Paul and Becca

A book that every missionary EVERYONE should own…

As we have shared with some of you, our time of adjustment here has been filled with challenges. We are getting to the point where the honeymoon phase is over. (I am glad the honeymoon phase of our marriage lasted longer than 4 months.) Many things are working against our expectations. I say our expectations because we all know…that what we expect is often NOT what we find. So we are adjusting our expectations to fit them into what we have found here.

Upon leaving we thought that Paul would have no problem adjusting since a hospital and an OR is where he is accustomed to working. We thought the challenges would be more for me, a new way of cooking, a new way of raising a baby, no car to jump into and run to the nearest Target. But I have adjusted better than I thought and we quickly realized the hospital was different than hospitals we are used to

Each day we look for glimpses of hope and confirmation.

For me, I love the time I have with Hannah and Etagainu who helps in our home and with Nathan. I love the time of fellowship with the other missionaries. And I am looking forward to starting in a Bible Study with some of the local ladies who are in the area. And I love having Paul home every night and with only a 5 minute walking commute.

Paul sees hope in the residents. They clearly love the Lord. They are so thankful to have Paul as a leader, especially after being without an official general surgeon to commit to them. The residents have often told me how glad they are that we are here and that they know that it is a big challenge to move across the world, but they are thankful that we decided to come.

We see hope and confirmation in our marriage. We are closer now than ever. We have been best friends for a little over 5 years now, but because of the challenges we have faced together we have moved each other up a notch.

We are closer with the Lord. We are depending on Him more truly than we ever have before. Of course we have always been completely dependent on Him, but sometimes we don’t acknowledge the fact that every breath, every penny, every good thing comes from Him. We are after all His creation and everything belongs to Him. We are each sinners, some of us grasping by faith to the forgiveness given powerfully by the blood of the Son of God. God is a sovereign God and even in His own completeness or self-sufficiency He did not leave any of us alone.

Most of us have had times of darkness. Times when we wonder where God is in this whole thing. After several times of going through darkness myself, I learned to close my eyes, pray, and eventually when I opened my eyes I would notice glimpses of light. I learned through my God-given faith that He was still there.

A week ago, in a time of “darkness”, I emailed a friend who had been here in Soddo when we first got here. To encourage me, she quoted from “Streams in the Desert” it reminded me that someone prior to us had left this book on our book shelf. I have been reading this book ever since and this is the book I think everyone should have on their shelf. I want to leave a poem from a few days ago, that I have been reading every day since. It describes how Paul and I are feeling and the hope that we find in our Heavenly Creator.

“All-loving Father, sometimes we have walked under starless skies that dripped darkness like drenching rain. We despaired from the lack of light from the sun, moon, and stars. The gloomy darkness loomed above us as it if would last forever. And from the dark, there spoke no soothing voice to mend our broken hearts. We would gladly have welcomed even a wild clap of thunder, if only to break the torturing stillness of that mournfully depressing night.

Yet Your soft whisper of eternal love spoke more sweetly to our bruised and bleeding souls than any winds that breathe across a wind harp. It was Your “gentle whisper” that spoke to us. We were listening and we heard You, and then we looked and saw Your face, which was radiant with the light of Your love. And when we heard Your voice and saw Your face, new life returned to us, just as life returns to withered blossoms that drink the summer rain.”
~Streams of the Desert, November 24th

So know that each day we wake up to be encouraged again and find the strength from the Lord in our weaknesses and our longing for what was known and comfortable. Each day new life returns and we are reminded of God’s sovereignty and grace we are unworthy of. Each day we drink the summer rain as the cool mountain breeze surrounds us. And each day we are reminded of God’s love through each of you who pray for us and encourage us.

In case you thought I was going out of style over here…don’t worry.  We have…..

of course don’t look too close or you will see 2 very 80’s people on the sign.  But believe it or not a lot of people have heard of Dallas over here.  And even the rural people wear “normal” pants/skirts and shirts, instead of mumu’s.  (I thought every woman would wear mumu’s, I was relieved when I was wrong.)

Hey everyone,  well our time away was not exactly as planned.  Paul got sick with flu-like symptoms on day 2, so we came home on day 3 instead of day 6.  He is better now and we think it was a bad case of sinusitis, head ache, aches and pains, fever…all the fun stuff.  Nathan and I are fine and we are glad to be back.  Paul just went back to work this morning for the residents Bible Study.  It was good for him to rest some here before going back and over all we have been thankful for the time at home.

Arba Minch was beautiful, but it was much hotter there than here.  It is a good drop in elevation and more humid because of the lakes.  Of course, I didn’t notice the humidity after growing up in Houston.  We have some great pictures of our place and the lodge.  We have a good family one that will go out with our Christmas cards. 

We have a newsletter coming out next week.  If you are not already receiving the Gallbladder Gospel email us (paulandbecca@gmail.com) your mailing address and we will add you on.  It is the first ever Picture Edition!  Very Exciting!

