They say that silence is golden, but my mother would beg to differ. She told me a little while ago that people are going to think we're still in Ghana, and since we've actually been back in Togo since Thursday, I guess I do owe you all an update.

Thursday was what will probably my favourite sailing experience of my life, which was one hundred percent due to the fact that it lasted less than twelve hours. I've driven the road between Tema and Lome before, and it only takes a couple of hours. Sailing in a ferry is another matter, and we were told to expect around ten to twelve hours on the water. I had a perfect plan, fully approved by my boss, which involved not setting an alarm, sleeping through the first four hours (except for a few unruly minutes as we first left port) and staying in bed for most of the rest of them. I'm a big fan of a sail that ends before you really have time to realize it's begun.

This is the first time that we've sailed into a port we've been in before, and the feeling of coming home was strong among those of us who were here in 2010. As night fell and we realized that immigrations wasn't going to clear us to leave until morning, we spent the time talking about all the places we're excited to revisit. Unsurprisingly, our favourite restaurants got top billing as the various merits of Akif Burger versus Al Donald's were quietly contested.

Unfortunately, either the HoJ or I has been on call ever since we dropped anchor, so we haven't had much of a chance to head out and enjoy ourselves yet. This week the real work will start up in earnest again as we set about untying and setting up the hospital to get ready for the field service that will begin with screening on the first of February.

Six months are ahead of us, and I'm ready to get started.

We have arrived safely in Ghana, and I for one am happy to have solid ground under my feet. Which is a little odd, maybe, because I'm still iving on the sea and there's nothing but water under the ship. But that water is still now and the mooring lines are out, so I can finally sleep at night again.

We'll be here for three weeks while the crew gets a break after a long outreach in Sierra Leone. We've already started enjoying what the West African crew (and any of us yovos who've been here before) call the Promised Land. It's wonderful to be in a place where the roads are clear enough that we can drive miles in minutes instead of hours, but it doesn't quite feel like Christmas yet if I'm being honest. I associate Christmas on the ship with Tenerife, with weather chilly enough for a scarf and fruit like pears and strawberries. But this Christmas is going to be an African one, complete with ninety degree weather and mangoes in big plastic buckets in the dining room. It's going to be different.

So much is the same, though. The Christmas season on the ship is steeped in tradition; anyone that knows my family knows our love of traditions. Because the crew comes from so many countries, there are little pieces pulled from all around the world to make up December on the Africa Mercy. We have cookie baking and a European-style Christmas market, complete with gingerbread and homemade snow cones, of course. (It's the closest we're going to get to the real thing!) We have a storytelling night and the Academy students put on a big Christmas musical. (It was last night, and it was amazing. A definite highlight was all the high school girls dressed up like angels and dancing hip hop. Who says that wasn't how they appeared to the shepherds?!) On Christmas Eve we all put an empty shoe outside our doors, and sometime in the night we sneak out to fill the shoes of our friends with little presents. (One of the prerequisites for this activity is feigning blindness if you happen to cross paths with one of the other elves in the middle of the night.) We all roll down to the dining room in our pajamas for Christmas brunch, and it's like being with your entire extended family and then some.

I'm going to enjoy these next few weeks. We have friends to visit here in Ghana and lots of exploring to do in Accra. Posting will probably be light, since the only real work I'm doing is in the office, and I'm pretty sure you don't need to know how the scabies policy is coming along, now do you?

Once again, we have set out to sea in a ferry.

This never quite seems like a good idea to me, despite the fact that we're sailing on the smoothest seas I've ever seen. Honestly, there are lots of times in the past two months alone that we've been moving more in port than we are right now. The thing is, there's no way for me to know how it's going to go for me over the next five days or so. This is my fourth sail, and on the first one I was so sick that the HoJ (who was, at the time, just the Boyfriend of Joy, but showed real promise with what I'm about to tell you) would make me Ramen noodles just so I had something soft to throw up. I think they could totally use that in an ad campaign. Ramen: Something Soft to Spew When You Sail. The second time was like a dream. Smooth seas, perfect weather, and wildlife every day. Seriously, at one point the officer on the bridge came over the intercom to announce, Dolphins, basically ... everywhere. The third sail was a mixed bag. I threw up for the first half and felt mildy human for the second, so statistically speaking, this could go either way.

