the Jesus in Atlanta.

This is what I don’t understand.  Rachel spends an entire chapter talking about how she felt the closest to Jesus in years working with orphans and widows in India.

I get that. I get what it’s like to rock Tanzanian orphans to sleep that rarely feel physical touch. I get what it’s like to take food and medicine to widows in mud huts.  I even get what it’s like to walk with a 17 year old HIV+ girl through the decision to place her son in a Haitian orphanage so that he would receive the treatment he needed.  I get how it feels to hold her while she weeps and watch a white lady take him away.

I can’t really say that Jesus was always on the forefront of my mind as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and my desire to help people eat and fight off disease and live another day was more often my focus.  But I get that part. The part about how Jesus is often seen among the least of these.

What I don’t get is why Rachel makes it sound like I have to be in one of those places to feel close to Jesus.  To feel like I can make a difference. To have a spiritual awakening. 

I think that’s crap.  I hope it is.

I know that the reformed theology which I’ve heard since the age of five, and finally began to grasp around seventeen plays a role.  I know that everything in life is spiritual.  That it’s all sacred.  That I can equally honor God working a 9 to 5 selling popsicles or serving in a developing country.  I’ve never struggled with those questions… probably because I was always the girl that wanted to live in the mud hut…but regardless…I get that part.

What I don’t understand is this feeling.  Why is it that I (or Rachel too in this case) must travel to Haiti or Tanzania or Honduras or India and work with the orphans or the widows or the dying to feel Jesus?

I don’t buy that.  I don’t believe it. But I do feel like it's true. 

In India I was introduced to the kingdom of heaven- not as is exists in some future state but as it exists in the here and now, where the hungry are fed with both physical and spiritual bread, where the sick are saved from both their diseases and their sins, where an illiterate widow taught me more about faith than any theologian ever could, and where children from the slums sing with God. In India, I learned that the gospel is still special.  Jesus still matters and can make a difference in people’s lives.

I don’t want to have to go to India to be reintroduced.  

I want the Jesus in Atlanta to still matter. 

that monkey book.

I've gotten so far away from writing over the last three years. Sometimes I am not sure who I have become or what happened to that nurse after she came home from working abroad for a few months. I miss her in a lot of ways.

I am learning that she is buried somewhere deep inside.

You may have heard all the rage about Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans. If you haven't heard of it you should just stop reading this post and order the book instead. I am 109 pages in and I could have written nearly every word myself. Other than attending a private Christian college most of what Rachel writes about is my life.

I am learning that keeping it all inside helps no one. Least of all me.

I started reading about Jesus last night. To be honest it isn't something I've really done since I lived on the small island of Hispaniola. Sure, I've read a few "Utmost for His Highest" posts and attend church on the regular. But really feeling like I know the Christ part of the "Christian" I claim? I couldn't even tell you how long it's been.

Rachel and I would be friends. She too thought she knew all the answers and from what I can tell so far she was overwhelmed by an Arab woman being murdered on public television following a gang rape...something about her being disloyal to her husband. Christianity says she is now in hell. Rachel saw the footage and it turned her angry. Angry and full of questions. I get easily angered by stuff like that. I always have. Over the years my unfocused anger has simply turned to apathy. And apathy to complete and utter indifference.

I wish that I knew what my reason was...that I could remember my Arab woman that made everything different. I don't.

Some of it comes from death I've seen. The poverty. Some from the fact that I just like my non-Christian friends a lot better than my Christian ones. Some of it is simply that I don't trust people and I don't trust God. Much of that is rooted in the chaos that left scars on my soul working in a Haitian hospital. Some of it is from watching my hospice patients die and in that moment wondering if their soul actually goes some place. Most of it is that somewhere in all of those messes I forgot about the man. The man that was God that came and loved and died. I know that if I can't believe in him and his mission then none of the rest of it matters anyway.

