Changes and Decisions
Picture-My boy Yankuba after a bath.
When I arrived back on Gambian soil I found out that one of my team member had to leave the country due to a family emergency. She was quite a big part of our team and we immediately missed her absence. This brings me to my prayer request for all of you. For several months this year, the clinic I work at struggled financially. We were deep in debt and we spent many days fasting and praying for more support financially and personnel for our station. God provided for us financially and we are now in the green but we are still very short handed. We have, at the moment, 7 short termers who will stay between 6 months and 2 years and only 3 long termers. One of those long termers will leave by next summer. As important as short termers are to the work done here, having a team of mostly short termers is very challenging. Please help us pray for God to send 2 more doctors, another midwife, and station hosts who can also manage all the maintenance needed to keep our clinic and team running. We also have to make some decisions as to how the clinic will be run for the next months so we don’t overwork ourselves and burn out. I will let you all know updates as they develop.
Outside the upheaval in the clinic, I found it more difficult to settle back in than I expected. I said goodbye to a very precious German friend and started living on my own for a few weeks. I also caught a doosie of a head cold and found the heat and humidity extremely draining. However, 3 weeks in and I’m coming around and finding energy to go and visit friends in the village after my trip home. I find living alone nice and quiet but also somewhat boring. I’ve never lived on my own before, I’ve always had roommates or housemates or dorm-mates or whatever. Being bored alone makes me get out more and be active in the village. It’s nice how God uses different things to push us out of our comfort zones.
I want to thank you all again for your prayers for me and my teammates. As another request, please pray for the Ebola outbreak south of us and the 2 missionaries in the States recovering from it. Pray that a treatment for it will be developed and that education will go out for people to know when to report it and how to contain it. We trust the Lord as our Protector and Healer.
Until next time, In Him, Bekah