I'm not quite steady enough to call myself a good sailor, especially when just the thought of pulling away from the dock makes me breathe deep and eat one last big meal rather than jump for joy. But if I make it through this one in style, I might start to feel a little more confident about my sea legs.

There's one thing that I know will work for me no matter what, and as soon as they made the announcement that the bow was open I grabbed a chair and headed outside. Out there, with the whole ocean spread out in front of me and the breeze cool in my face, I never feel sick. One by one people make their way down to Deck Three, all the way forward, and then back up to the salty air and together we watch the sun set and the moon rise. If we're lucky (like tonight) we see dolphins and flying fish and nearly-transparent jellyfish billowing alongside us. Someone brings a guitar and we worship together and there's this sense of community that's somehow different from the rest of the year.

For some reason, we are closer when we sail. This morning before we departed Jenn put words to the feeling. It's like we're one big family getting ready to go on a trip together. For as long as we're on the water, this feeling of family is so much stronger than other times, somehow. We greet each other with sincere questions about our friends' health and we make pilgrimages around the ship to deliver food and ginger biscuits to those who can't get out of bed. We sit together out on the bow, and for the only time in the year it's just us. Just crew, no visitors or day volunteers or tour groups or food delivery men. The ship is ours, and we revel in it for these few, sacred days.

I'm sitting cozy in my bed right now. The moon is high outside my window (although porthole, I suppose, would be the more nautical term), and the water rushing past is shot through with silver. At least for tonight, I love sailing.

I always find it much harder to blog once the wards have emptied for the year. It's as if their lives and stories are so much more important than my own. Or, at the very least, a lot more interesting; I can't deny the truth of that. But once they go the place is quiet and dark. Except for the emergency lights of course; you can't turn those off, and they stand constant guard over the empty rooms.

I've been thinking about light a lot in recent days, in large part because of the Advent services that started last week. You know, the ones with real candles. Candles are a big deal around here; open flame is prohibited on board except for these five small candles once a year (and sometimes the ones in Santa Lucia's crown, but that's a whole different tradition for a different day). The International Lounge, where we have Sunday services, is darkened and each week another candle is lit. Last week was the candle of Hope, and as I sat there watching the tiny flicker of the flame, it hit me again what a tremendous thing hope is.

We use the word all the time. I hope it doesn't rain. I hope dinner will be good tonight. I hope this brownie doesn't make me fat. We use it so often that, like so many other weighty words, it's lost much of its impact. I looked it up just now because I love words and all their shades of meaning. The first was unsurprising.

A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

It makes sense that the first little candle throwing its light into the darkness of a new year is the one christened hope. Hope is that longing for something new, that breathless anticipation of something you can hardly bear to speak aloud.

The second definition was the one that set my heart spinning in my chest.

A person or thing that may help or save someone : Their only hope is surgery.

Hope is so much more than just a feeling, more than an idle wish or a passing desire. For so many, hope is all that's left when the rest of the world has turned away. Hope is what gives a mama strength to hide her baby in a back room rather than bury him in the forest when he's born with a cleft lip. Hope is what keeps a seventy year-old woman walking, all the way from one country to another, seeking help for the tumor growing on her hand. Hope is what whispers in the ear of a man as he lies awake at night, desperately wishing that someone would look past the scars on his face.

Hope is the light in the deepest night, the single flame in the face of crippling despair. It's the unwavering promise that, yes, salvation is possible, that there is a way out, no matter how dark the path might be.

Matthew wrote that nations would put their hope in the name of Jesus.

Is it any wonder that He called Himself the Light of the World?

Yesterday I had the incredible privilege of photographing the wedding of two dear friends from the ship. Becca and Greg met when she first came to the ship in 2009, and yesterday I got to be there as they pledged their lives to each other. The day went off in fairly typical West African style; there were Land Rovers, closed roads, rain showers and lots and lots of love.

Here are a few snaps from a beautiful day. (For those of you on the ship, I'll have a full set on the Transfer Drive once Becca and Greg get back from their honeymoon and have had a chance to see them first.)









What would a Mercy Ships wedding be without a bride on a Land Rover?



