Left, Right, or Straight Ahead

Two days ago I had this incredibly selfish wish that I was ashamed of and wanted to not have: I wanted to spend time with someone who spoke English! Well I got my wish with mixed results, although there was still some Spanish occurances that left me embarrassed and frustrated. I left Baños early morning on a bus to Shell. There was a very nice Ecuadorian business man sitting next to me, the Spanish wasn´t flawless but it went okay. I even managed to get off at the right place! For the majority of you who haven´t rode the bus system in Ecuador it´s hard to find where you get off if its not a major stop or the end of the route. the buses really don´t stop they just kind of slow down. Where I needed to go was not a stop and I needed to be there at 8am...yeah right. I even got directions to the hospital that I was sure I understood. However after 15min of walking I came to the end of the road without a hospital. I asked someone else, got the correct directions but of course was rather late. Dr. Koleski was a very friendly and tolerant guy though (intelligent too). And he spoke English whenever the nurses or patients weren´t around. He let me ask a ton of questions and I followed him around the entire first day. I can´t even remember all the patients, but I learned a lot.

At night I stayed at the guest house ran by the hospital. there was this really cool swinging bridge I got to take to "work" over the gorge and creek. I´ll post pictures later... There was a family from Iowa staying in the house as well, hence more of my English speaking wish. Arles and Paul had been down here, I´m guessing 10 years ago for 3 years working for Aviation Mission Field with there young son (now 13) who was born here. Paul runs an airport and fixes planes. This mission flys to 200 different villages in the jungle...wow. Now they are back for 3 weeks working at la Casa de Faye orphanage with their son Luke and daughter Emily (9). The orphanage is building a bigger place on new land. I got to go see the existing one and play with the kids for all of 5 minutes. Half of them are handicap and would have been drowned in the jungle. Others are just left on the street.

Day two, surgery. Yup I got to scrub in for the first time ever. It was neat and fascinating but I preferred the patient contact with the ones that were awake more. They took out the gallbladder on a 12 year girl with gall stones. Thank you Dr. Graham for letting me watch. He also removed a occculsive cyst and sat in on a bunch of consultations. The neat thing about the doctors here is that they all talk to each other and get input on abnormal stuff. One guy who was sick went to the Shaman first and they held him over the fire to "cure" him. Ouch. He had some bad burns we looked at. Dr. Koleski said there was a lot of spiritual warfare here and I can see it. It was amazing to see some people travel 8 hours just to come to the hospital, however that´s usually after they´ve seen the Shaman and too often it´s too late.
I said the English speech was a mixed blessing...here´s the problem...I stayed in a gated community. They almost all did, it seemed wrong to be separated although I admit on one occasion with a crazy guy (the locals knew exactly who he was without me saying next to anything) I was really glad to lock the bridge gate behind me. That doesn´t mean I still wasn´t convicted about it. How do we speak love to these people when we live in there community with 8ft high chicken wire fences some with barb wire on top!

I went to say goodbye to Dr. Koleski and he started talking about God´s plan for us. He said it´s like when we write our name with our prominent hand that´s when we are working in God´s plan. When we write our name with our other hand that is how it feels when we are doing someone else plan even if it´s our plan. He went on to say it was his plan for me to go on to med school but I had to figure out what God wanted. It was nice to hear that I´d be good at it and did well with patients but I´m not sure. Everything seemed so laid out at the being of the summer and I had confirmation with the steps....yet med school has been coming up since 8th grade so who knows I might go back to school yet. Yup Mom and Dad, I know that´s what you always wanted...at least my degree would be getting used. I think it´s going to take a lot of prayer time first though. There´s some major obsticles that God could overcome but I´d have a hard time on my own. I´ll just commit to following.