So I started reading about Jesus last night. Some of it was inspired by Rachel and her questions. Some of it is simply because my soul has been aching for a couple of weeks and I know that there must be something that can make it feel whole. Something more than lots of wine with the greatest girlfriends a gal could ask for.

Rachel says that her most honest answer to the question, "why are you a Christian?" is that she was born in the United States of America. As was I. I was born in the Bible Belt to phenomenal Christian parents who work in ministry, in the perfectly reformed church that knows the answers to all theological wonderings, to the middle class, straight, Caucasian, in 1985. I "won the cosmic lottery" as she calls it.

Unfortunately, that has been my honest answer to that question since October of 2010.

I realize that there is only one person who can possibly change my answer. His name is Jesus.

my thoughts about KONY

I’ve been wanting to write and felt so void of words. Finally a topic has presented itself that I cannot stand silent on. I offer no solution...only thoughts.



If you are on facebook you have already seen it. It’s taking social media by storm and millions of people will know who he is in little time. Even if they never watch the video.

While the KONY 2012 campaign has exploded the last few days several people are challenging the idea (though not really opposing, who could?). I must say that I agree with some of their concerns.

The financing is somewhat of a joke to me…many people are claiming that Invisible Children doesn’t have open or accountable records and therefore you shouldn’t given them your money. Most of the world lives on dollars a day, so if you want to give your dollars to this cause I think that’s great. Americans have more money than they know what to do with. Enough said.

The issue that really confuses and frustrates me once again is our American elitists attitude. IC needs to recognize that we MUST empower the African people to promote and produce justice & integrity in their leadership and social structure. We cannot do this for them. I don’t know how we do this exactly. But recognizing them for starters would help.

“…though President Museveni must be integral to any solution to this problem, I didn’t hear him mentioned once in the 30-minute video. I thought that this was a crucial omission. Invisible Children asked viewers to seek the engagement of American policymakers and celebrities, but – and this is a major red flag – it didn’t introduce them to the many Northern Ugandans already doing fantastic work both in their local communities and in the diaspora. It didn’t ask its viewers to seek diplomatic pressure on President Museveni’s administration….

And as far as President Museveni is concerned, my thoughts are these: if thousands of British children were being kidnapped from their towns each year and recruited into an army, you can bet that David Cameron would be facing some very, very serious questions in the Commons. You can bet that he would be grilled on why, years after the conflict began, there were still about a million of his citizens slowly dying in squalor in ill-equipped refugee camps. You can also bet that, after twenty-odd years of this happening on his watch, he wouldn’t still be running the country.”

This is what I’m talking about!? Instead of sending American troupes to hunt through the African bush when they probably don’t even know which snakes are poisonous, why aren’t we encouraging Ugandan leadership to do more. To be more.

Let me stop here and say that I am outraged that Kony continues on. I remember seeing the first IC video sitting on a floor with 30+ college students eight years ago and being completely outraged. If given the chance I would myself take a gun to Kony’s head but I cannot tell you how much I would rather hand the gun to a Ugandan. One who has lived in fear for decades. One who might have killed his own parents under Kony’s command. One whose face is now mutilated. We cannot understand or relate to this. And we are naïve if we even try.

This worries me even more…

“…the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter.

Amercian intervention isn’t always all “Tears of the Sun.” There are consequences and we must remember that! If Kony begins to feel more pressure from the USA I can’t imagine how things might change for his child army.

The problem with all these words is that I offer little solution. I am not saying that we shouldn’t support Invisible Children. I think that we should. However I don’t support the idea of sending Americans to Uganda or elsewhere to “fix things” and I wish that rather than trying to get in touch with Ryan Seacrest we were finding ways to support the struggling leadership in Eastern Africa.

As with most issues of injustice we can’t attack them guns blazing with tunnel vision. There is always more to consider. Especially when anything African is involved. Any amount of time spent on that continent will teach you that life isn’t and never was the way it is in the United States. We must support, promote and empower African people to have the courage to continue doing the right things.

Left Behind.