There were a few snags along the way, of course. After a long drive through town, complete with crazy market-day traffic, we ended up walking the last part of the way to the house where Becca was going to finish getting ready. She led the parade with a smile, a smile that wasn't even dimmed when rain started pouring down as the outdoor reception was set to start.



The ceremony took place in the church Greg and Becca have been attending here in Sierra Leone. It was packed, and when the Liberian worship started, they almost blew the tin roof right off the place.





The rain cleared up enough to let us get some beautiful shots of the bridal party and the happy couple.





From there it was off to the reception, which took place in the garden of the house where the Mercy Ships off-ship teams lived here in Sierra Leone.







Thanks to the new Mr. and Mrs. Kulah for letting me be a part of this amazing day!

Happy December! Living on a ship off the coast of West Africa, there's not much that really screams "Christmas," but hopefully these wallpapers will help a little.







The Advent season on the ship is special, and not just because it's the one time of the year where real candles are allowed (only for the Sunday night services in the Advent wreath). It's the end of an outreach, and as we look forward to the coming of the Saviour, we look back at the Light that He's already brought to this country through us over the past year.

(Click any of the photos to be taken to the larger size that you can download and use as a wallpaper.)

And just like that it's over for another year. There were three lonely beds in D Ward this morning, Hassan, Grandma Groundnut, and the last patient from A Ward who I hadn't met before. I walked in and Grandma Groundnut stopped in her tracks, ran over to me and buried her head in my chest. She held me tight, sobbing out her fear and her sadness into my scrub top.

I busied myself with the last tasks. I buttered bread and made tea and handed out lotion, and after a surprise fire drill, we gathered in a circle to pray. Hassan sat on Sarah's (our administrative assistant) lap, and to every sentence I spoke, he added an emphatic amen.

We headed out into the cool morning air, huge bundles of dressing supplies balanced precariously on heads as Hassan's mama and Grandma Groundnut swayed down the gangway. We held hands as we walked out to the gate, and after one last hug they turned and headed up the road towards home.

There are times when other people's words work so much better than my own, when someone else can speak my own heart better than I can. This is one of those times. I love her thoughts on the end of the outreach, on the way it feels to get here so close to the end. So I'll just let her speak for me.

Coming in for the last leg of the race has been a blessing to me. We care when something ends because of the significance it had throughout its course. And, as it turns out, experiencing the end of something significant can be just as moving as being part of its beginning.

To quote our friend Hassan, Amen.

(Quick update on Sia: I spoke with her uncle this morning who had just been in touch with the hospital in Guinea. Sia, her mama and her baby sister have arrived safely after a journey of several days. Keep praying for the continuing treatment to be successful.)

Mondays are generally busy around here, at least for me. Since I don't work on the weekends, it always feels like I'm playing catch-up. Rounds are spent rifling through the charts to answer the questions I don't know the answers to offhand, and it takes most of the morning at least until I feel like I've got a good handle on the place again.

Today wasn't just any old Monday. Today was The Last Monday, the first in a long series of lasts until this place will be packed up and tied down to bolts screwed into the floor and we'll sail away from Freetown some muggy day in December. The wards close for good on Friday morning, and so this week is going to be spent sending the remaining patients home.

It's always a bittersweet time. There are a few patients on B and D Ward right now who I don't know very well, simply because they just had surgery last week, but the vast majority of them are long-term residents of Deck Three. They're the ones with wounds that won't heal, the ones who have been back for second, third, and fourth surgeries. And because they've been here the longest, they're the ones I love the best.

I know; I'm not supposed to have favourites, and I'm certainly not supposed to admit it out loud to the whole internet. But if you could see that place right now you'd understand why my heart aches to think that their beds will be empty soon.

However, regardless of how much I've come to love my pikins and my Grandma Groundnut, go they must. The going is complicated, more so than almost anything else; this is not an easy place to live with a health problem.

If there are any nurses who read this blog, I'm sure you can sympathize. It's hard enough, sometimes, to get a patient discharged home with everything in place so that they can continue to be cared for. Add in hundreds of miles of dirt roads, mud huts, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, heat and humidity, and a complete lack of resources and it's a recipe for disaster.

