This week I thought I'd give you a glimpse into one day of life here. Friday morning I was up around 6:30 to start the day. I dressed, made breakfast, had my devotions, and fed the cat. Then at 7:30 I walked over to the clinic. My clinic helper arrived the same time I did, so I unlocked the door and brought out firewood for the waiting patients to build a fire. I got a marker and numbered the hands of all the patients that had arrived so far, then I went into the clinic and made sure my medicines were ready for the day. (I precount and bag them with instructions, so I don't have to fix them for each individual patient as they come.) I continued numbering other patients as they arrived. Then around 8:15, Erick, a short term missionary, gave the clinic announcements and preached a gospel message. Then we started seeing patients. There were only ten patients that morning, a very small group, so we were done by 10am. The last two patients were two little girls from one of our church families. Their mother asked if we could use some strawberries and leaf lettuce (both rarities here). I said we would be delighted. She said that she was headed down to her garden and would bring some up later. So I offered to just come with her to her garden, so that she would not have to climb back up to our house.
We walked together to her garden, probably a 10-15 minute walk. Gardens here are huge -- about the size of a small field, and most people have three or four in different locations. I picked strawberries, and she cut leaf lettuce and peas. I loaded them all in a bilum (a string bag used to carry just about everything here) and headed back to my house.
When I reached my gate, Erick called to me. A man had come to the clinic for treatment. He had been struck on the head with a stick about 7am that morning. He is from a town several hours away, so he had left immediately and just arrived at 11am. We took him inside and cleaned up his head, shaving the area around the cut. Erick sewed it up with six stitches, while I assisted him. By the time we were finished with him, it was noon.
I came back to the house and wrote a prayer letter (which should hopefully go out sometime this week). Then about 2pm, I made lunch of pumpkin soup and grilled cheese. I think the only thing store bought was the cheese as the rest was purchased here in the bush or made from scratch. Next, it was time to head down to the church for the youth meeting. We had 20-30 teens attending. We played volleyball first (with a ball that American teens would discard as too flat and too old), then went inside for Bible quizzing and Bible study time. We are working through James, so the study and questions were from the second half of James 1. The youth meeting is being run by Erick and his wife Kara. Kara, however, had lost her voice, so I led the quizzing time.
After the youth meeting, it was time for fellowship. On Tuesday and Friday evenings, we go to a national home and hold a mini service, inviting those from the neighboring houses to come and hear the gospel. This particular night the fellowship was quite near the church. We packed nearly 50 people into the 8x12 main room of a national grass woven house. Of course, we were all sitting on the floor around a firepit with smouldering coals. It was raining by the time fellowship was over, so we had a rather wet, dark, 20 minute walk back home. It was about 8:45pm when we got home, so I made a sandwich for dinner and went to bed.
Obviously not all those things come up every day, but nothing was incredibly unusual either. It is just part of life and ministry in this village that I am thrilled to call my home.
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