Baptism By Fire

Ok, this is exceptionally outdated. I wrote this in my journal and just haven't gotten around to typing it up. But this is how I got started working in the hospital.

My second Sabbath in Chad was quite memorable. I was walking to church, and it was fairly cool since it was still morning. As I came to the corner of the hospital where I turn to walk to the church, I saw some people with their large bull cow. These cows are some of the most miserable creatures I've ever seen. They're so gaunt, and they are what I imagine the seven cows representing famine in Pharoah's dream looked like.

An older man was telling a little boy (about 7 or 8 maybe) to get the cow. When the boy went to grab the rope, the cow got angry and started rushing the boy with his horn (the cows have huge, long horns). I watched in horror as the cow tossed the boy several feet in the air with his horns. The boy landed hard on the ground, and I'm really not sure how he managed not to get trampled. But somehow the boy scrambled away, and I ran over to check him out.

I didn't see any broken bones or wounds, but he was bleeding from his mouth. I frantically tried to motion for his family to carry him to the ER (Urgencie), but I think that they were in shock. I decided to run to get James, but I couldn't find him. Fortunately, by the time I finished looking for James, the family was taking the boy over to the hospital. I decided that there wasn't anything else that I could do, so I went on to church.

Church is kind of difficult here because I don't understand everything, but it's getting a lot better, especially now that I have a French hymnal and I'm learning more French. This particular Sabbath was more difficult though because in the middle of the service it started pouring down rain. So there was rain pounding the tin roof of the church, and it was almost deafening. All of us SMs had decided that on Sabbaths we would make lunch together and eat together after church. So we all went to the middle house and made egg sandwiches-- toasted bread, mayonnaise, scrambled eggs, and tomatoes. It was definitely interesting learning to cook
over a charcoal stove, but the food was amazing!

Once we were nice and full, we decided to play a game of Bible Bananagrams. That was so much fun, and it was really challenging to use only Bible words. In the middle of our second game, James came in. I was definitely surprised by his reason for coming. The hospital had been having trouble with one of the nurses not showing up to work, not doing his job, and giving patients wrong meds. Apparently, he had decided that he didn't want to come to work this Saturday, so James asked me if I would work his shift from 3 pm to 9 pm.

Needless to say, I was not very happy to have to work on Sabbath, and I was scared because there was so much I didn't know about how the hospital works. But I went. And I worked. It ended up not being that bad. It was definitely challenging and tiresome, but I think it was good for me. I think being thrown into work and out of my comfort zone was good for me because I was forced to learn fast. Maybe baptism by fire is the best way to go.