This is the time of the year when we start to pray for miracles. We know that some of the wounds that still remain aren't going to heal by any other means, and so Doctor Gary isn't really kidding on morning rounds when he orders prayer, every two hours and more as necessary. This is the time of year when we see those miracles. We've already taken Abu's name off the list of patients who will need follow-up care when his neck healed overnight, but there are many more, and the situations are complicated.

Pinky needs to get back to Liberia. I haven't written about her yet, but she sleeps next to Sia and the two of them are good friends by now. The surgery to remove a tumor from her jaw and replace the bone with a rib went well, but the money for their return journey was stolen from her mama on the way here. Please pray that the money we raised to send them back will be safely guarded and that they will find their way to their uncle in Duala Market. (I smile as I type that, because I can picture that dusty road in Monrovia so clearly in my mind.)



Sia is going to leave early tomorrow morning to make the long trip to Guinea with her mama and baby sister. They'll have all the money and all the medications needed for the rest of her treatment for Burkitt's with them. Her blood tests were good this morning, everything is in place for her at the hospital in Guinea, and all that remains is for her to get there safely. Please pray for protection to go with them as they travel.

Litte Kadiatu, whose face we've started to rebuild, finally had her feeding tube removed today. She flies at me the minute I step through the door, hands up until I lift her into my arms. She chatters away, just like a little bird, and I chatter back, wondering what on earth I might be saying. The skin graft inside her mouth didn't heal fully, so she's on the list for more surgery when the ship comes to Guinea next year. The place on her leg where we took that skin is taking far too long to heal, though, and we're working on teaching her dad how to care for it before they head back up north early on Thursday morning. She's another one who needs a miracle.

It's more than just these three girlies. Pray for Baindu, too, whose mouth is healing slowly. She'll need more surgery in the future, too. Pray for Isatu (Grandma Groundnut), whose future is uncertain and whose wound is also slow to heal. For Aminata, whose tumor is already starting to grow back and who will need to go home on medications that her mama might not be able to afford for a whole year until she comes to see us again. Pray for Bockarie. We built a nose to replace the one he lost when his house burned down around him when he was six days old, but the place on his leg where we took the skin to cover the place on his forehead where we took the nose (I know, it's confusing) is also stubbornly refusing to heal, and he'll be heading home on Thursday morning, too.

There are more, but I don't know their names, patients who have been here for months since plastic and general surgery rotations finished, each battling stubborn wounds as the clock moves inexorably forward.

We are almost out of time. Please pray with us.

I've waited a little to blog again, because I wanted to tell you about Sia but I wanted to have photos to share with you. Today our ward photographer came down to take some 'snaps' while we were working, and I think it will be fairly evident that my little Sia is feeling much better these days.

She had her second chemo treatment on Monday, and has bounced back much more quickly this time around. It's obvious why; when we gave her the first treatment, her tumors were huge and she was a very sick girlie. Today, though, she's a completely different person, and boy is her personality amazing.

She's still scared to death of having her blood drawn, though, something that unfortunately happens fairly often when you're being treated for cancer, and this morning I was the lucky one who got to hold her down for the proceedings. We use a cream that numbs the area so she's not feeling as much pain as you'd expect, but just the sight of us coming with the tourniquet is enough to start her crying. By the time we finished this morning (despite a fabulous nurse getting the blood easily on the first try), she was limp in my lap, a puddle of tears staining my scrub pants.

I wanted to be more than just the one who holds her down while we hurt her, so I did what comes naturally to me: I made a face at her. And then I made another one, and another until she was finally making them back. We kept going until she was laughing and reaching up to kiss my cheeks.



And now, it seems, I have broken dear Sia. She doesn't appear to be able to make a normal face in photos any more. I love it.



This kid is spunky like you wouldn't believe, and it's what's going to get her through the next few months. Everything is in place for her to go to the Hope Clinic in Guinea, and we're just waiting for her uncle to arrive so we can send her on her way with all the supplies she needs for the rest of her chemo treatments.

There's one every outreach. (Jenn wrote about hers here, and I love how she explains it, how there can be so many who mean so much but just one who really gets into your soul.) Sia is definitely my one, and as short as this time here in Sierra Leone has been, she's got just as much of a hold on my heart as any of the others have.

