blood and guts.

Well folks, the Lord has done an amazing thing in my life. He has soften my heart towards stitches. That's right...stitches....like the medical ones. I have never had stitches but I would cringe just thinking about them and look away and run when I saw someone with stitches (rude? maybe...). This week a boy from my house fell and got a pretty good gash in his forehead. It was bleeding pretty bad and the staff were a bit hesitant to jump in to help him because he is HIV positive. The started yelling for the nurse and she came running. She scooped him up and ran him to the clinic on site at BGate. While she was running she yells, "Paige! Come help me please!" So I followed her to the clinic thinking, "Like I am going to be any help...the only medical training I have had is a babysitters class through the Red Cross and that was like 6 years ago!" When I got to the clinic she handed off the boy to me and I just calmed him down while she got the stuff together to do stitches. The first thing I realized about this boy is that he was not crying. At all. He was a little shaken up and in a bit of a tizzy but he was not crying. He settled down pretty quick and I went in the other room to lay him on the bed so the nurse could put the stitches in. She asked me to hold him down while she put the stitches in. At this point I was probably in a worse mental state then this kid was. I am sitting there thinking, "I am going to pass out and this kid is going to be screaming....Lord please just miraculously heal this kid right now so I do not have to witness this!" As she started cleaning him up and began stitching him up I just kept talking trying to keep him (and myself) distracted. After the first stitch the nurse goes, "Paige, just look up! Its not that bad." So I did. And it really wasn't that bad. I even found it kind of interesting. I will tell you people, that was a work of the Lord. I have no doubt. Through THE WHOLE process of putting 3 stitches in, this kid just sat there. He didn't cry. He didn't move. He was just chillin...WHILE SOMEONE WAS SEWIN UP HIS HEAD!! Anther work of the Lord. That day he ended up pulling out all his stitches TWICE so the nurse had to put them in again TWICE. The nurse was not too happy with him.
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And while I am on the subject of medical stuff I will tell you about my experience with boils. FUN FUN. The Australian volunteer nurse joked with me for a long time about how she was going to get me to help her with some "blood and guts!" So, one morning she caught me and said, "Hey Paige! We have a few kids with boils, would you like to help me pop them?" While my mouth said, "Sure!" my mind went, "NO NO NO NO NO NO RUN AWAY FAST!!" This nurse is quite the character and was going on and on about how she loved popping boils. Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess. I will not get into all the gory details but I will just say this: it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I was pretty amazed with the human body and how a little bump could hold so much puss. The first one was successful but the second boy we looked has had a very deep boil and it had popped during school that day so it was already a mess. Again, I will resist getting into details but I walked away from that day pretty proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone a bit and getting into some blood and guts!

Today are the elections. Sadly, I was not on top of it so I did not vote.  I will say that it is very nice not having to see the annoying adds or get the random phone calls telling you who to vote for. This past Sunday in church we had a time of prayer for the US elections. At first I was a little confused because we are in Lesotho so why should it matter? But, the rest of the world really does watch the US to be the example in a way. So, who we choose to be our leader says a lot about our country. I just pray that whoever wins the elections will look to the Lord for guidance as he leads our country so that when people look at the US they might be able to see a glimpse of Christ. I will say that I did not pay attention AT ALL to election stuff this year because I knew I had missed my chance to vote. I encourage you all to vote today and be thankful for this wonderful right we are given.

peace and love.