Catching up and Gran Torino.

Well, I journal-failed. I pretty much haven't really journaled in a few days, since the last time was yesterday morning attempting to describe the day before. Lol

Basically, I've not felt good the last few days. Just had a headache and a bit of a stomachache. Perhaps I'm not drinking enough fluids. I'd love for it to be something as simple as that. I'm feeling better now then I have been, but I still have a headache. Add to that the fact that yesterday morning I sprained my ankle falling off the back porch while bringing breakfast to one of Steve's workers, and I'm pretty much a mess. Ankle is feeling a bit better now, but still sore and tender to walk on. I basically wake up feeling “eh”, and then get better during the day, peaking around 7:00PM at night and rapidly going downhill. So right about now, I'm not feeling too dandy.

I finished all the computers today. I did a total of 9 over the past week or so. I have a 10-page report detailing all the changes I made to each computer on my computer and on Faith's computer. Sometime before I leave, we'll go over the report and see if she wants me to change anything and make sure she understands it all. I also have a spreadsheet on both of our computers that details each computer, the serial and product numbers, who the computer is 'registered' to, and anti-Virus info. That's basically been my work the last week or so. I've enjoyed it, and gotten quite a bit faster with each computer as I've gone along. Switching between three different operating systems is a bit confusing at times though, I will say.

Watched Gran Torino last night. Interesting movie. A LOT of language, in an attempt to accurately depict gangs. And in the end, Clint Eastwood (the hero of the movie) sacrifices his life to save his friends, doing so in a rather Christ-like manner. For all the good of the movie and its accurate depictions of real life, however, I am not too sure about it. I did not feel particularly edified by it, and I don't know if I would have felt comfortable watching it with Jesus sitting next to me. I guess it's something along the lines of “how much bad do you put up with to find the good?” I realize that Jesus hung out with former prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners. He was at once in the world and at once not of it. If, in our lives, we are called to minister to what might be termed unsavory characters, then so be it. In fact, I would almost guarantee that most people that are Christians will find that ministering to the lost and delving into the dark, ugly, nastiness of this fallen world is quite necessary to fulfill the Great Commission's requirement of making disciples. But there is a difference, to me, of doing what is quite necessary in making disciples and watching a movie for mere entertainment purposes. Other reasons for watching it might be made, but I truly cannot think of any at this moment. It is one thing to hear language and see filthy things because of where Christ has called me and what He has told me to do. It is quite another to subject myself willingly to hearing that same language and violence in a film meant for entertainment. Even if that film, at the end, has a good message. Does the end justify the means?

I'm not much of a movie person, I guess. They generally don't leave me feeling very edified. Now, there are some movies which I enjoy watching for entertainment, and I don't believe that God means us to be stuck up prunes who never crack a smile. How to Train a Dragon was a fun film, as was Race to Witch Mountain. Lord of the Rings is an incredible story, and movies like Sergeant York are quite edifying. Why can we not have quality entertainment and good messages without all the junk? Now, I realize some messages would be difficult to get across without portraying the ugly nastiness that is this fallen world . . . and to that predicament, I have no answer.

I would like to point out that I don't think movies are inherently bad nor that people who watch movies with language/violence/etc in them are sinning. That, I think, is a choice that has to be made between that person and God, made as God directs and the Spirit convicts. I do, however, think that to fill your mind with entertainment without thinking about it is a horrible idea. There is a message to every article of media, and to not think through that message and be careful you are not being influenced by the world unknowingly is a rather poor testimony to Christ. Paul says that because we are not under the Law (Mosaic) of the Old Testament but rather under Grace, there is now no condemnation and we are free to choose that which we will. He also warns us that since we have that choice, it'd be a decent idea to not abuse it and to do those things which would honor God and love our fellowman.

Okay, off that tirade. Everybody watched a couple of episodes of MASH tonight except me. Viewing that movie left me with a non-desire for movies and entertainment for tonight, anyways.

Had a lovely talk with Steve this morning. It started to POUR rain around 3:30 this morning and didn't stop till 5:30. It was amazing. I got up around 5:30 and read my Bible and prayed for a bit. 6:30 or so, Steve and I started talking. We talked about Old Testament history, Early Church history, and other questions that I had from reading and thinking about Romans 8. I finished that conversation feeling quite encouraged. :)

Okay, I'm about to drop, and I've written a decent amount tonight. Time to go take a shower and hit the sack. At least I get to sleep in tomorrow. Yay for Saturday's!

07.27.2010 - Tuesday

This day has so far been just like yesterday. Worked on computers this morning, finishing up another laptop by 2:00. Then went back up to the house and worked on American History until the girls decided they wanted to go down and check their emails and facebooks. I'm down at the clinic with them right now, doing the same. So yeah, pretty much a flat-line day so far. No plans for tonight either.


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The end.

Oh, and apparently I got a day behind in my journal. I had the correct "day of the week", but not the correct number. I was calling Tuesday the "26th" in my journal, and had been incorrect for a week I guess. Apparently I corrected that mistake when I copied and pasted into the blog, cause I don't see any problems with my posts.

07.26.2010 - Monday

Apparently I forgot to journal yesterday.