(Have I mentioned how much I love this place?)

Yesterday was busy, much like every day around these parts. We still have more than our share of max-fax patients on the wards, and Natalie's been letting me hang out with the patients while she does the mundane office work.

I had finally started writing notes in charts when the Patient life team came onto D Ward to start morning worship. Content to sit and finish my tasks, I was listening to the singing and not paying much attention to what was going on around me.

Sometimes, though, there are things more important than note writing.

It wasn't long before I felt a little hand on my knee and looked up to see Kadiatu, her head cocked to one side, eyes asking me to come with her.

Kadiatu lost the middle of her face to noma, and we've started the process of rebuilding it. She's still small, so it's too soon for a new nose, but Dr. Gary has cut and pulled and moved and sewn until he's covered the hole next to what's left of hers. It's been a battle so far, and we're not out of the woods yet, but Kadiatu is a far cry from her former self.

No longer angry and frightened, she skips around the ward, feeding tube dangling off her cheek, chirping out goodness knows what in her tribal language. Yesterday, she wanted me to worship with her.

I was busy. It was late and a meeting was just around the corner, and I wasn't finished my work, so I tried to resist. She gave me a stern look, the likes of which only the very stubborn can really master, and pulled harder at my hand.

It's hard to resist a pikin with a feeding tube and a new face and a lifetime of struggle in front of her if we don't build her that nose one day. So I got up and I worshiped with little Kadi. I clapped and sang and shuffled my feet, and the words surrounded me like a prayer.

You are the pillar that holds my life.
You are the pillar that holds my life.
Daddy Jesus, You are the pillar that holds my life.

Whatever we do for these patients, whatever help we can offer, it's not us who holds their lives. There is one much stronger, much more capable of making sure each little chirping bird is sheltered.

There are some days that I would kill for a hidden camera on the wards, because there's just no way to properly describe this place in plain words. Today was another one for the books; half hilarious, half heart-wrenching.

The hilarity started when we got the doctor to come see the sister of a patient. The patient, eighteen years old, has a little baby, and the sister is here, too, to help take care of the pikin. The sister was complaining of pain, and we needed to send labs off to make sure she was okay. In order to send samples to the lab, we need to have an ID number so that the results can be entered in the hospital database, and in order to give out an ID number, we need to know the name and age of the patient. Simple enough.

I asked the sister her name, and she answered without hesitation. The trouble came when I asked her, how many years you get? Eyes narrowed, she sized me up before answering. Fifty. Since she's maybe twenty-two at the absolute max, I laughed and told her I needed another answer. It came quickly: Okay, fifty-four. At this point a crowd had gathered (as per usual here in Africa), and I told her that we, in fact, that number was still far too high. A question in her voice, she gave me her final answer. Twenty?

Sold to the lowest bidder.

A little later, I was writing a note in a patient's chart when I felt an inquisitive finger prodding the underside of my bum. (For those of you not blessed with curves, yes, a bum can have an underside.) It's a measure of the comfort I have with this place that I didn't even flinch. When I turned around I found the mama of the little one in Bed Eleven holding her hands a good three feet apart, an approving look on her face. Fine, she assured me, You have the African shape! From behind me came another mama's voice. Ali Tumba! 'Tumba' (TOOM-bah) is the word for rear end around here, and mine has garnered a good amount of attention in recent days. This morning, it ended up as the deciding factor in a debate.

The pikin in Bed Eleven is a little three-month-old baby who had his cleft lip fixed yesterday. His mama calls him Duck, and yesterday she promised Jenn that she could marry him. That was, however, before she caught sight of my tumba. There were hoots and hollers and a fair amount of elbowing, and I'm not sure, but I think I'm now engaged to Duck. Please don't tell the HoJ.

The last story is the heart-wrenching one, but for once it's not in a bad way. For once I have nothing but good to share with you, and it's good for Sia. Her story developed in the most amazing way today.

First, I want you to head over to Reka's blog and read the story of how Sia was found on the street. That's how Sia's story started, and you've heard a lot about what's been going on since she arrived on board. I want to tell you about what's going to happen when we leave.

