Today's reading is entitled "All efforts of Worth and Excellence are difficult". The passage is Matthew 7: 13-14 which says: "Enter by the narrow gate.........because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life......"
This devotional talks to me about how hard it is to live for Christ. We seem to think that when we become a Christian, we will be exempt from major difficulties and live the life of a privileged person. And then.....at least for me.....I am surprised....over and over....when difficulties come and the pressure is great!!! And so many times my first desire is to want to run and find a place that is easier and less is required of me..... Oswald Chambers states: "If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all efforts of worth and excellence are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but its difficulty does not make us faint and cave in—it stirs us up to overcome. Do we appreciate the miraculous salvation of Jesus Christ enough to be our utmost for His highest—our best for His glory?"
The next step in my journey......Pleiku.....was going to stretch me far more than I had been before.
While reflecting on the steps that brought me there, I see the opportunities that were placed in my path and how one event of learning and growing prepared me for the next step. This is now so evident to me, how God prepared me for the different places that I worked in Vietnam. I started my overseas journey at Hoa Khanh Children's Hospital at the clinic and in the hospital teaching the staff about infant and baby care. We would meet twice weekly and talk and practice suctioning techniques, CPR, feeding techniques, positioning the babies for safety and so on. I enjoyed those times and it gave me a chance to bond with the staff.
After the April, 1972 north Vietnamese offensive into Quang Tri, thousands of refugees flooded south to Danang. I had just returned from visiting my family in the USA. Knowing that there was going to be an increased need for health care, I returned to Vietnam. I also loved working and living there. My responsibilities had changed to include outpatient clinic services in the morning at the hospital followed by mobile afternoon clinics 5 days a week in the area behind the hospital that had been a Marine base. It was now full of refugees. In the evenings I shared call with the other nurses so the doctors could have time to sleep. Generally we were working and on call 36 hours and then had 12 hours rest. It was a very busy time but one that caused us to hone our skills to meet the new challenges.
Working as a supervisor in the hospital allowed me to learn from the doctors and begin to build skills in medical triage and treatment of disease like pneumonia, burns, diarrhea, plague, diphtheria, anemia, rabies and others. Next I worked in the clinic after one of the American nurses had left. I worked with a young medical intern from California for several months, Dr. Richard Johnson. Since he was still studying, we called him, "Almost". Almost a doctor. He was bright and kind and loved to teach and I grew in my skills with his mentoring. Finally, moving to a roving clinic within this large refugee camp, giving immunizations, evaluating and treating the illnesses and sending those children that need further care back to our hospital for admission gave me the confidence to work on my own. These roving clinics had to abruptly cease after a grenade was thrown into the area I was going to but was late that day.
Even though I was not aware this preparation was for the future, God was providing it for me to get ready. Then He moved me to Pleiku. The local hospital did not want to treat the leprosy patients for fear of contracting the disease. The leprosy center was outside of town.....had no electricity, nor running water. It was small but met the needs of a significant number of leprosy patients in the area. The nurse who visited the 26 villages during the month provided the ongoing leprosy treatment medications to the patients, evaluated new cases, treated illnesses and then brought those that needed inpatient care back to the center for treatment as necessary. We served this population and treated many similar disease that I'd seen in Danang but also tetanus, malaria, and many bone infections from the leprosy. We also had patients that self mutilated because they didn't want to return home to the ostracism they would face in their villages. If you accepted treatment for leprosy, you then were an outcast from your family and village. Sometimes the wife and children would go with the patient but not always. So some thought it was better to have a need for treatment and stay in the leprosy center than go home.
All of the staff at the center were leprosy patients too. All but one were Jarai tribesmen (one of the primary ethnic minorities found in the central highlands). The pharmacist was Vietnamese. Even the cook who prepared all the food for the inpatients was a patient himself. The staff would care for the patients overnight. We were not allowed to be this far out of town after dark. I just was not safe.
Each evening as we went home we would stop by a village, sing a song to draw a group and then one of the workers would tell a Bible story using a flip chart of pictures. I remember standing in this village one evening and thinking how I had wanted to be a singer.....I had actually prayed as a child that people would want to come and hear me sing and that I would have the voice that stirred listeners......and I started to smile.....I was singing.....and drawing a crowd......in this far away village in the central highlands of Vietnam....and I figured God has a good sense of humor..... God had answered my prayer.....just not as I had expected.
My routine was.....get up in the morning, after breakfast, around 7:30, push our little car around the compound until we could pop the clutch and it would start......spend the day at the leprosy center.....learning language, teaching nursing, treating the patients, leave around 5pm, stop by a village for the Bible teaching and perhaps to visit someone too sick to come to the center for help, go home and have dinner with my two housemates and anywhere from two to four Jarai Bible school students...so the dinnertime was also in the local Jarai language. I would sit at the table.....and daydream because by that time of evening, I was really not ready to continue to struggle to listen to the language. Sometimes I was caught because on of the students liked to quiz me on what I understood and I was usually incorrect which made for laughter. I would go to my room, play my one song on the guitar, exercise and finally go to bed.
Weekends were different....Saturday was a day off from the leprosy center...usually.....I would bake, relax and visit the other families that were living on the compound. Sunday was a 3 hour church service...in Jarai, of course, and again a time of reflection for me since I understood so little.
Well, one evening after I have been there for several months we were stopping to visit a sick person after work. Dawn, the other nurse, asked me to come in with her and I chose to stay in the car. I was finding the isolation so difficult.....my frustration with lack of language skills beyond medical words.....the lack of avenues for fun and relaxation.....I was no longer afraid of leprosy.....not any longer believing I would catch it and have to stay forever.......but just missing friendship with others...