Church was. . . incomprehensible once again. Something about me not being able to speak or hear Creole very well. I think he started out in Romans 8, so I decided to read it for myself and do some thought-writing on it. I got through 3 verses in the time he finished his sermon. I take a long time to think about stuff, apparently. *thinks deep thoughts*

Went down and facebooked/blogged/emailed in the early afternoon. Played some cards with Grace and Betsy after I got back up to the house. And now to the fun part of the day. . .

Steve let Grace, Betsy, and I take the four-wheeler up to some Haitian place that I can’t spell. haha. There is a lovely view up there. We parked the four wheeler at a church and then took a 10 minute walk up to the top of the hill/mountain. From there, you can see a couple miles of coast and several miles of coastal plains and low hills. Very pretty, and even more so as the sun starts to set. We stayed until the sun dipped below one of the larger mountains and then returned back to our vehicle.

When we got to the church and jumped off the 4-wheeler, we were instantly surrounded by several little kids who decided they were going to be our best buddies and walk us up the hill and stay there the whole time with us. There were maybe 6-8 young girls around 7-11 years old (my best guess, anyways. Lol) and a young fellow who mainly sat off the side and watched. Grace and Betsy (who know far more Creole then I do) spent some time singing songs with them (like Father Abraham and Head 'n' Shoulders, Knees and Toes). I finally decided to have some fun myself and started giving the girls rides on my shoulders and back. At one point, I had a girl on my back and a girl in each arm. I think they enjoyed it, or at least thought I was funny. Oh, and I did handstands for them too, and attempted to yodel. . . it came out more like a loud, high, and warbling scream. That rather frightened one of the girls. She jumped several feet into the air. :-D

After we got back to the house, we ate a late dinner and then listened to a Matt Chandler sermon that I had with me called Forgetting and Striving. It's a fairly good sermon, I think. :) I've listened to it several times, and always brought something new away. I wish we had time to go through his series on the Cross of Christ. It's absolutely phenomenal. Maybe I can convince them to listen to a couple of sermons every week for the next three weeks. At least the first one in the series, since I think that one is incredible.

7:00PM

The rest of last night was a bit different. I had a lot of lower back pain for some reason, and the pain was shooting down my leg into my big toe on my right foot. I know that sounds weird, but it happens to me. Has for years. I can remember being 10 years old and going down in the middle of the night to my parents room crying because my toe hurt so much. I think that was more from growing pains, whereas this was from tight muscles and vertebrae problems.

God worked on me last night. . . I'm really not sure what He was working on, I just know I got a bit humbled and cried for a while. I don't mind not knowing though, so long as I know He's working and I'm letting Him. :j

Today was a decent day, except for the lower back pain I still have. Worked all till about 3:00 on the computers down at the hospital. I think I have three laptops, half a netbook, and a desktop back up left to do. I should take it slow or I'll run out of work! :) I'm sure they'll find something more for me to do though. After I finished one of the netbooks and realized that all the other computers were in use, I came back up to the house and studied for my American History CLEP test for a while. Got through the early colonization period with my flashcards that I'm making. Tomorrow I will probably start on the Colonial Period.

After I finished studying, I laid down and took a nice nap before getting up to play basketball. It doesn't take too long when Grace, Betsy, and I go out to play for a bunch of Haitian kids to come out of the wood works. I played a game with two other Haitian teenagers. It was the two of them versus me, and I ended up winning. I think the Haitian young people that we play with think I play college basketball back in the States. They were insisting to Grace that I must. It's not that I'm very good, cause I'm not, it's just that I'm taller then all of them by a good bit and so can out jump and out rebound all of them. Match me against someone my height and I'm sunk. Lol

Here in a little bit we are going to watch the second disc of the Fellowship of the Ring. Looking forward to that. Then hopefully a decent night's sleep. **crosses fingers**

07.24.2010 - Saturday

Wow. I think the days are starting to roll by faster or something. Or maybe it's just that I'm at the end of a week, and the weeks roll by quicker for me. Monday marks the half-way point of my being in Haiti. It will be three weeks that I've been here. After tomorrow's church service, I only have two more to sit through. That makes it sound like I don't enjoy the services. Hmm. . . I do and I don't. Sitting in the hard wooden pew for a couple of hours and listening to a lot of stuff I can't understand is a bit trying at times. On the other hand, just knowing that Christ is being preached and being able to sit and study my Bible for over an hour is nice.

Weekends are nice, since we really don't 'do' anything. Not normal things, anyways. Weekdays (LOL I'm listening to this donkey that's outside and who is braying like Chuck Norris is after him. Quite hilarious, and quite loud) are more structured and orderly as far as what happens, when it happens, etc. Weekends are just kind of free for all days, where breakfast could be served quite late and dinner eaten early. In fact, that's generally what happens.