We've found a hospital in Guinea where she can receive further treatment, and we've been working out the details as far as how she'll get to and from her home in the north of Sierra Leone and what sort of financial help they'll need to make this all happen. I worked on the wards today while Natalie, the current Team Leader, spent the day doing office work. She felt like she wanted to see the sun, so she took her work up to Deck Six to sit in the internet cafe. While there, one of the women who works with Patient Life came to talk over the whole thing and see where we were at.

Natalie and Yvonne moved to the comfortable chairs near the cafe and started working out the total cost for Sia to receive the four more months of treatment she'll need. Factoring in all the costs, it came to around $130. There's a woman who attend's my mum's Bible study back home who shares my blog with a friend of hers. That friend already donated thirty dollars towards that sum, and Natalie figured that the remaining hundred would be easily raised since we all love Sia.

Which is when God stepped in.

A woman sitting a few chairs over leaned towards Natalie and apologized for eavesdropping. It's just that, before I left, my neighbours gave me a hundred dollars, she explained. They wanted it to be used specifically for the care of a child, and I had no idea how to find a child or how to best use the money. Are you talking about a child?

Of course they were talking about a child. It's not a joke when it says that He does more than we can ask or imagine; before we could even come up with a plan to raise this money, God had already provided. He moved in Marie's heart to donate thirty dollars, and he moved in the hearts of an unknown couple to give the rest of the money, specifically to be used for a child. He arranged for Natalie to take her office day upstairs, for Yvonne to meet her there, for the woman to be sitting near enough to hear their conversation.

This God of ours, He does nothing by halves.

If you downloaded any of the November wallpapers, please accept my scatterbrained apology. I somehow managed to make all three of them with the month starting on Thursday, not Tuesday. I didn't notice until today when I started trying to make outpatient appointments on absolutely the wrong days.

Please accept my hearty apologies and these newly-uploaded backgrounds which have calendars that actually start on the correct day.







(However, if you just want them for the photos, then feel free to disregard all this!)

Little Sia is still on D Ward; I've been off for the last two days, and when I walked into the room this morning I thought I was seeing things. Where before she had a tumour the size of a small orange, now the contour of her face is nearly normal again. Burkitt's responds so quickly to treatment that it's almost unbelievable.

She still cries every time we come near her with a needle, something that unfortunately happens every day since she's had a few issues after getting her dose of chemotherapy, but she's eating again, which is a start. She and her little sister, Kumbah, sit facing each other on the bed at each meal, Kumbah more often than not offering her big sister a handful of beans or rice.

Today, for the first time, Sia was up and walking around the ward with Kumbah when one of the nurses for some reason decided to scoop Kumbah up in a pillowcase. Don't ask me why any of these sort of things happen; I'm supposedly in charge of the place, but my hold on the reigns is always just a little tenuous. Be that as it may, the effect of this move was something I really hadn't expected.

I looked down a Sia and she was laughing her head off. She's spent the last week curled up in bed, not speaking a word; I've never ever seen her smile. Today she laughed.

Sia's future is still uncertain. We're working on finding a way for her to get follow-up care when we leave, and with only three and a half weeks until the hospital closes for good this year, we don't have a lot of time. God is God of the details, though. He knows each curly hair in each of the braids on Sia's head. He's written each day of her life in his book, and although we don't know right now just how many days she has left, we've bought her this time at least.

Some things are just unfair. It's not the she got the green cup and I wanted the green cup kind of unfair, but something much more heartbreaking. It's Sia, downstairs in D Ward right now, her baby sister probably curled up with her, mama keeping vigil on a chair beside the bed.

Sia is eight, and where her left eye should be is an angry red tumour. Her belly is swollen with more cancer, and because she was born here in Sierra Leone, she might well die because of it. It's deeper than that, though. It's not just that Sia is West African; it's the fact that she came to us at the end of October. At any other time in the year, we would have entered her into the Burkitt's Program, and that would have been that. Our incredible palliative care nurse, Harriet, would have overseen her care at the local hospital, Sia would have received chemotherapy, and she most likely would have been cured.

Instead, we are faced with the reality that we have only three weeks of surgery left. The hospital will close a week after that, and then we will sail away and little Sia will still be here. How is it possible that a matter of months, weeks maybe, might be the difference between life and death for this little one?

