I found my watch!  About 2 weeks ago, I lost my watch to the soil of Sudan.  The watch, which I received for my first Holy Communion when I was eight, is probably my oldest possession that is neither lost nor broken these days.  Losing it here came as a bummer, but after praying both for its appearance and for some perspective in my own heart, I became pretty okay by accepting that it’s just a possession and there are much greater tragedies in the world.  And as one of my Sudanese friends said: “it’s just a watch.  God will bring you another.”  So I was resolved to cry no more over this spilled milk.

This morning we had our usual clinical skills class in the AM hours, during which I could see some of the staff cutting the grass with these long machete-type blades.  Another of the Sudanese clinic staffers, a great guy named Deng, came into the class and asked if this happened to be the watch I lost weeks ago.  And in his hand was indeed my watch!  It had been beat up a little bit by footsteps and rain (it was found on the ground once the grass had been cut), and was also no longer working, but I was darn happy to have this special watch back.  Even if it never ticks again, I’m glad.

Though I don’t want to make it seem like losing my watch was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I do think it nicely illustrates the interesting relationship between prayer, trust in God, and His answer to our prayers.  I realize that God answers our prayers in curious ways sometimes.  As they say, He works in mysterious ways.  After spending a little while being bummed at losing my watch, I realized that this is all part of God’s plan, and to let it bum me out any longer would be a waste of this precious time I have here in Sudan.  And now, weeks later, having accepted losing it, it found its way back to me.  It was another reminder of how good it is to realize that God is indeed in the driver’s seat.  I worried about it, looked for it, prayed about it; but I finally was able to  put the matter to rest in my heart once I placed it in God’s hands.  And lo and behold, He brought it back to me.

So today is off to a good start.  We are all going to head off into town in a little bit to look around and enjoy the remainder of the afternoon.  So that’s all for now folks.  I hope you all have a good day as well.  John

(Stephanie Williams) For the last two weeks I’ve been doing a health teaching before prentals on sexually transmitted diseases. On the first day, I discussed it beforehand with my translator to see if I had to be culturally sensitive about any of the issues.

When I told him I was going to teach on STDs he cocked his head to one side and said, “But… there are no STDs in Sudan.” Dead silence.

Then it was my turn to be confused. I too cocked my head to one side and said, “Huh? Of course there are STDs. People have sex here don’t they?”

He shrugged as if to say I was wasting my time but agreed to translate for me all the same. So I forged ahead and taught them the signs and symptoms of the most common STDs, as well as the consequences of them.

Funny thing but over the last two weeks I’ve had a half dozen women tell me they have those symptoms… some have had them for years. They’ve been treated and have even brought their husbands in as well!

My translator no longer thinks Sudan is STD free zone.

(Tyler Paulson) I love Dut. He’s the main security guard here on the compound. He carries a rifle pretty much everywhere. I’ve decided he’s a good guy to be friends with.

Dut doesn’t speak a word of English, I speak about two dozen words of Dinka, so we can’t talk too much; but every time we see each other we shout each other’s name and share a high five, handshake, or shoulder pat and repeat every Dinka greeting I know multiple times.

Dut is originally from Malony, the village where we’ve been doing weekly mobile medical clinics. The first time we went out there, I told him I wanted to take his picture in the beautiful grass fields there. He told me to wait one moment and then he ran over to get his daughter so that I could take their picture together. He had that proud father look on his face as I snapped their photo and his daughter was absolutely beaming.

A father giving his daughter that much love and joy is rare in Dinka culture, so I instantly liked Dut. One day in heaven, when language barriers are no more, we’ll be able to talk about our summer here together and laugh about all the great times we had. I think there will be some good ones.

(Missy Nickerson) Me oh my!

So much has been going on here. We’ve seen over a hundred patients a day, averaging 140. That’s 140 patients split between two doctors…well sort of…the twins are 1 year med students but they have Caleb who’s a physician assistant who can answer any questions if they have any.

So I’m doing registration and as I like to know it Crowd Control. Which can most definitely get stressful at times but not as stressful as
HELPING DELIVER A BABY.

Haha. I helped another birth on Thursday. So the tally is 3. And by help I mean hand things to Stephanie and document the times and stuff so I can’t really claim helping deliver a baby but I kinda can = ]

The funny story of the delivery was, well, sometimes we have a hard time getting linen. People like to steal it because its nice for them to have and then sometimes people don’t want to wash them, so linen has been somewhat of a difficulty for us to find.  So Natali (the translator) and I are in the room with the mother in labor and Stephanie, the midwife.  The baby comes and we only have one towel for the baby which is just not enough for all of the fluid. So the mom doesn’t want to hold the child so the newborn is handed off to me. The baby is wrapped in this small towel and I’m holding it away from my body so as not to get blood on me.  So I call for linen and Daniel tries to find some and Natali, bless his heart is standing there, so I send him off to get linen. He comes back 3 minutes later and says no linen. So I, with a smile on my face, said Natali, I don’t want you to come back into this room unless you have linen. So he runs off.  So I’m waiting and waiting and eventually linen comes and I hold the baby closer and then I realize something, Natali isn’t back. So I say Natali? And he answers yes and sticks his head in the room.  Even though he saw linen enter the room, he still didn’t have any so he wasn’t going to come back into the room! Stephanie and I just laughed and laughed. It was classic. = ]

This Thursday was wild because I’m doing registration and then the baby comes so I help with that. After I take a quick shower to get the amniotic fluid off of me (might I say ew) and then have lunch and then back to registration, everything is going well! Everyone is being patient and registration is done at oh say 3 which is early for us. So I hop on over to my favorite place, the pharmacy, where Deng and Pretty are, and I start to help them deal out medicine when Marcos, one of the translators, comes and finds me and tells me a patient is shivering, which I knew meant convulsing because people with really bad malaria can have really bad convulsions. So I run out of the pharmacy and sure enough this young woman who had a 41.4 C fever is convulsing, so I yell for Caleb, the physians assistant, who starts an IV really quickly and gets Quinine. So as this is starting buckets of water starts pouring from the sky. So everything gets chaotic. We situate the young woman in one of the consultation rooms to get her out of the rain and then I hear commotion from the “waiting area” and I run out and everyone is pointing to a young child who is seriously convulsing. I rush him in to the first consultation room and the same thing, I.V. and quinine. Then I have to manage to get people out of the rain and its so loud because our roofs are metal and hectic. And as we like to say, welcome to Sudan

They both ended up being fine, just bad bouts of malaria but you can imagine it was a odd day of seeing such life and such hurt. Praying through it all.

A piece of Sudan life = ]