Nathan having fun riding a little horse saddle in the lobby.

Where we stayed.  That was what our cabana looked like with a view of the mountains and lakes

Enjoying the coffee ceremony.  There coffee is so good!

This is Nathan enjoying our villa and all of the new things to cruise around.

By the way, if you are wondering why we don’t post more often…It is because of our incredibly slow dial up internet connection.  While posting this blog I…

made breakfast

ate breakfast

bought eggs (ok, these are delivered to our door)

put nathan down for a nap

did dishes

cut papaya

cleaned the bedroom

read your blogs

and edited pictures

Eref too saat means it is time for a rest!  We have been here three months and are feeling the weight of responsibility and cultural changes.  So we are going on a trip.  Saturday we are driving with a team that is here to Arbaminch (means 40 Lakes).  We are staying in a little villa until next Thursday.  All by ourselves, with nothing to do….it sounds so dreamy.  And we are already dreaming of all the things we could, but don’t have to do.  You can see pictures of Paradise Lodge here. 

I think in order to be able to stay on the mission field long term, we have to have a time of rest and rejuvination for ourselves.  When we live 2 football fields away from work and Paul is essentially always on-call it is difficult to get away, even at home.  This is a concept that is so different for Americans (myself included).  In America our private spaces are getting bigger (our cars, our bedroom, our closets, etc, etc) and our public spaces are getting smaller (our living rooms, our backyards…).  We are use to living our private lives where we wake up in the morning, get ready for work, leave out the garage, get into our car and drive to work…and when we get home enter our garage in our car and close the door before ever even getting outside.  And then back into our homes.  I had a missions professor describe this much more elequontly than I just did, but you get the idea…we are very private people.  I noticed this as Paul and I searched for apartments in Dallas a few years ago.  Everything newer had huge bathrooms, bedrooms and closets and the living room and dining room were squisshed into the left over space. 

And although we are in need of a rest and a get away, I am currently enjoying living in this tight community more than our own private lives.  Yesterday morning, I had to go to a meeting and I left Nathan asleep in his crib while I walked to the hospital.  Well, Etagainu (she watches Nathan in the afternoons) saw me and asked where Nathan was.  I told her and she gladly went and checked on him while I was gone.  It was nice to know someone wanted to help. And everyone helps each other so much.  Over and over again, I think of the saying, “It takes a village, to raise a child.”  It is so true!  So I am thankful for my village.

This weekend and next week, Paul and I are looking forward to some time to rest and just play with Nathan and be together.  He has been working so hard since we got here and he really is handling it all very well.  I don’t know how he handles the responsibility, but I try to support him in what ever way I can. (Love you, honey)

Thanks to all of you who pray for us, we need it.  And we are praying for you too; we know America isn’t any easier…it’s just a differnt kind of hard. 

On a different note:  I know all of you who voted for Nathan’s favorite new food are curious…It was Avacado!  He loves them!  I have been wanting him to try it since we got here and they are just now in season.  He eats a whole one before bed every night!  (Now they are smaller avacados than we are used to, if some of my dietitian-portion-control-queens are freaking out.)  But he loves, loves, loves it.  And I was so excited to introduce them to him.  It is so adorable to watch him feed himself, but he only gets to feed himself avacado if it is bath day!)  He also loves the grass and playing outside (as noted by the above picture).  We will have more pictures soon after our Eref too saat and plenty pics outside enjoying the “13 months of sunshine” of Ethiopia.

Well, we missed out on voting for the next American president, but we can’t miss this…One of my dad’s photos has been choosen by National Geographic as a finalist for the 2008 International Photo Contest.  It is a picture he took in Yellowstone of a bison running.  It made the top 30 Nature photos out of a total of over 18,000 pictures!  Congrats dad!!! 

So you have to cast my vote, because of this incredibly slow dial-up connection, I can’t seem to get to his picture.  Please vote here!  My dad is Stephen Mayeux and the picture is titled “Streaming”. 

I’ll let you know when he wins!

“My crib is this big!!!  And behind me you can see my new room color.  For those of you who think it looks pink…it is not.  Momma says it is a nice shade of mauve, but dad says there is no such color.  Let me know what you think.”   

 This is my bathtub!  I like to watch the birds outside take a bath in their tub too!

This is what my daddy really wanted to do to the computer after it got sick, but shhh don’t tell momma.

love you!

from Nathan who sends slobbery kisses.

It’s been another full week here at Soddo.

On the home front, we have a newly painted house. Our neon walls have been replaced with a nice adobe look. Becca has transformed the place into a home! One of the local carpenters finished a new crib for Nathan. Unlike the one we were using initially, this one has four sides. Since he is pulling to standing quite well now and our floors are concrete, we wanted to make sure he can’t get out. Becca gave the dimensions and the crib arrived. We have the infant equivalent of Alcatraz! He may be three years old before he can reach the top rail. It looks great, though. As my computer’s data card reader doesn’t work (see virus story below), I can’t add pictures at this time, but Becca will later this week.

