Kementian News, 10-1-07 Edition

 

Kementian News, 10-01-07 Edition

Howdy,

Its sunday and I've been here for just over two weeks. Well, I say I've been here, I spent the last week down in Brooke's Point so count it how you want.

The last week went by in a blur. Attempting to figure out how life works down in Brooke's, and then trying to understand the language down there. I hadn't even got Palawan down and then trying to throw Tagalog on top only made things worse. I did survive for those of you that were wondering...

Most of my time in Brooke's was occupied running around in the truck chasing stuff down for medical patients, picking up folks from Kementian to take to patients, running errands for Pastor (Kent George) working around the house, cleaning the Hilux, maintenance on the Hilux, etc.

Tuesday David Aguilar had gone out to work on a patient that had fallen and cut his had very badly. David took my radio and it had locked up on him so no one was able to talk to him, nor was he able to hear any of us. He was out of touch for nearly 5hrs. Long story short, the patient needed to get to the hospital as the sutures that David had weren't enough to hold the wound closed. Since he was lacking radio contact with us, he was going to have to hike out, the patient was very week due to blood loss, and catch a tricycle for the 20km trip to the hospital.

I'd taken off on the motorcycle to see if I could find him. After dinking around for 1.5hrs, I was able to find David and the patient on the trail. I was able to use the radio that I'd brought with me to reach Brooke's and have a truck come pick them up. Just about this time the sky started to darken up and look like rain. Now rain on a motorcycle doesn't normally bother me. The thing is the bike I was riding was 125cc little thing with no fairing and no windshield, I didn't have a helmet, I was wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip flops. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to wear when the skys about to let you have it.

Pretty soon I'm doing less then 30km/h trying to see ahead of me to dodge the pot holes. Then the bike decided I needed to switch to reserve on the fuel tank and died. So I flipped the valve and kicked it to restart. Nothing. 10min later, still nothing. I'd checked and re-checked everything to be it was right. It was. So after several prayers and a couple more kicks, she finally lit off. I made it back to the intersection of the National Highway, and two other roads that I don't know the name of, and the bike died again. This time it wasn't fuel but water getting between the spark plug and the wire. So I just pushed it the remaining 1km to the house. By the time I got there, I was wet enough that I would have been dryer had I jumped in a pool.

Talking with David, he said that he'd just about given up on everybody and lost faith that he was going to reach us, and he was honestly worried about the welfare of the patient, just when I showed up on the trail. He said had I showed up an 1.5hr earlier it wouldn't have had the impact that it did.

That 1.5hrs that I spent dinking around trying to find the right spot to look for him was by God's plan. Then the bike dying on me helped forced me to get beyond my mechanical abilities and to trust simply in the Lord and Him getting me home. God also blessed me with a smile when I was most frustrated about the bike. I couldn't help but laugh. Here I am sitting on a dead bike that won't start even though I know its mechanically fine, in the pouring rain, and all I can do is laugh.

They got the patient to the hospital, got his hand sutured up, got a blood smear for david, confiremed he had malaria, and got him home to bed for some rest.

Everything worked out like it was supposed to. Not according to our plan, but according to God's.

God is still working in each of our lives in a very real manner

I pray that each and everyone of you may experience this as well.

Sunday evening, after the wind had been howling all day, the wind ever so kindly took the ridge cap off of our thatch roof. This allowed a hole about 16ft long and 5in wide to run the width of our hut. With more rain in the wind, we hunted down a tarp and managed to convince it to stay on the roof covering that hole.

I'm told that someone is supposed to be coming up sometime to replace our entier roof. The kicker is, nobody knows when exactly they are coming. So for now we will make do with a tarp and hope the rest of the roof stays put!

God bless

Nathan