I spent about 6 hours today at the clinic working on computer maintenance. It's slow going, since I'm working primarily with Windows Vista right now, and I know nothing about that. Each computer is also different as far as what comes already installed on it and what it might need. I figure since I'm here that I might as well do thorough work on all of them, so I'm taking my time. Two laptops are complete after nearly 10 hours of work and two more are about half way. The two I'm working on right now are the desktop and one of the netbooks. I'd like to reinstall Windows XP on the net book, but it doesn't have a recovery partition or a CD as far as I know. Besides the fact that I don't have an external drive to use anyways. I suppose I'll ask Faith about the CD tomorrow and use the CD/DVD drive from the desktop if I need to. The net books are both refurbished, and I'm thinking perhaps they didn't come with CD's. Guess I'll find out tomorrow. :)

Watched the first disc of The Fellowship of the Ring tonight. Good movie. It's been a good solid year since I've seen them, as my brother took them (since he owns them) when he moved out-of-state to go to school. I remember now why I love those movies so much! They are just phenomenal. I played quite a bit of a massively multiplayer online role playing game (mmorpg) Lord of the Rings Online the past 6 months, and it was really super cool to be able to imagine where the hobbits were as they moved through the Shire and to Bree-town. I can remember standing on Weathertop in-game and looking out over the landscape. Imagining Strider and the Hobbits running through that area was easy. Then when Arwen (Glorfindel in the books) takes Frodo from the Wild (which I think is in the Lone-lands or in the Trollshaws. . . ) to Rivendell, and crosses the Brunien River at the Fords of Brunien, I could easily imagine that place. Anyways, having played the game and recently read some of the book, it made the movie definitely come to life for me.

After we got through the second disc, Steve checked the battery power and discovered that is was on 11% or something. We'll watch the second disc tomorrow night probably, since we've finished the Truth Project.

Okay, time to shower and get to bed somewhat early tonight. Oh! I trimmed by beard by a substantial amount tonight. It was about an inch long, and it's now about a ¼ inch. I still need to trim up around the edges, but I'll do that after my shower. Steve was gracious enough to lend me his trimmer. It only had once length setting, or I would have kept my beard a bit longer, but I can't complain. It feels better then the bushiness it was before. I have a cowlick below my jawline on the right side, and sometimes it looks rather annoying. :p

07.23.2010 - Friday

Went down to the clinic again this morning before breakfast. I have kind of gotten into a habit of doing so. I enjoy checking my email and facebook and just having some quiet time to start the day. I will say that I probably won't do that tomorrow morning though, as I'm ready for a day of not getting up quite as early.

After breakfast, Faith asked me if I could do maintainance on every computer that the Leach's or the Hospital owns. She basically wants me to do a spreadsheet containing information such as make, model, OS, product number, serial number, and Trend Anti-Virus information of each computer. Then she also wants me to make sure Trend is up to date, the computers are defragged, and that there are not unnecessary things running on it. It's kind of a challenge for me. :) I did two laptops today, recording the initial boot up speed, how many processes were running on start up, and what sort of maintainence I did on them. There are three computers I also will back up to an external drive. I'm keeping a Word document that details everything I am doing to each computer (and an explanation if needed) so that after I am gone, it will be (hopefully) fairly easy to see if I did something that needs reversing. On one laptop, I decreased boot up time from over two minutes to exactly one minute. It's amazing what a little work can do. :-D

That's basically all I did all day. Tomorrow I'll go back and keep working on them. They'll be all super fast and awesome after I get done with them! I hope. . .

We were going to watch The Fellowship of the Ring tonight, but it rained for quite a while today, and the projector takes a lot of power to run. We decided to watch a romantic comedy called Blast From The Past. . . it was...interesting. I fear I'm being corrupted by these movie hungry missionaries. :p I will say that the movie did an excellent job of promoting the old ideas of chivalry, manners, proper behavior, etc. It was quite nice.

I need to borrow Steve's facial hair trimmer at some point, because my beard is growing a bit long. It would be nice to get it trimmed up and looking a bit better.

Read the story Beauty and the Beast tonight out loud to the family. It was from The Book of Virtues. I like story-telling, although I know I need to work a lot on annunciation and slowing stuff down.

I am enduring my second round of poison oak. I seem to attract it. I'm using a topical cream to treat the itchiness and calm it down a bit. It's helping some, although at times it still itches like crazy. Scratching it is bad though, since the oil spreads easily if you break the surface of the rash.

I tried blogging today, but it was giving me fits yet again. The problem I'd been having was that when I copied and pasted from my journal, it would either give me a META problem or the text would be the same color as the background of the blog. The META problem I took care of by copying and pasting to a Google Doc and then copying and pasting it from there to the blog. The background problem I took care of my putting up a new template with a different background color. But now the text color is a problem again. Oh well. I'll work on that more tomorrow while I'm waiting for a laptop to finish running a test or something.

Speaking of tests, I took one of my three American History (pre-1877) CLEP practice exams. I haven't studied much except up to the time of the American Revolution. I got 45/120 right, which equals approximately 51 on the CLEP score, or barely passing. Hopefully with some more studying, I can bring that up a bit.

07.22.2010 - Thursday

I'm pretty tired, so I think this will be short. The Wilson's left today, and the house feels rather empty now. Having half as many people around the dinner table seemed rather weird. I didn't do a whole lot today. No clinic work at all, although I did go down for about 20 minutes to check my facebook and email with my iPod. I did study for the American History (Pre-1877) CLEP test though. That will be my focus now. I'm hoping to take that when I get back from Haiti.

