Saturday, December 19, 2009

a snippit here

Hey guys,
6 days until Christmas. Today I will buy my stocking stuffers. I didn’t write a specific post this week, but here are some excerpts from emails to some friends about what’s been happening over here…

“We are getting ready for Christmas over here. Next week we have some days off, I am looking forward to being a bit more chillaxed! I am missing home, missing the cold weather that seems to go hand in hand with this “time of year”. I am sweating right now and it is 9am.”

“Our two families are getting ready to leave, both are headed back to Australia to meet up with the rest of their family to celebrate Christmas. Neither planned on going back that early but G*d made a way for it to happen. It is a quick change and will decrease our number from 27 to 20 for Christmas and the three weeks following until we go back to Perth.”

“The team is amazing, and G*d is abundantly full of grace. Each day women and babies are slapped in the face with injustice and somehow G*d puts us in the place at the moment to int*rcede practically with pr*yer or action.”

Okay, love you all. Happy Christmas!
Bekah

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Here’s the thing. G*od is really cool.

Okay, I have been thinking a lot about grieving lately. Learning how to do it. All of us need healing. I think grieving and healing are deeply connected. Grieving releases healing.

Yes, all of us need healing. Whoever who you are, your parents probably weren’t perfect, you have probably made mistakes, you have probably been rejected, you probably haven’t seen the character of G*od in the painful things you have walked through in life…

About the healing.

I’m not so good at the grieving part. I like to keep the peace. To feel the peace in my heart. Grieving offsets the feeling of balance I love to feel.

You know when you cut your finger, and if you suck hard enough or squeeze hard enough, the pain subsides. That is, until you let the blood rush back to your cut. For me, the blood is the grieving, I like to cut it off and slowly let it flow to the site of the cut and kind of control the pain that I feel. It is actually the blood that contains the healing agents for the open wound, the very thing I cut off. Or like cartilage, cartilage takes a long time to heal because it is less vascular. You know when people tear their meniscus it often has to be repaired by surgery because the healing would naturally take too long. The blood, the pain, is necessary.

So here is this for now. Maybe more later.

We had an excellent week at the hospital. I personally got to be in the labour ward, and it was awesome. I love life.

Bless you guys.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Hey guys!



This month, as a team, we welcomed 85 babies into the world.

G*od is working not only in the present moments, but also changing things for the future, a doctor gave his life to the L*ord! This doctor has begun joining us in our morning prayer times before we enter the wards to work.



Here is a bit of a testimony from my lovely co-leader, Melisa:



“Throughout the morning we had several difficult births but every new baby was full of life and strong. Then there was one little one who a student midwife at the hospital was having trouble delivering and I ran over to help her. The little one was turning blue and I knew we had to get him out quickly. After he was born, I put my hand directly on his chest to feel for his heartbeat and there was none, he was blue and limp…lifeless. So we moved into action to get him separated from the mama so that we could resuscitate him and we pra*yed like crazy and spoke out life over him. Then just before he was moved to be resuscitated one of the students exclaimed “He has a heartbeat but isn’t breathing”. After 2 of the girls resuscitated him and we continued to pr*ay and call on the name of J*sus, this new beautiful baby boy was breathing and alive and doing much better and before we left for the day he was breastfeeding with his mama in the postnatal ward… “ asante Yesu” his mama exclaimed with us. Praise the L*rd!”



We have now heading into our third month of life in Tanzania . Our schedule in the hospital is in full swing Mondays thru Thursdays. Fridays are set aside for assessments and teaching. Saturday and Sundays for rest and ch*urch.



Three times a week we meet together to inte*rcede for whatever G*od is saying. As a team we are on the journey to see the marriage of wor*ship and inter*cession. This week G*od put it on multiple people’s hearts to seek G*od in a child like way about the injustice women are entangled in daily. We jump roped, hop scotched and leap frogged to prepare our hearts. As people were reminded of songs from our childhood we shouted them out and danced around while also recording on the chalk board what G*od’s heart is. While we got G*od’s heart and perspective we also recorded the injustices we are seeing:

“No BP cuffs to recognize warning signs of pre-eclampsia (a condition of high BP in pregnancy)”

“Premature babies without incubators”

“Women delivering on their own”

We arranged the “injustices” in a circle and marched around them six times and the seventh time screamed prayers for justice. We closed the time by dancing upon these injustices. G*od is using these pr*ayers.



Christmas is approaching rapidly. We hung our stockings tonight on the windowsills. May you find deep joy in refocusing you and your family on the miracle of life that Je*sus has given us.



Feel free to email me back! Merry Christmas my friends!



bekah