Last week I received an email from Save a Child's Heart, an NGO working in Haiti out of Israel. I had been in contact with them in October of 2010 as you can see below. According to the emails my friend Kensia will finally be receiving a life-saving heart surgery. I was under the impression that the entire case had been dropped with no one to follow up. I was wrong.



From: Jessica Scott
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:52 PM
To: Save a Childs Heart
Subject: Child in Haiti needing treatment

Hello Dawn,

My name is Jessica and I am a Registered Nurse currently working in Port-au-Prince, Haiti following the earthquake in January. I am an American here for 6 months helping to reorganize a hospital. I have come across a 15 year old girl named Kensia. She was evaluated by a retired Cardiothoracic surgeon volunteering here last month and has been determined to need an aortic valve replacement. I am not very experienced with hearts but here are some of his notes...

I have been looking for an organization such as yours for several weeks now and I wondered if this specific case is the kind of thing you take on. From what I have read and seen there is no heart surgery in Haiti at this time, so I have been seeking options in the US, Dominican, and elsewhere.


Thank you so much for your time,
Jessica Scott, RN
Hopital Adventiste de Haiti



On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Astrid Celestin wrote: you were cced.

Dear Dawn,

Below please find original email where you referred us Kensia.

Jessica, in the meantime, we obtained visas for Kensia and her mother, they should be traveling at the end of this month. The surgery is paid for...

Thanks,
Astrid and Emmeline


Praise God.

"Now this is the confidence that we have in Him..."

February 18th at 11:30 am: Brooke Beck wrote to me, "Yvens is home and it was all a success!!!" These were perhaps the most encouraging, utterly joyful words I have heard from Haiti since leaving on December 15th. It baffles me that while looking back at my blog posts from Haiti, I never mentioned this child. I started to blog about him in October...but wasn't ever able to finish. It's a long story, one that began for Brooke in February of 2010 when a then one year old baby came to HAH following a surgery for a congenital imperforated anus (there was no opening in his bottom for poop to come out when he was born). He had surgery that opened his bottom and a colostomy was placed for him to poop thru until this anus was patent. He would wait several months with his rectum being dilated (from what I understand) until the colostomy is able to be reversed and the child's digestive tract will function normally.

Due to the lack of qualified surgeons in Haiti, Brooke and I followed Yves (he was a twin raised along with a second brother by his mother who has moved to Port-au-Prince leaving her family in the countryside to be close to hospitals that could care for her son). Yves's dad had left the scene shortly after he realized that his son would have medical problems. Colostomy's are stinky, messing things to deal with in the cleanly America. Imagine having one on a baby that doesn't understand why his poop is coming out of his side. Imagine living in a tent with limited access to clean water. Imagine having no properly fitting colostomy bags (to collect the stool coming out). Imagine changing ABD pads 4-6 times a day to keep your child's skin from getting raw from leaking stomach acid. Imagine being completely dependent on two white girls who may leave the country at any time leaving you without a solution to your child's predicament. Imagine the stress of a single, jobless mother raising three boys under four in a city far from home. That's the story behind the story.

Brooke and I (but mostly Brooke) cared for this family for months. We gave them free diapers and ABD pads, cream and sometimes food. Brooke often took them groceries as they were living very close to the hopsital. We searched and searched for a surgeon coming that might be able to reverse the colostomy within the correct time frame.

In September Brooke and I were both out of the country. I was in the Dominican Republic on a break and Yves's mother brought him to the hospital. She was always very persistent and hopeful that someone might "fix" her baby...although Brooke and I assured her that we were looking and would contact her if ever a surgeon came available.

The week I was absent (and Brooke had changed jobs) a General Surgeon was at the hospital. He saw the child (without any history given) and decided that he could probably figure out how to operate on him. Colostomy reversals seem pretty basic to General Surgeons I guess...however, when your specialty is Trauma Surgery on adults you probably shouldn't touch a 2 year old's GI tract. Even in Haiti. (This is a common misconception in Haiti..."It's better to do something than nothing at all." NO. No, it's not, if you don't know what you're doing and you haven't even seen it since Residency!...but alas, that is another soap box).