So yeah, other then that, not a lot when on today. Played basketball tonight with Grace and Betsy and some Haitian boys. Grace got proposed to (not an unusual thing around here. Lol). We had baked ravioli (yummmmm) and left over pizza for dinner. We were going to watch a movie tonight, but decided to wait till tomorrow. There was a bit of a lightening storm going on outside, so all of us ended up going and sitting on the porch (on the van bench that serves as the outdoor patio couch, haha) and talking for well over an hour. That was a blast. :)

It's been raining here a LOT for the time of year it is. Steve is loving it. It rained almost all last night and a some tonight too. I think it's done for tonight though.

I didn't sleep very good last night, for some rather annoying reason. I woke up after about 3 hours of sleep and never really got much continuous sleep after that. Every 45 minutes or so I would wake up. Finally just got up around 5:30. Which means I'm tired now. So. . .off to bed I go.

07.21.2010 - Wednesday

Sitting down to write tonight, I find my mind strangely blank on what happened today. :p

I sat in on consultations with Scott again today, for the last time. Tomorrow, the Wilson's leave at 11:00 in the morning. They have a 2:00 flight out of Mole. Nothing too exciting happened today. Fellow came in that had a catheter. . . had a HIV+ patient, but that's not too unusual.

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11:45PM

It's raining, lightening, and thundering outside right now. There is a nice, cool breeze flowing through the window. In short, it's awesome. :) The Leach's are expressing amazement at the fact that it has been raining so much, as we are at the very end of the rainy season, and there is generally not this much rain. I love it, except for the mud. :p

After consultations were finished in the afternoon, Grace, Betsy, and I went back up to the house and watched The Epitome of Hyperbole by Brian Regan. Great comedian. :) After we watched the whole thing, we also listened to four audio clips of him that I had on my iPod that weren't on the show we watched. I think most people enjoyed him. :)

We had the Catholic Sisters over for dinner today. Woohoo for pizza and coke!! :-D And then peanut butter and . . . I can't remember the other type of cookie that was made. . . but we had those for dessert. :)

After the sisters left, a few of us started discussing stories that we grew up with, and I found that many stories I remembered came from a book called The Book of Virtues. The Leach's and the Wilson's both seemed to know some of the stories also. We found the book in the Leach's library and I read two stories out of it outloud. By the time I made it through the first one, St. George and the Dragon, the entirety of both families had gathered in the dining room/living room and were listening. After that tale, I also read How Much Land Does a Man Need?, which I was shocked to discover was written by Leo Tolstoy. We will definitely have to read more out of that book before I leave. :-D

Mafia, Hearts, and Dutch Blitz filled out the rest of the night, and now I think it's time for bed. Good night, all! :-D

07.20.2010 - Tuesday

Today is my birthday. My golden birthday, in fact. Twenty years of age on the twentieth of the month. And here I am in a foreign country. “Where you lead me, I will follow. No turning back, no turning back.”

Decent day. Went down and emailed/facebooked, attempted to blog in the morning before breakfast. When I got back up to the house, everyone was just sitting down at the table to eat. After prayer, they sang me Happy Birthday and I opened a card from them. Very awesome, signed by each one with a little note. It was pretty cool. :)

Scott and I saw several patients this morning, although nothing too fascinating. When we got down to the clinic in the morning, we moved some beds around in the OR so we could move the sonogram machine down there. Denise was doing her consultations in that room, and today is OB day. After Scott and I finished up with the few non-OB patients, we went in to Denise's room and watched the ultrasounds and dopplers being down. Grace was translating for Denise. They were basically just trying to determine age of the baby, as almost all of the women were there for the first time (for the pregnancy). Some were 37 weeks along, and it was their first visit.

Denise did full ultrasounds on the first four of her patients to get comfortable with the machine, and then decided to do just the consultations and dopplers. If the age was uncertain, she would do ultrasounds. By the time she'd done those first four, however, word had spread that one could see one's baby via the picture machine. Each patient after that requested an ultrasound.

I learned how use the doppler to get the baby's heart rate, and did that on a few patients. One mother was having twins and didn't know it. Till today, that is. Via the ultrasound, Denise found a second baby alive and well. The mother looked pretty happy. :) Also developed a couple more x-ray films, although I did one upside down. Lol

Watched Defiance (with Daniel Craig) tonight. Based on a true story during WWII. It's pretty violent, got a bit of language, and some sexual innuendo, but beyond that, it was a decent movie. I think I liked it, which was surprising. It was a bit thought-provoking.

Okay, it's late. I'm really just journaling so I will stay awake while my iPod charges enough to get through the night. I think it's done enough now. :)

07.19.2010 - Monday

Oh Monday. Why must you come so often! You could at least take a day off once a month and do us all a favor!

All things considered, though, it wasn't that bad of a day. I went down to the clinic before breakfast and did some emailing and attempted to get a blog post up. That didn't work out so well, and I tried a couple more times during the course of the day without luck. Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be able to get a post up.

First order of business clinic-wise was the new laptop the clinic just got. For some reason, the screen was not turning on upon boot-up. Faith hooked it up to an external CRT monitor and I attempted to look up some answers to the problem. Before I started, however, I tried cold-booting the computer and putting it in sleep mode. Nothing made the screen turn on. I didn't see any easy fixes online, and I was kind of at my wits end. I'd seen some vague references to removing the battery or making sure the RAM was seated well, so I decided I would try both of those on a gamble just to see if they would help. I removed the battery and then removed and replaced both RAM sticks. Upon rebooting the computer, the screen worked fine. YAY! :)

After that, I helped Scott as he took one final look at the young lady with the abscess under her arm. The wound was looking wonderful, and he taped it up one last time before releasing her. Then it was on to general consultations the rest of the day. Nothing too terribly exciting, I'm afraid.