She's getting her first dose of chemotherapy here on the ship as I type this, but all we're hoping is that it buys us a little time. Time to figure out what to do with her after. Time to find someone who will make sure she gets to the hospital, to find someone who will pay for the treatment. How can we be sure that she'll get what she needs when we're so far away?

I stood in the hall with Dr. Gary and Stacia, the oncology nurse who's giving the chemo, (yet another example of the right person being here at the right time) and he said something that makes the way forward just a little more obvious.

Eight years is too short.

Sia means firstborn girl; if it were me instead of her in that bed, I'd be named the same thing, and I don't know what to do with that. What I do know is that eight is not enough.

There are so many things I love about this place. A few of us sat together after church tonight and just shared stories of D Ward, and I realized again that there's nothing else I'd rather do. It's a hundred things a day, and as I live through it all I tuck them into the back of my mind so I can tell you all later.

There's Nurse Shaka, a patient who had a huge tumour removed from the back of his neck and who may or may not actually be a nurse in real life. We've caught him adjusting the IV fluid rate on the patient in the next bed, and just today I found him, along with two other patients, in the isolation room where the lady with the fast-fast is staying, having a little chat. When I mentioned the reason for her isolation, I have never seen anyone move quite so fast as they all did when they realized that they could be catching the fast-fast too. (Have I said fast enough yet?) Given the fact that Nurse Shaka speaks her language, I kept him outside her door for a little while longer to translate for me. Community is alive and well on D Ward, folks.

Speaking of the lady in isolation, she tried to kick me in the head today, and I learned the value of therapeutic yelling. Now, I don't generally condone yelling at patients, but a needlestick way back in Liberia has made me a little jumpy around people who flail when sharp things and blood are involved. I was in there to restart her IV, and when the needle touched her skin, the leg closest to me came up in a decisive kicking motion, and it was at this point that I decided to employ the therapeutic yelling technique, regardless of the fact that she doesn't speak a word of English. It seemed to work, because when I moved to the other arm for a second try, she screwed up her face and glared at me, but kept perfectly still.

Fanta Man is doing better. He has a caregiver here with him now, a man who may or may not be his son. When I came back into the ward from the near-kicking episode, I had one of the funniest moments of the day when I found the caregiver helping Fanta Man drink tea in an incredibly unique way. There was a large syringe (the same size as the one he was drinking Fanta from the other day) filled with milky tea, and attached to the end of that was a piece of IV tubing about a foot long. Fanta Man had the other end of the tubing in his mouth and was sucking back tea, gesturing all the while at his son to speed up the process, please, and mumbling something about how the tea just wasn't coming fast enough. (There's that word again!) It's hard to picture, I know; just trust me when I tell you that it's one of the best moves dear Fanta Man has pulled since arriving.

Once I had finished laughing about Fanta Man, I headed to the recovery room to check on little Kadiatu, who had to go to the OR this morning because she basically removed everything possible during the night; feeding tube, IV, bandages. Everything. And because she needs to wait for surgery to build her a nose, inserting a feeding tube that goes through the nose and into the stomach isn't something that can be done just anyhow. I heard her yelling before I even got into the room, and she was already starting to reach for the new tube, so I did the most obvious thing. I ran to the ward for a safety pin and I pinned that tube to one of the braids in top of her head. Only in Africa.

Four moments out of a hundred, and I head to bed exhausted again but happier than ever that this is the place that God wants us to live out the love He's given us to share.

You didn't think yesterday's post was it, did you? That Fanta Man would just go to sleep and wake up clear-headed and bright-eyed this morning? Folks, if you were expecting that, then you have come to the wrong blog post, because this one is a straight-up continuation of yesterday's antics.

When we all came on shift at seven this morning, things seemed like they were set to run much more smoothly than yesterday. Fanta Man was tucked into bed, fully clothed, not a trace of orange on his dressing. My little man from yesterday was assigned to a different nurse, but he was off his morphine pump and feeling much better about life. Everything was quiet. Until breakfast.

