Preparing for Home

Tues. Aug. 17th

Nos amies,

Believe it or not, we are beginning the long trek home tomorrow. We leave for Mondou in the afternoon. We will be staying in a guest house there for the evening to avoid the possibility of a rain delay (rain delays on the dirt road from Bebalem to Mondou might cause us to miss the bus - very possible, they drop barricades across the road if it's too muddy!). So Thursday morning, we board a bus once again, headed north to N'Djamena. This time we all appear to be healthy and we have far fewer items, so we are trusting the going will be smooth (not that stray camels are thinking much about the quantity of our luggage...). We spend Thursday and Friday nights in N'Djamena giving us another chance to meet with the Propsts and AIM folk in that area. Finally, we begin our flights home at 1am Sunday morning, stopping in Tripoli, then London (where we get to spend the night!!!!) then Atlanta and Greensboro Monday evening. Please be in prayer - seems like our travels have been especially rough this summer.

Speaking of prayers - (moms, you may not want to read this part) we have had close encounters with both a viper and a scorpion this past week! The viper was a small black snake that was apparently trying to get in our kitchen - Tony pointed him out to me as we went outside the door. Thankfully, the door shut it out and I was able to grab Tony before he decided to poke it with a stick (what he does with anything interesting moving along the ground). The lady with her vegetables for sale just outside my door grabbed a stick and beat the snake to death (while shouting "Ne touches pas! Ne touches pas!). In gratefulness, I bought quite a bit from her that day! And just tonight, Andy noticed a tickling sensation on his toe while he was standing at the sink doing dishes. As he looked down, he noticed it was a scorpion crawling past his foot. Thankfully his quick movement back landed the creature on the floor without a sting. We got good photos of both. Andy says, "Five weeks and only one viper and one scorpion - that's not so bad!" (ok, so we're not counting the rats or mice..) But he was a little shaken up, and so was I.

The past couple days have been filled with preparing to go. African people in general believe in the good goodbye. That means taking our time and making sure everyone gets a chance to say what needs to be said. It has been very positive and rewarding. It is clear that God wanted us here this summer as we heard over and over again how encouraging our presence has been. It is a joy to be used by God to lift the spirits of our Christian brothers and sisters! Tonight the two hospital chaplains asked to visit so they could pray with us and for us. One of our requests concerned our return to America - continuing to listen to God despite the many distractions America offers. Andy read Mark 8:14-15 - the parable of the sower. It is easy for us to let the distractions of America choke out the word of God. So we pray as we head home to keep our eyes on God and our ears tuned to Him, no matter how crazy life gets!

One more story to share. A couple days ago, there was a young teen who was playing soccer with Drew when his foot was suddenly covered in blood. Drew called for me, as he tends to, so that I could do something about the blood. Well, when I had the boy raise his pant leg to see where the blood was coming from, I saw that he had a very large infected sore that had been irritated and was bleeding. I poured some water over it and washed the blood off the foot. I then headed to the house to ask Andy for some help since it was beyond my understanding. As Andy got ready to dress it with a clean bandage, he noticed another sore a little further up the leg - about 3 times the size. Claire, a nurse staying with Dr. Ann, asked the boy about other sores and we got to see two large sores on his other leg, too. Immediately I was struck by how impossible this seemed. How could such sores go untreated? Well, when a boy is living in Bebalem, but his mother lives with his stepfather in another town, and his father is dead, and he tends to wander, then sores go untreated. I thought I had found a man who could bring him to the clinic where I could help finance his care early this morning, but the boy took off early this morning to find his mother and the sores continue to fester. Arghhh. Please pray he returns. I am leaving some money with Claire with hopes that he does (it should cost less than $20 for complete care). If the sores get worse, he could become septic, the bone could become infected, many bad things may happen - this I know because Andy sees these patients. And sometimes it's too late.

Well, that's it for me today. We are excited to see all our friends and family soon - even as it is hard to leave - a place that was at first so hard to accept, that we now consider another piece of us. Dieu vous benie beaucoup. God bless you. And God bless Bebalem.

Cari