Leftovers for dinner, Joe, Grace, and I washed up the dishes. Went down and emailed for just a bit. The inverter was pretty low on juice, so I didn't stay on long. I basically just downloaded all my mail, then turned off the power. Grace and Betsy came along and asked me to run to the bakery with them so they wouldn't have to walk in the dark. I obliged them and then went back to the clinic and wrote a couple of emails. Before I went back up to the house, I turned the power back on and sent them. Tomorrow, I'll probably go down before breakfast again and write some more emails and try to get that silly blog post up.

I found that quote from C.S. Lewis today. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” That. . . that is a fascinating quote. Definitely going up on my Facebook status tomorrow. I believe the quote is from Lewis' book, The Weight of Glory.

I also picked Scott's brain for Air Force/medical info. Found out that I would only owe the Air Force 4 years of service, not 4 active and 4 inactive like I previously thought. Also, my residency (which would include my general surgery licsensing), would be included in the 4 years I spend with the Air Force. Upon completion of medical school, I'd automatically be a Captain, and often about half way through the time commitment, you receive a promotion as the Air Force tries to entice you to stay on. Scott finished up as a Major. Sounds pretty good to me! :) I should check on pay rates for those ranks. Also, I need to ask Scott if you are paid full wages while attending medical school (I imagine you are) and what/how internships factor into the whole thing. I think that internships are part of the residency, but I'm not totally sure.

07.18.2010 - Sunday

You'll notice that I changed the background to the blog. I did that because when I copied and pasted journal entries, they were not showing up properly. Changing the background appears to have fixed the problem. :-D

Also, I've posted several times in a row. I'm basically just doing a blog entry per day of my journal. Make sure you read them all! :-D

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Apparently I was too tired yesterday to journal. We went to the beach and spent several hours there. It was fairly fun, expect for the always annoying sand and icky salty feeling after swimming. Grace, Betsy, and I snorkeled for a while, looking at the coral about 100 yards off the shore. That was fun, although after an hour my ankles started to get rather tired. Steve got us fish from the restaurant on the beach. Two fish, 10 banan-pase, and 8 bucks. It fed all of us there at the beach: Scott, Denise, Chalice, Mikayla, Joseph, Steve, Grace, Betsy, and myself. Faith stayed home to watch the preemies and to cook us dinner – enchiladas!

I don't remember much of what happened after dinner last night, so I'm just guessing I was a little tired.

I finished the Tom Clancy novel that I was reading today. I immediately started in on a book by Gavin Menzies called 1421: The Year China Discovered America. It is, so far, a fascinating book. It details how many of the maps that Europeans had when they started charting the world had items on them that were not yet discovered by them. Gavin is laying out a fairly clear history (as much of one as there can be, since much of Chinese History was destroyed by a Chinese Dynasty) of the late 1300s and the early 1400s, and the empire that Zhu Dhi built for himself. Gavin claims that the Chinese charted the entire world, basically, and first discovered America. It's a mind boggling and thought provoking book that requires one to completely leave behind the commonly accepted history of the West.

Steve got two calls this morning right before church that requested an ambulance pick up for a woman in hard labor. Grace, Denise, and I headed down to the hospital so that we could help/observe with one of the births while another doctor (Felix) did the other. Steve was only able to find one of the women, and brought her to the hospital before heading off to church where the rest of the group already was. After realizing that only one women was going to be at the hospital and making sure Dr. Felix was there to handle it, Grace, Denise, and I went on to church ourselves. Apparently the message this morning was a bit . . . non-cohesive. I wouldn't know, of course. I was reading 2 Chronicles 6, where Solomon prays for God to kind of be centralized in the temple they were building, and that every time someone humbled themselves and prayed at/towards the temple, that God would hear. God answers him in chapter 7 with the familiar, “If my people, called by My name, humble themselves and pray . . . “. I found It interesting that no where did God say they had to pray towards the temple, be at the temple, or really do anything with the temple. That was, of course, on a cursory glance. I shall continue looking at and studying the passage.

Watched the last session of the Truth Project tonight: Community. One thing stuck out to me quite strongly. It was something that C.S. Lewis said. “You have never met a mere mortal. Every human is a soul either horribly monstrous or eternally splendid.” That is not quite the wording. . . I shall have to look that up tomorrow when I have internet. Anyways, the idea that I have never met a mere mortal, that every person I have come in contact with is an eternal soul is just earth-shattering. How often do I treat people like scum? How often do I ignore the needy, the outcast, the ones that don't fit my ideas of acceptable? And yet God says that His heart is with the needy, the poor, the outcast, and is against the proud, the afflictors, etc. How convicting. :p Another thing that was interesting? God is humble. Try that one on for size.

I think I'm falling in love with this Sibelius symphony. Symphony No 2. It's pretty tight. Tomorrow marks 2 weeks that I have been in Haiti. It partially feels like it's been every bit of two weeks if not longer, and partially that it's not been that long at all. I'm wondering how the next four weeks will be. Only one more day of being a teenager too. . .

