Someone pinch me please

Someone pinch me please. Sometimes I am still in awe of the job the Father has allowed me to do AND that I am in Kenya AND how we ended up here AND what we happened to escape because we are here. Basically, I am in AWE of the Father and how he orchestrates things when we are totally oblivious to His ways. I know that I have sent out numerous emails to everyone that keeps up with us but I figured I could also explain on here what has happened the past couple of months to our family.

Since we have been in our country of service in West Africa we have battled sickness after sickness or some crazy injury involving one of us. I will not go into all of them but lets just say there has been enough of them to cover the next 10 years of my life. :) Even though we have had some traumatic times the Father has been faithful and has affirmed our work in our town EVERY TIME something crazy went down. EVERY TIME!!! For example, one of the worst days we had on the field (the kind that makes you want to buy your airplane ticket home) the Father allowed us to lead one of our new friends to Him the very next day!! Another day that was really bad we received EIGHT care packages!!! Who receives 8 care packages in one day!?!? Another bad day we received a financial blessing and on another bad day we got our crate!!! There were smaller blessings throughout these times but these are big ones that jump into my head at first!!! We have no doubt that we are where we are supposed to be.

The first week of January we had our first volunteer team come out. Since that week, things just went down hill concerning Macy's health. When Brad left to get the team (my first time at home by myself with the girls) both girls were great....until they both started throwing up in the middle of the night. We had been sleeping in my bed all together because we had a girl movie night since Brad was gone. I ripped the sheets off of the bed and we all headed to their room to sleep after showering them off. The next morning I was crazy tired (whoever gets good rest sleeping beside a child needs to give me their secret because I never sleep good beside one of my girls!!!) and then noticed that the dog had chewed a hole in our egg-foam mattress that was on top of our not-so-comfortable mattress!!! ahhhhh!!! The girls did fine that day but Macy threw up more that night also!

Finally, Brad and the team get back and Brad comes down with a double ear infection..what in the world? The teams' trip to a village is delayed a day, but hey, the girls are back to normal. The teams leaves and Brad and one of the translators are exposed to bats while sleeping in a hut. This means automatic rabies shots even if you don't think you have been bitten. Great. (Here I owe a shout out to Fred's Pharmacy for making me give immunizations the past flu season!) We got the shots for Brad and I get to give them to him! Fun times!

A couple of weeks after this Macy began to complain about a hair in her throat. She would come up to me every 30 minutes or so and open her mouth for me to see if there was a hair in her mouth. After the 3rd day of her asking me and Brad this question, she started screaming LOUDLY saying her throat was hurting. At this point she could not even swallow her saliva. We were very concerned and after talking with our medical folks, we decided to get her to the closest Dr. that next morning. The doctor at the hospital we went to diagnosed her with Strep, however, I still believe to this day that it was not strep. There was no actual test done to verify it to be strep. Macy took the 10 day supply of amoxicillin but her eating habits never went back to normal.

Because she was not eating normal, Macy started drinking profusely (in my opinion) and would use the restroom every 30 minutes or so. She also started having horrific dreams for about 2 weeks and wet the bed for that time period also. I know that the dreams could have been caused by her malaria medicine (which we stopped and changed to Malarone) but I am convinced that spiritual warfare was taking place because of something I experienced myself. We upped the amount of time we spent in prayer and praying with the girls and over their room after they were asleep. At this point, Macy had lost a lot of weight and complained of not getting enough sleep at night. What four year old complains of not sleeping well at night?

We took her back to the hospital we originally took her to and they did another round of tests....urinalysis, CBC with diffs, and a stool analysis. Everything was fine. They said it was viral. Hmmmm.

After another week of this going on we headed to the capital to see the best Pediatric doctor there. She was wonderful and did everything in her power that she could do there. Again, all the tests came back normal and they sent us home. She believed Macy was just dealing with a fear of swallowing because of how bad her throat hurt (which is true now, we know).

We went back to our home, but nothing got any better. It finally accumulated to the day when Macy started screaming loudly again after eating a soft tortilla shell that food just kept getting stuck in her throat. After that, Macy and I were soon Kenya bound that next week.

Since being here in Kenya, Macy has seen several different kinds of doctors, from an ENT, Pediatric GI specialist and counselors. Macy had to have CT scan done when we first got here of her throat. Bless her heart, it was scary to her. She did a tremendous job but her little chin just quivered during the whole CT scan and crocodile tears rolled down her face during the procedure. I did everything I could not to break down right there in that room. I sang to her, talked to her, and prayed with her during this. (I am not sure how parents who have chronically sick children that need procedures like these done do it all the time. My heart goes out to them!) The next week Macy had an endoscopy done and we found out that Brad and Mara would be able to come and be with us the next day!! We were super excited because we did not expect them until the next week!! The endoscopy, though, revealed an esophageal erosion that had already began healing in Macy's esophagus and a couple of other inflamed areas. Her throat had at one time hurt her really bad...thus the fear now to swallow. She was placed on Nexium and will continue to take it for the next 6 weeks.

What a blessing it was for Brad and Mara to get out of West Africa when they did. If they had waited another week, they would have been stuck in our country of service because of the current coup there! The Father works in mysterious ways and it is always for the good of His children! I am torn though. I long to be back in our home and with our friends that we work with. I am happy that we are here but can't help but also feel guilty that others are there having to deal with the stress of the turmoil going on around them. The past 2 days I felt like a emotional basket case. Today I am better. Two nights ago I was struggling with all the emotions in my heart and finally just committed them to the Father. Like a wise friend said yesterday....I told the Father that night that as long as He gets glory from everything that has happened in our family's life recently, that it has been worth it.

That's really all there is to it. Whatever may come my way and my family's way, as long as the Lord receives glory, IT HAS BEEN WORTH IT.

Today we found out that all of Macy's biopsies came back normal. We are now set up to work with a family counselor to help us help Macy, and a little help for ourselves on the side. We will be here in Kenya for at least 2 more weeks. After that, who knows when we can get back into our country. We get to go to Zambia the latter part of April for 30 days so we may not get to return until after that. I will keep everyone updated!