How do two weeks fly by so quickly? Now I have a lot to catch up on!
The last 15 days have been quite eventful. On Friday the 8th (the day after my last post) I was talking to Krischelle on Skype when I got a call from Manis saying to please come over to the campus as quickly as possible, Sam had cut himself with the electric saw while working on the church porch roof. I grabbed Ani and rushed out the door only to meet with Manis coming to get me on the 4-Wheeler.
I knew it must be pretty bad and was trying to mentally prepare myself. I am not a natural nurse so I was praying that God would help me do whatever I would need to do. I got there to find Sam’s finger wrapped tightly with a cloth to slow the bleeding. I was told he had cut off a piece of his finger but I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant! How big of a piece???!!! When I unwrapped the cloth I found the he had cut off basically the whole “fingerprint” part of his left pointer. Then James (one of the development guys) walked up with a folded piece of paper which, I was told, held the piece that had been cut off.
I cleaned Sam’s finger the best I could and then called mom (a real nurse) to see if it was worth sending him to the clinic to stitch the piece back on. She said it was so I then cleaned the piece of finger as well as I could, put it back in place and taped it down with steri-strips to hold it while he went to the CAM clinic on the 4-Wheeler. I wrapped almost an entire roll of gauze around with the keep it clean and he and Petion headed off for the clinic. By God’s grace Sam missed the bone and Bethanie (the wonderful nurse at the clinic) was very hopeful about the piece rejoining with the finger. Isn’t the body an amazing thing?!!
Sam continuing work on the church porch roof with his injured finger.
A few days later materials for the school roof arrived! A team will be coming down in February to help us get it on but since Sam and Petion were leaving and would be coming back only a few weeks before the team arrives we went ahead and got the bulk of the materials. I was working on some things at the house when the trucks arrived so Manis ran over to the campus to help them unload and to get some pictures for me. As they were unloading the 2x6s one slipped out of one of the guys’ hands and hit James right on the forehead. He crumpled to the ground and for one terrifying second everyone thought he had been killed. Manis yelled for someone to get water and after dousing him, James finally came to. As you can imagine, everyone was quite shaken. In the end James had an awful headache but was otherwise fine. Thank you, Lord!
Unloading the lumber (before the accident). James is in the tan shirt.
By the time the guys finished it was dark. The color of the roofing was a bit of a fiasco as they didn’t have enough of the color we had originally chosen, but in the end I really like it 🙂
All of this has reminded me, though, how much we need to pray, and need your prayers, for safety. Every day things are done here that are dangerous… it is just part of life. Of course as many precautions are taken as possible and everyone tries to be safe… but that fact of the matter is our safety and, more particularly, the safety of our staff is often quite precarious.
On the 15th Sam and Petion flew to Germany. I know they would greatly appreciate your prayers as they will be doing quite a bit of traveling within Europe for speaking engagements.
On the 17th I headed into PauP to meet up with Krischelle and Bonita who were flying back from the US. I had been planning to drive down the following day but when we got up on Sunday Manis said he felt it would be better to leave that morning. There was a strike against the government planed for Monday and no one knew what the roads would be like. I packed as fast as I could and by 9:00 was on the road. Sure enough, the next day the roads were blocked and I would have never been able to get through. Again, Thank you, Lord!
We had a busy time in PauP but all in all things went well and we were able to accomplish all that we needed to. A special thanks to our friends Jenny and Djordjy Compere, Lara Berry and the Broyles family for their help and hospitality!
We got home last night after a long day and an eventful trip and it was GREAT to be home 🙂 I was not able to check my email at all while we were in PauP so please forgive me if you have written to me this week and not heard from me. I will try to catch up soon!
Also within the last two weeks we have been able to triple the cow project participants but that will be a post all its own!