07.16.2010 - Friday

This morning, Scott and Denise attempted a fluid tap of the young female that had a edemedous stomach. They drained about 200 ml from the bottom right quadrant of the abdomen, but unfortunately it only drained from a very local region, not the whole abdomen. There really isn't a whole lot more we can do, sadly.

After that procedure, Scott and I unpacked and packed the young female who had the abscess under her armpit. He stuck a Q-tip in the wound after unpacking it, and it came out coated with pure, red blood. This is good. :) Scott repacked the wound with gauze and told her to come back Monday so we could look at it again. Then it was consultations again the whole day until 2:00.

This evening we had movie night. We watched Invictus, a story about Nelson Mandella and the South Afrrican emancipation. It starred Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. I'm not a huge fan of feel-good sports movies, and this one was no exception. There were a few good lessons, such as forgiveness of anything and everything your friends or enemies throw at you and racial equality, but beyond that, I did not really think the movie worth much. Of course, that forgiveness only comes from one place in the real world: Jesus Christ. So on that thought, the movie was a very excellent one. But beyond that, it really had no other redeeming qualities, although nothing was really “bad” per se. I'm just not a huge movie person at all. I guess I'm of the opinion that if a movie doesn't have a lot of good, biblical qualities, or has some strong allegories, then I'd just as soon not fill my mind with it. That is, of course, just my opinion. I generally don't condemn people who see lots of movies, although I will say that many people I know that watch a lot of movies would be much better off studying the Word of God instead. But I have my faults too, and I too do many things when I should be studying His Word instead.

I've felt a bit grouchy all day, which doesn't make me happy. I'm almost picking fights and getting irritated at people who have counter ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas often make perfect sense, which only compounds my irritation. Add to that the fact that I apparently got poison oak on my arms, and I'm not a happy camper. Oh well. Guess I'll take a shower and head to bed.

07.15.2010 - Thursday

Wow, long day. Got up early this morning to go down to the clinic with Scott so he could do some internet work before the day got going. I got out my phone and set my alarm so I could be ready to go at 7:00. Unfortunately, I forgot that I hadn't used my phone since I left New York, and so it was still on ETZ, an hour ahead of Haiti. This meant that when I set my alarm for 6:30, I really set it for 5:30. I didn't realize that til I was up and dressed and looked at my iPod, which said it was 5:45. Fail. I laid back down for about an hour before getting up again.

After breakfast, Faith, Grace, Scott, Denise, and I went down to the clinic. First order of the day was sonography. Since no one here knows how to use the sonogram, Scott and Denise experimented with it for a while. When they felt somewhat comfortable as to the workings of it, they brought in the first patient. Young female, maybe 25 years old? She looked basically like she was 10 months pregnant with a 12 pound baby. But. . . she wasn't pregnant. There is a ton of fluid in her abdominal cavity and upper thorax. Sonography didn't show much to the inexperienced eye, although Scott and Denise thought it might have been something with the liver, given that there was so much fluid. Lab tests showed no problems with the liver, however. Tomorrow there will be a fluid tap attempt made to drain some of the fluid off. Hopefully that will ease her pain and make it easier to diagnose her condition.

Second patient was an older man, 65 years old, who also had slight swelling. Again, nothing conclusive was discovered through the sonogram. Scott later did a consultation with the man and found out that he was a heavy drinker until last year. That fact, combined with the liver and kidney results that came back rather poor from the lab tests, led Scott to believe that the swelling might be due to liver degeneration.
After the sonographies, I stayed with Scott and Grace and listened in on consultations on 8 or 10 people. Oh, I forgot to mention that Scott also lanced an abscess on a older teenage female. It was under her armpit, likely caused by a sebaceous gland getting clogged. It was...yummy. :p Unfortunately with abscesses, it is very hard to numb it because of how deep it goes and how the abscess is formed. I think she was in a significant amount of pain. The rest of the day passed in relative peace with Scott and Grace and we stopped around 3:30 when we ran out of patients. I stayed in the office for another hour or so checking email, then decided to work on the sonogram. Earlier in the day, Scott had expressed a desire to see if we could connect the sonogram to a computer in order to at least take pictures if not do a video feed to a radiologist or tech in the States. I worked on trying to get that set up for about an hour with no luck. The sonogram machine was really intended only to have an output to a larger screen, not to connect to a computer. The only thing I found online regarding connecting to a computer was the ability (with software) to download hi-resolution pictures to the computer. The software likely came with the unit when it was new, but who knows where that stuff is now.

We have 8 visitors not including the Wilson family. They are just staying the night. A fellow named Chuck has a ministry called Truth Ministries and he brings teams short term (often just a few days) to Haiti. They stayed last night at the Trueloves and staying tonight with us. Tomorrow, Steve will bring them down to Mole so they can fly out. That makes for a rather full house, and of course tonight would be my night for dish duty. Joe and I did the dishes (I found out he is 13, not 12) and Grace was kind enough to help out drying and putting them away. Doing dishes for 18 people is not a easy chore. :p We had pizza and coke tonight, which was soooo good. Yummy!!

