With Man It Is Impossible
Julie Matthews is a partner of The Paradox who is currently serving in overseas medical missions at the Good Shepherd’s Fold Orphanage (GSF) in Jinja, Uganda. Below are stories of God’s faithfulness in her time overseas.I'd like to share some of the stresses of life over the past few days here in Uganda. I'm sharing because I want to explain what I have been learning and how God is using it to grow me!MARIA
Two little sweet children were brought to the GSF last week. Their mother had recently died and the father is unable to take care of them at this time. Maria is 1 year 4 months old. She is VERY malnourished and has a horrible cough. When we took her to the clinic they said she probably has tuberculosis. Although very common here, TB is not something you want to mess with! We knew right away that she was potentially very contagious and needed to be moved from the baby's home. Dayna, the other nurse, and I began to care for this poor little girls 24 hours a day. She slept in our rooms, we spent 5-6 hours a day just trying to get her to eat, we cleaned up many reusable soiled diapers! The hardest part was that no other children could be around Maria, so that meant one of us had to be in the house at all times with Maria. We have much needed help from a couple other missionaries, but it was definitely our full time job!
Were we exposed to TB? Maybe....hopefully not...please pray for us! She has officially been diagnosed and started on treatment. We have high hopes that she will be a happy healthy baby once we fatten her up and her treatment starts to work! Because it was impossible for either Dayna and I to be home at all time during the month she will be contagious, Maria was moved back into the baby home but in her own little isolation room.
CHLOEChloe is an amazing 12 year old girl here at GSF. She has a very joyful spunky personality. She also has asthma! She started having a bad asthma attack this week. We have everything we could need to treat her asthma though so we have been able to manage her here. However, this attack hit on an already busy day when I was the only nurse at GSF! Multiple breathing treatments done, an IV placed, multiple IV medications... medicine giving, reassessments done, brainstorming the next best thing to do when there was no improvement... it was a little hectic! It is definitely I different feel that my days in the ER where you have to have a doctors order for everything! Good thing I was paying attention anyways and (mostly) felt confident about what to do next. She is doing better but still receiving medicine! Luckily we had some time to goof around in-between treatments.Other quick glimpses into the week::: A youth team of 23 teenagers from FL arrived this week so minister to GSF and the surrounding villages.:: Katie, a missionary that lives with me, has had malaria this week and has been very sick.:: Another younger missionary has had some sort of bacterial infection this week.:: Ruth, the Ugandan nurse, was home for 5 days for her Easter break so we were down one nurse.:: The toddler house has been a continuous problems of malaria, and mumps.:: On wednesday I took our 4 children to monthly seizure clinic which takes about 4-5 hours.Ok, so you might get the picture by now... I was stressed and often overwhelmed this week! God has been stretching me and teaching my greatly throughout this time. Ultimately I have been reminded that we are not in control. Although we try and control every situation, never wanting to make one mistake, or miss one good idea, we can never be perfect! We can never make everything go exactly the way we want it to. This week it was medical problems that were weighing me down. Sometimes its making decisions about the wedding and my future...sometimes I try and control how certain conversation will go with family, friends, or co-workers. We will never have complete control, but God ALWAYS has control! If we just turn to him with every step, every decision, every anxiety, then He will help us carry that burden and direct us where to go next.We might feel like we can't survive one more hour, day, week, month...and we can't. Not alone at least. But with God, all things are possible.
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)
Julie is a member of the Monticello City Group.You can read this story and more on Julie’s personal blog here.