Sierra Leone 2011!

I'm going back...and I can't wait!

Since I got back to the States in May things have been different. It's a good different, a challenging one. I love what I do here, but I found that I've left pieces of my American-Indonesian heart with the innocent little brown hearts I met aboard an ex-Dutch ferry boat. It's no longer a constant ache. I don't feel as guilty about showers longer than two minutes, I don't accidentally use Ewe or French in my sentences any more. But it hasn't totally gone.

There are reasons I'm in the US right now. But that doesn't stop my heart from asking when I can go back. There are so many triggers - the lyrics of a song, a call from a friend, an innocent co-worker's question about where I've traveled as a nurse....

All this brought me to my knees one afternoon at the lake, asking God for the privilege of being his hands once again aboard the white mercy box, for the opportunity to love on the unloved, that he would give me His heart and break it once again.

Questions like that should only be asked if you mean it. Because it's not a question of whether we are called to missions, but where. It's not if we are called to love, but how and who.

Isaiah 58 is a chapter that's spoken to me in the past, a set of Bible verses God has used to direct my choices of who and how to love. There is nowhere more than aboard Mercy Ships that I was truly able to say that verses 6-10 were truly being fulfilled in my life. But I hadn't really paid attention to verse 11 before: "The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."

I think I can honestly say that God has a sense of humor. With this verse that afternoon I felt his clear call back to a sun-scorched West Africa, and with it direction and peace on a number of other questions I had been wrestling with. Friends, I can tell you with certainty that unless something drastically changes, I'll be headed back to Africa with Mercy Ships from January-May 2011!! I'll be a Pediatric Ward Nurse again, knowing that this will not be my only job. There will be ICU and PICU shifts again with my heart in my throat and a constant prayer on my lips, the difficult IV starts and lab draws saved for an ER-trained nurse, riding a stretcher down the narrow metal corridor doing compressions as a part of the Emergency team, the challenge of caring for a friend, crowded screenings in the hot sun and surrendering my own need for control when He chooses to take a child home forever.

My heart, still healing from my last trip there, is going to be irrevocably broken, again and again and again. While I'm not sure my heart can stand another medical missions trip to West Africa...I'm sure without a doubt that I can't afford not to go. Africa needs me, sure. But I need Africa more. The fog is gone, and I can see clearly again.

Isaiah 58: 5-11

⁵ Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?

⁶ "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.