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After dinner and dishes, Scott and I went down to the clinic so he could do a bit more computer work. Also took one of the couples that are here as guests so they could send an email or something too. I slept, jounaled, emailed, facebooked, and played boggle on my iPod. Quite a productive evening. :-D

The Wilson kids, Grace, Betsy, and I played Dutch Blitz again tonight. The Wilson kids are getting better at the game and hopefully will provide much competition.

Mmm...guess I should take a shower and head for bed.

An Experiment

So I'm rather tempted to just copy and paste my journal into a blog post. Since I journal every night, this would make blogging considerably easier, as I would not have to dedicate the time to coming down to the clinic and typing up a blog post. So...here goes. ;)

07.13.2010 - Tuesday

9:20PM

Steve and I put up fence on the west side of the compound today. In the morning, we got everything together and stretched out the chain-link, making sure it was long enough. Then Steve welded one end, and attached a board/metal tongue to the far end, attaching it to the truck winch and pulling it mostly tight. By then, it was time for lunch. After lunch, we continued working on the fence, getting it stretched as much as possible and then arc-welding it to the re-bar coming out of the concrete wall.

Once we got the fence up and welded at both ends, we called it good and packed up the welding tools. At some point, Steve will pour a couple of concrete posts along the fence and weld the fence to it there too. Steve then had me use a pick and break up an area of ground that was used to mix concrete and still had a layer of the material hardened on the ground. I have not used a pick in a long time, and I got worn out quite quickly. Steve and I contemplated on the practicality and usefulness of being short compared to the aesthetic-ness of being tall.

Around 3:15, Faith asked me if I could go down and look at one of their net books (an HP mini) that wasn't connecting to the internet. I worked on it for about an hour before the internet appeared to fail altogether. I will have to work on it again tomorrow, after the hospital people get done with it. Basically, MSN was installed and then un-installed along with Norton Anti-Virus. Windows Support indicated that there is often something called “SYMTDI” that needs to be deleted from the registry before the internet will work. I could not locate that file, and so am attempting to look for other things that are wrong. So far, the only thing I can see is that the DHCP Client and WZC don't automatically start upon Windows start-up. . . but even when I turn them to automatic and turn them on, it still won't connect. But at that point the internet started to get flaky. I will go back tomorrow and finish up on them. If I have time, that is, because the Wilson's are coming tomorrow, and I don't know if I will have time to actually get anything done.

We played Poker tonight. I decided to go all in on a two pair jack high, and actually won the pot! I finished with 240, and Faith was in second (she folded on the last hand) with 168. I was pretty excited and giggly for a while after that. Lol

07.14.2010 - Wednesday

7:50 PM

Today was a pretty decent day. :) In the morning, after breakfast and getting dressed, I went down to the clinic and worked a bit more on the HP Mini. It's weird. Sometimes I'll boot it up and the DHCP client won't start automatically and so the computer won't connect to the internet. Upon starting the Client manually, the Mini connected to the network and everything was fine. . . except for the fact that Internet Explorer would not open about 70% of the time. The DHCP Client started automatically about half the time, and some of those times IE would open too. I'm really not sure what else to do with it now. If it was my computer, I'd probably do a repair reinstall and see if that helped anything. But it is not my computer, and since it's refurbished, I don't even know if it has the root directory that contains the reinstall or repair files, so . . .

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9:15PM

About 10:30, I stopped working on the net books and came back up to the house to get ready to go with Steve. We were going to pick up the Wilson family from Mole St. Nicholas. They were being flown in by MAF to the airstrip down there. We left at 11:00 and got down to the airstrip around 12:30 or so. Since the flight was not expected to come in until around 1:30, we went to the end of the airstrip and a little past it to the ocean. There was an incredible gale coming in off the water, and the waves were all white-capped. It was pretty awesome. Hard to hear someone talk though. After we stood there for a bit, we went back up to the airstrip to wait for the plane. Steve and I talked for a while about Catholicism and the problems and non-problems with it. I hadn't thought about it, but the early church, from the 4^th century onwards, was basically Catholic. There was no other 'Church' of the time. If you came to Christ from the 4^th century at least until the Eastern Orthodox Church was established, you very likely came to Him within the Catholic church. That was something I'd never thought about before. We also discussed (on the drive down, really) whether God is in control of the world, how we define Evil when perhaps to God it is Good, defining 'control' and 'allowance', etc. It was an interesting conversation that leaves me somehow eager to return to the States and discuss it again with Mrs. H. We've had some good conversations, and I would be interested in again pursuing the debate.

Plane got in on/around time, and we got the Wilson family loaded up. There are two girls and one boy in the family. Chalice is 16, Mikayla is 14, and Joe is. . . 12? I think. Mr and Mrs Wilson are both doctors. Mrs Wilson and her two daughters rode up front with Steve and Joe and Scott rode on the top of the truck while I rode on the bumper. After 45 minutes or so, Scott came down on the bumper with me and Joe moved inside the back of the truck. Scott and I talked for quite a while, discussing everything from our Testimonies to my appendectomy.

Tomorrow I am hoping to work with Scott in the clinic. We'll see how that goes.