Yvens was operated on, and it was thought to be a success. Another constant problem in Haiti is good follow up after surgery. This General Surgeon was there for a week, but after his departure we would have no General Surgeon coming for over a month. There would be no one to follow...other than me. An RN of 2.5 years.

I returned from the DR the day before the surgeon left. He explained his patient to me (that I knew quite well) and told me about the surgery. I was overwhelmed. I was so excited that the surgery was done and hopefully a success. But I was scared out of my mind that something would go wrong and I wouldn't have a doctor to fix it. He wasn't confident. He told me that the surgery had been difficult and he thought that the intestines would hold but he wasn't sure. He looked at me and said, "Jessica, it's either going to do fine or the intestines will tear and he will die, fast." The next morning, a Saturday I believe, the surgeon left.

Tuesday morning Yven's mother was there early. Before I even came downstairs. I ran into her in the hallway at about 6:45am and my plans for the day went out the window. She handed me a screaming baby with an open insicion in his side, red and warm, leaking stool. I almost lost it then and there. We had no doctors even qualified to assess such a case at the time. Shit. Literally. Shit everywhere. She saw how scared I was in my eyes. I didn't lie to her. This is really serious I told her. He needs surgery and he needs it now and I don't have a surgeon who can do it. I told her I'd try everything.

I was still pretty new to doing things on my own since Brooke's departure. I didn't have a lot of friends or connections in the city, though by blackberry was full of names I didn't know. I stood in the ER exam room with Yvens, his mother, and a translator and I stared at my phone. I prayed. I sent a massive text message to every medical contact in the blackberry. I didn't know any of the people.

"Does anyone know of a Pediatric Surgeon in Haiti? I need one immediately. I have a baby that will die within days."

I waited.

"Who is asking?" came the only reply.

"My name is Jessica and I'm an RN at the Adventist Hospital in Diquini."

"This is Heidi from MSF Carrefour (Doctors Without Borders not even a mile away from us). I have a Pediatric Surgeon who was assigned here but we can't really use her specialty. She is available and ready to work. She can come right away."

The next five days were a blur. The surgeon, Chandrika, my answer to prayer, came and assessed the child. Wanted to give him another 24hrs to see if the fistula would resolve on its own. When it didn't she came to our hopsital, in an unfamiliar OR with staff she'd never met and performed a difficult (because of the lesions) surgery that saved Yvens life. I stood in the OR and watched. She kept him from getting septic and dying. She was not able to repair the intestinal wall...there was too much damage... Instead she reopened the colostomy. This meant that he would need ANOTHER attempt at colostomy closure in three months, with likely no surgeon in the country to do it. But he was alive and healthy. Colostomy and all.


Since the end of December Brooke and I have been searching high and low for a Pediatric Surgeon that would come to Haiti for this one surgery. Seemed like a lofty aspiration, but we had to try. After all, our hospital almost killed this child and it was our obligation to see him through. We wrote emails to doctors and hospitals all over the country. We mentioned it when we were in the States and all to what seemed like dead ends.

On February 9th I got this gchat from Brooke:
Brooke: waiting to hear more but they (Yvens and family) are in Cange (at the PIH hospital) for the week and its looking good. Thanks for your help and will let you know...

On February 11th I got this email forwarded from Brooke:
Hi Brooke,
So Dr. Mooney and I saw Yvens and we will try to do his case either tomorrow or Friday. We sent for some lab work I will give her a call tomorrow once we get our schedule together.
I will keep you updated,
David

On February 12th this one from Brooke:
Yvens got his operation today. I have only talked with Fevil so I don't know all the details...but wow...a year later it is happening!!

And on February 13th:
Done over a year later...Yvens is home and it was all a success!!! VERY HAPPY...


1 John 5:14-15
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.