as much sleep as possible since Zoe has decided, once again, that waking up every two or three hours is totally cool. A little after ten, it started sounding like elephants were having a dance party on our ceiling, and when the thumping continued and started to be accompanied by flashes through the curtains, I figured it was time to investigate.

It seems that I don't have a great grasp on how quickly time is passing, because I was stunned when I made it to Deck Seven to find that we've somehow been back long enough that the seasons have turned again.



The wind whipped the waves into a frenzy, the rain was falling sideways, and things were blowing right off the top deck into an ocean lit by a sky full of lightning. The railing was lined with people, all reveling in the first rains of the season and jumping in the puddles. (This explained the elephants; sound apparently carries quite well through metal decking.) And speaking of elephants, my memory, it turns out, is not up to their standards, because it surprises me me every single time just how exhilarating that first storm is after six months of sunshine.

So I guess you can keep your daffodils and azaleas; it's hard to feel homesick when our seasons deliver shows like this.

I wish I were coming to you with better news, that I could say that the little girl in Ethiopia is heading home to her family. But I can't.

I received word last night that she, too, went back to Jesus.

Before coming to the hospital where Dr. Dave works, her family had sought care from a traditional healer who, in an effort to help her breathe, had removed her tonsils. This caused serious trauma to her airway, and she just wasn't strong enough to withstand the injury.

Sophie put it right. Stuff like this reminds me to be thankful that God is sovereign.

Because on the face of it, this looks like loss and it feels like failure. It's another blow to the face of hope, a brutal reminder of the brokenness of the world we live in.

Maybe, though, it wasn't about saving her. Maybe it was about strengthening our faith and revealing God's glory and making sure that a little girl who was going to die was able to breathe easy in the last hours of her life.

I'd like to say that I believe everything I just typed, that I'm resting easy in the knowledge that God is on the throne. And maybe some day it'll be true and my faith will actually be strong enough for this sort of thing.

Today, though, I'm having a hard time with it.

It's nearly eleven at night. Zoe and the HoJ are both fast asleep, and I know I should be in bed too. But I have something amazing to share with you.

If you've been reading since the beginning, you probably remember Baby Greg. He was one of the first ones to steal my heart, one of the first ones to shatter it when he went back to Jesus. Before that, though, while we were fighting for his life, we had to figure out a way to help him breathe in the absence of a ventilator that could function the way we needed it to. I remember calling my hospital back in the States in the middle of a long, dark night while we watched him gasp for air, carefully writing down the instructions that a respiratory therapist relayed to me across the miles.



Before long, we had Baby Greg hooked up to an improvised bubble CPAP setup, and for the next month, we kept his oxygen levels up without any mechanical help. In the end, it wasn't enough, and we had to let him go. I've wondered many times why God brought him to us in the first place if it was all going to end the way it did.

Fast forward nearly five years.

In the interim, I've become friends with a missionary in Ethiopia. I can't remember how it happend; like so many other friendships in my life, it seems like I've always known Sophie. She and I follow each others' blogs and correspond back and forth about life in Africa, me on a ship and her in a little house on land on the other side of the continent.

She's friends with Dr. Dave, a pediatrician at the Soddo Christian Hospital. A couple months ago, Sophie got in touch with me on behalf of Dr. Dave. There was a newborn at Soddo Hospital who couldn't maintain his oxygen levels, and she was wondering whether I could pass on the information about the CPAP setup that we had used for Baby Greg.

I quickly drew out a diagram and e-mailed it to Ethiopia.



A little while later I heard back from them, letting me know that they didn't have the right parts to make the system work for that little one, but that they had managed to sort things out in other ways.

This morning, I heard from Sophie again. She had just received a text from Dr. Dave.

Bubble C-pap rocks--5 y/o horrible pneumonia and upper airway trauma ... --sats were 70's on NC now 95 on cpap with much less work of breathing-thank you for using your connections to potentially save this little life!!! Dave

I sit here in my cabin on board a ship docked in Guinea, and over in Ethiopia there's a five year-old whose life might have been saved because I used to work with Laura in the PICU in New Jersey before I came to Africa, and she told me how to rig up bubble CPAP when I was taking care of Baby Greg in Liberia five years ago, and Sophie knew about it because she read my blog, and she told Dr. Dave that maybe I could help.

I have never seen so clearly God's heart for the world as I do right now.

One small child, one life out of billions and billions, and God has moved heaven and earth to save that life. I can almost see the shining threads connecting us all, spanning the continent and the oceans and the years. And as I watch, I see those threads stretch and multiply until they cover the entire earth in a brilliant web of pure gold.

God is not silent. He is not idle. He weaves our lives together in the most unexpected and intricate ways, laboring tirelessly on behalf of the small and the forgotten.

Humbled, I watch Him work, holding on to my end of the thread as He takes it and makes it into something beautiful.