A little while after we got back from Mole, I went down to the clinic to get my net book that I'd left down there and to check and return emails. After a while Scott and Steve came down. Steve gave Scott a tour of the clinic. The Wilsons have been here before, but Scott wanted a refresher on where things were. After the tour, Scott came and sat down in the office with me to work on the computer for a bit. We spent a fair amount of time there before a storm moved in and Scott lost the signal on his internet. Grace came down about that time with a couple of unbrellas for us. Turned out we didn't need them, as the rain let up enough for us to walk back to the house in relative peace.

The Wilsons brought a basketball, and we ended up playing some for a while. It rained after we'd been out there for half an hour, and while the rest of the young people kept playing with the ball, I stepped under a covered porch, as I don't much like rain and wetness. :p People apparently got their fair share of rain, and when the storm had passed over, everyone came inside. Spoons, Mafia, and Dutch Blitz was played until 8:30 or so, at which point the Wilsons went to their house (the Byer's old house) and to take showers and hit the sack. I'm meeting Scott at 7:00 tomorrow to go down to the clinic so he can work on his computer a bit more before the morning rush starts. Speaking of which, I should go to bed . . .

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So there you go! There is a taste of both my journal and a couple of days in the life of yours truly! Let me know if this is an okay blogging style, or if you would prefer something else. :)

- Josiah

A quick Update.

This is the first chance I've really had to post on my blog since I've gotten to Bombardopolis in NW Haiti. First things first...it's humid. A shower every night is not just a suggestion, it's a must if you want to feel anywhere close to clean.

Wednesday we left Port-Au-Prince for the 10 hour trip to Bombard. I spent about 3.5 hours in the back of the truck and the rest of the time crammed in the cab with 3 other people. Awesome trip, with things they call "roads" that would hardly pass for anything in the States.

The whole trip from Port to Bombard was done along the coast line, and most of it was dry and barren. Once we got to Bombard, however, it was a lot nicer and greener, primarily because of the elevation. We are up on a mountain, and it makes a huge difference.

Thursday and Friday were spent unloading medical supplies and re-stocking the clinic shelves with them. That was a bit hot, since the stock room is about 11 feet by 5 feet including the shelves that run around the perimeter of the room. It has no ventilation except for the door, and there were three of us in there. Friday afternoon I went with Steve to Beine-de-heine (an hours trip each way) to return home a woman and some of her friends/family from the hospital where she'd been brought two nights before to give birth. The brakes on the ambulance pretty much failed on the way there, so that was exciting. At some point, I think Steve and I are going to bleed the brakes. He is pretty sure that it was just the constant riding of the brakes as we went downhill that caused the brake fluid to not recirculate and get overheated, changing the composition of the fluid and making it ineffective. Hopefully just bleeding them and replacing the old fluid with new fluid will help. :)

I woke up this morning at 4:15, as I have every morning I've been here for some reason. This morning, however, I woke up to a recorded church service being played on some speakers quite loudly from some distance away. I recognized one of the songs "He Loves Me". Unfortunately, upon being woken up, I learned that I had a migraine, I think from tension in my neck. I basically couldn't move, and even then it hurt. I took some tension headache Excedrin and laid back down. I didn't go back to sleep until after breakfast, and even then did not sleep long. I finally got an awesome neck rub, and that relieved enough pressure on my neck that I was able to sleep for a few hours. My neck has been hurting the whole day, although not nearly as bad as it was this morning. I've taken 2 more Excedrin and a total of 1200 mg of Ibuprofen today just to keep the pain down. As long as I don't lean over, I don't black out or have too much pain. :j Hopefully I will feel better soon. Planning on moving to a new bed tonight though, since the one I was sleeping on is really really soft, and I don't think my back liked that. The new bed is quite a bit harder.

As I laid down mid-morning, I put in my earbuds and listened to a sermon by Matt Chandler entitled "The Art of Remembrance". Totally awesome sermon, and a must-listen to. Here is the link to download it if you are interested: http://denton.thevillagechurch.net/sermons?kw=Art+of+Remembrance&type=sermons&match=all.

We are taking care of two preemies right now. They were born yesterday, and are sooo cute! I held one of them for a while today, and it stopped crying immediately. :-D

Okay, now to try to respond to some emails before it's time for my birthday dinner! We are having homemade ravioli, italian creme cake (without the coconut), coke, popcorn, and watching a movie, Spartacus! :) Hopefully it will be a fun night.

Much love,
Josiah

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Bonjou!

I am currently sitting on my bed in the guest house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, testing out the internet connection that I should have for a couple of days while I am still in Port. 

I made it here safely, obviously, and have not died of heatstroke, although I must say I feel that I am languishing on my deathbed from the humidity. It's a bit...warm. It's relatively okay when the breeze is blowing though, which is a majority of the time so far. 

I have had an excellent time so far, having gone on a bit of a walk with the missionaries I'm staying with and having quite a nice chat with Steve (one of the missionaries) about several topics, including: the settling of this island by the Spanish and then the eventual take over by the French, the slave population and uprising here compared to what North America's slave population was like, Old Testament prophecies, CLEP tests, and the difference between America's rebellion and Haiti's slave rebellion. Hmm...run on sentence, I think. :) 

All that to say, I'm enjoying myself so far, and am looking forward to dinner! :) 

Pictures seem to be taking a very long time to upload, and I cannot even see forward progress...so I'm not sure if I'll be able to post or not..

- Josiah