I spent most of my days alone at the center....and felt isolated even at our home.....and didn't want to be a burden for the married families.....so terribly lonely......and I remember beginning to cry and pleading with God to fill this loneliness.....telling Him I wanted to get married and have children......and how could I in this place. I believed with all my heart that this was where I was supposed to be but that didn't make it any easier this evening......and finally I was pleading for God to take this agony away or maybe I couldn't stay here....... I had regained my composure before Dawn and the tribesmen returned to the car and so felt my sadness would remain a secret....between me and God....and He knew my heart.
It wasn't many weeks from that evening when God answered this prayer.....but again not as I had expected. We had the wife of one of the patients staying in town because she was near the end of her pregnancy. She had delivered a child, we were told, last year and the baby had died. In fact, she had delivered twins the year before and had left them out in the forest since there was great fear of multiple births and a belief that if you kept them, the evil spirits would cause problems for your village....so this was why she had left her children in the forest to die. This year she wanted to make sure her baby would live and be healthy so stayed in closer to town. I remember palpating her abdomen to see the position of the baby and thinking how I really didn't spend enough time in obstetrics to be able to do this.....all I felt were feet......so didn't know how the baby was lying..... When she was close to term she was staying nearby and we went to church together.......during the service I looked over at her and noted she was perspiring profusely. I asked her if she was ok and she said.....she thought the baby was ready to come. I didn't have a car but the missionary, John Hall, had his car at the church. The problem was he was helping with communion. I watched her for a moment and thought she would have the baby on the front seat of church if we waited. So I got up and asked John for his keys to take her to the hospital. He wasn't going to have me drive his car.....so he went with us. We took her to the hospital....she didn't have leprosy...her husband did.....and I went back to the house to get some things for the baby. When we returned to the hospital we found her and her husband in a room all alone. She was lying in bed and he was sitting with her. Across the room, uncovered on another bed were three little boys. She had delivered triplets! I was thrilled......also pleased that I wasn't so inept that when I felt feet all over her abdomen, I was right.....but then the reality that she was across the room, covered with a light blanket and not caring for her babies settled in. I covered the boys and asked her what was the problem. She said she couldn't keep the babies. She couldn't take them home for fear of a calamity occurring in the village and she would be blamed. Then she offered the three tiny babies to me to keep. Almost immediately I reflected back on my prayer for a husband and children......and had much to think about. These babies were perfect and so sweet but I couldn't keep them. I also couldn't leave them to die of exposure at this hospital so I covered them up and went back to see what we had available to care for these tiny babies.
Now I know that I was totally surprised when we looked in the storeroom and found an working baby incubator. This had been given to the missionaries by the US military when they left Pleiku. I do not know why they had this in their supplies. We cleaned it up and put it in my room......turned it on to be warm for the babies and returned to the hospital. I thought the mother would have changed her mind and reached out to her babies but she didn't. She didn't even look at them when we took them home.
Now my schedule changed all the more. These tiny babies were able to fit lying across the bed.....all three in the incubator. I set an alarm and fed them every three hours around the clock. It would take about 30 minutes per baby to take maybe two ounces so I'd have a chance to sleep for an hour and a half before the feedings started again. We had the nurse, Lois Chandler, visiting from the Dalat mission school in Malaysia. She arrived a few days after I got these boys and she would get up and help feeding so we could get more sleep. After a week or so, the mother came to the house. She wanted to see the babies....and we talked to her about her testimony in the village. How can you say you believe that God is greater than all other spirits and yet be afraid to keep the gift of these babies for fear evil would come on the village. You see, these tribes people believed in God......the grandfather of the skies....they called Him. And they knew He was good....so said you don't need to keep Him happy, He is good......but the evil spirits... they were the cause of evil and you needed to appease them to keep them from bringing trouble on you and your village......and since most of the village didn't believe in following God.....if a tree were to fall and hurt someone.....any calamity.....it would be her fault.....because she kept these three boys. So we prayed together and asked God to give her the courage to stand up against the pressure of culture, trust in God's faithfulness and keep these babies.....trusting that God would also protect their village and all the people in it. Remember.....this was during war time and this was a big prayer of faith. She continued to come for several days and began feeding her babies and finally one day said, I will take these boys home to our village and trust God. And she and her husband did. I thought these boys should be named Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego....from the Bible story about the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel since their lives would be full of difficulty....she named the War, Har, and Hur.
When the boys were maybe 6 months old she came to the leprosy center with just two of them. One had died being given the antimalarial medication. He had choked on the medication as his dad administered it to him. She had the Viet Cong come and take her husband to carry ammunition for them as punishment for the death of the baby. The two remaining babies both had malaria. She was so pleased that God had answered her prayer and no calamity had occurred in the village. So thankful she had kept these babies. She was also well aware that the war was increasing and we would probably have to leave soon. She asked that I reconsider and take the two remaining babies with me when I left. I knew I couldn't. When we were evacuated she was still at the leprosy center with her infants....getting them the treatment for their malaria.
Reflecting back, I believe that each experience I had had up to this time was preparation for what was to come. I had started my overseas journey at Hoa Khanh Children's Hospital.....learning daily to be independent, to evaluate and treat patients with good results. This then prepared me for the leprosy center where there was no doctor....and very few doctors to call and petition for help.
I loved my time there....even tho it was difficult...... Each time I was faced with things I didn't know, I would pray and God would give me the resource to find the answer to the issue. The staff taught me so much about trusting in God's love....I never heard one complain about having leprosy and what this did to their lives.....they would pray for me......they were amazing. I was sad that I only stayed there for 15 months before we were evacuated to Saigon and eventually of the the country. They were wonderful people. I am eternally thankful that God blessed me with my time to live and grow there.
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