On the work front, it was an emotionally challenging week with young patients. I have been taking care of three little guys, all of which with big problems. The first is a three year old boy with a big mass in his abdomen. I operated on him Monday and removed a soft-ball sized tumor from his lower abdomen. I won’t know for sure what it is until I get the pathology report but I’m very worried it is malignant. Two days later I was asked to biopsy a large tumor on a six year old boy’s face. It involved the cheek bone on the left side and caused his eye to be deviated upwards and was eating into the roots of his upper teeth. All we can hope to do is get a biopsy report that shows something treatable by medicine. The last little boy, only two and half years old, came in as an emergency with a very distended abdomen and a bowel obstruction. We took him to the operating room that night and I was surprised to find the most difficult and terrifying abdomen I’ve ever seen, due to incredible inflammation. Our working diagnosis is now tuberculosis. Forgive me, I need to use a little “surgeonese”. After opening the fascia, I was amazed to find the peritoneum to be over a centimeter thick and clearly caseating. Every bit of the bowel was firmly sealed in dense, inflammatory adhesions and two areas of the bowel were deserosalized just getting in. We lost about 200 ml of blood just getting this far, maybe a fifth of his blood volume. OK, translation for those who need it: it was very bad and if I had proceeded with the operation, especially in an environment without a real ICU and only one unit of blood, he would not have survive. We have since started him on tuberculosis medication and he is slowly improving. He is still in our prayers and needs your prayers as well!

Two days before coming to Ethiopia, I stupidly erased some important files on my computer and had to reformat my hard drive. In the struggle, I just forgot (again, stupidly) to redownload our anti-virus software. After getting to Ethiopia and to a 52 KB/sec dial-up connection, I have not yet downloaded the software. I’ve now contracted my first computer virus here and nearly lost everything on the computer. Thanks to a good friend back home (thanks, Kelly!!), and the grace of God, the computer is now working and (not as stupidly) has anti-virus software firmly installed. It only took the entire weekend to do…

Finally, to add a little excitement, we experienced a small electrical fire in the operating room building today. It seems the fuse box burst into flames. Praise be to the Lord, the fire did not damage the building structurally. As both the OR building and the ICU building have power coming through this box, we had no power to either building for most of the day. Again, thanks to the Lord, the guys were able to fix it and we have power now. One more prayer request… many of the buildings need some electrical work to prevent this from happening again.

OK, it’s bedtime here in Ethiopia. Another week awaits. We miss you all.

Paul

We cannot express our gratitude enough to all of you!  It is amazing how God provides for every little need.  Whether it be, spiritually, emotionally, financially or physically.  You have all blessed us so much!  Just a few examples of things that happened this week…

On Monday I laid down to sleep and was praying and for no reason specific I prayed that someone would email me that night just to say hi.  I don’t know why I prayed that specifically.  I wasn’t lonely, but sometimes it is nice to have someone from home say hi and how are you.  Well, the next morning I got an email from a friend who moved with her husband and 2 little kids to Morocco.  It was so great to hear from her and to lament with her about missing Target.  And to know she is praying for me as she faces challenges of a new culture. 

Another thing I miss is having non-stop conversations with other mothers about parenting and mostly getting our children to eat, sleep, play and yes, even poop.  It is not just a dietitian thing we all talk about our babies…P. O. O. P. I have been emailing several friends about advice now that Nathan has reached this stage of independence.  Together, over email we have solved our children’s’ problems with sippy cups, napping and pack n play time.  I do miss our Northpark play dates!  Nathan was such a good shopper.  So thank you to Diedra and Lauren for the across-the-seas advice!

Then this morning I was getting sad about not being able to go to our church’s Fall Festival tonight.  I was thinking about how this whole season of holidays will be extra difficult to be away from family and friends.  And then….someone came to my door with packages!  One of our friends from Baylor had told us she was going to send a few things, but I didn’t think it would get here for at least another week.  It was so great!  Nathan and I immediately sat on the kitchen floor to see what was inside.  It was filled with great things for the holidays…decorations, candy, a wind up santa that Nathan loves and candles.  It also had crystal light, seasoning packets and some lip gloss!  Thanks Diane!  It was so fun to get the packages.

These are just a few examples of how God has provided for us since being here.  We want to thank all of you for the support you have given us emotionally through encouragement, spiritually through praying, financially through giving and physically through candy!  Our hope is to encourage you as well and give back a portion of what you have given to us.  Please let us know how we can pray for you.  There are a lot of praying people who read our blog so feel free to comment requests / praises or email us at paulandbecca@gmail.com

Love to all, Becca and Paul