What is that you say?

Another blog from Liz ALREADY you say? Yes...shocking, I know!

We have now had patients on the ward since Wednesday. It is SO exciting! Although with the excitement brings the challengs of any new outreach. It is good the wards fill up slowly as the wards are plumb full of new nurses, new charge nurses, and new translators. I have spent lots of time praying for patience with all the "newness" around me. God has been so faitful and I can honestly say it is all Him!

Just to give you an example of the entertaining chaos...many of our translators do not speak very good english come to find out. Let me describe a situation between my friend Ali, a translator, and a granmother of a patient from earlier today:

Ali to translator: "Can you ask grandma what operation her grandson is having done."
Translator: blank stare
Ali: "What operation is the child having done?"
Translator: stare
Ali: "What did the boy come here for."
Translator: "Ah.." ...rambles on a bit to the grandma.
Ali: "So?" "What did the grandma say?"
Translator: "It will all be ok, I told the grandmother to not be afraid and to take courage."

Later on in the evening when I was in charge I told a translator to tell the new ones coming on that they are not to wear the blue nurse scrubs but the older, light blue ones. I then pointed at the scrubs a nurse had on for an example of what not to wear. They all nodded excitedly..."aha, yes". Five minutes later...in walks one with the blue nurse scrubs...haha.

So needless to say it is a work in progress. We really do have some amazing translators too and they are all so excited to help. But in the meantime...a large dose of patience and laughter is on order:)

Praise the Lord that He delights to use us in our weakness to show His power, Amen?

"But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor. 12:9-10

And that my friends, is the reason Mercy Ships is able to do what it does...cause it is actually not us making things happen, but God!