Fanta Man produced not one but two Fantas from who knows where, purple this time, and proceeded to pour one of them into his bowl. He crumbled up his bread into it and then called over his nurse, Jess. I was upstairs getting my own breakfast when she showed up in the dining room in search of a spoon. Apparently Fanta Man wanted a spoon to eat his purple bread with, and when Jess didn't produce one right away, he pulled a huge wad of cash out of, well, somewhere. (There are no pockets in hospital gowns, so we're not sure where it really came from.) He had 92,000 Leones, and it was all hers if she could just find him a spoon.

Since we don't really take bribes, she offered instead to lock up the money in the safe where it belongs. That went well for about fifteen minutes until he decided that he did not trust us at all, and started yelling that he needed his money back. When it wasn't immediately forthcoming, he threatened to call the army on her, which only resulted in her bursting into laughter. Not terribly professional, I know, but it was really the only response given the situation.

Unfortunately, this didn't help Fanta Man's mood, and he headed over to the sink and started yelling unintelligibly at none other than the soap dispenser. He kept pointing over at Jess with a disturbed look on his face, and turning back to the soap dispenser for some sort of acknowledgement of his feelings.

The soap dispenser didn't have much to say.

So Fanta Man did what any confused old man would do; headed back to bed, donned a pair of bright pink pants under his gown, after which he rifled through his bag for a while and pulled out a book that he had been reading. He had apparently been marking his place with a piece of bread, at least a week old and as hard as a rock with a little hole eaten out of the center, which he pulled out and waved at Jess, who was pretty much unable to keep it together at this point.

It was shortly after Fanta Man pulled on the second pair of pants, bright blue over the pink ones, that confusion broke out on the other side of the ward. The patient in Bed Fourteen, the guy I used yesterday to translate for my patient in Bed Nine, was fully dressed and halfway down the hall, heading home before anyone noticed. One of the translators ran after him and returned with his bag, but not with him. At least now he will not go far, was her matter-of-fact explanation of why she chose luggage over patient.

Somehow, overnight, the tables turned, and now Bed Nine was able to speak more French than Bed Fourteen, and so I used Nine to talk to Fourteen as I tried in vain to convince him to stay. It was slow going, since both the men have recently had surgeries on their jaws that have left them mumbling and near-impossible to understand in any language. The three of us stood in the hall for a while, working on communication when a third patient showed up from B Ward on crutches. She also spoke no English, but her French was perfectly West African, and clear as day for me to understand.

Unfortunately, just understanding the language doesn't mean you can convince someone that they're at risk for infection if they leave the ship, especially not when Fanta Man is escaping D Ward through the back door to the ICU and needs to be caught. (Incidentally, the only way to get Fanta Man out of the ICU and back into bed was to convince him that not only the ICU but also his home and the entire country of Sierra Leone were, in fact, closed for business.)

At some point, we just kind of threw up our hands and yet again admitted that only the essentials were going to get done today. Keeping Fanta Man and Bed Fourteen in the ward were the only real priorities, and it seemed like it took all of us all day just to make it happen. When I went down just now to retrieve a water bottle that I forgot at the end of the day Bed Fourteen was still there, his bag hidden under another patient's bed, and Fanta Man was sitting with a translator next to his own bed, a classy coral jacket added to his ensemble over his gown.

I'm not going to lie when I say that I'm glad I have the day off tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm going to see if I remember how to be a real nurse.

Famous last words, those.

Today was a shift unlike any I've had in recent memory. It wasn't that I had a bad assignment; a pharyngoplasty two days out and three grownups who could, for the most part, express their needs and didn't have a lot of care to give is a great set of patients. Except it's never that easy, is it? Of course one of my patients only spoke obscure tribal languages, and the only other person around who spoke those same languages was another patient (not mine) who also only spoke French. I didn't really hesitate, since the kid who had had a pharyngoplasty (a nasty surgery, by any account) was vomiting on the other side of the room, and pulled the French-speaking patient to the bedside of my old man so I could do a quick assessment. That other patient has apparently been here long enough that he started anticipating my questions, and was able to tell me not only that my old man had opened his bowels, but what the consistency of said action was.

That being sorted, I turned to Alpha, my poor little man in Bed Twelve. He was a sorry sight, with a soft plastic 'trumpet' in one nostril so he could breathe, a feeding tube in the other, an IV of morphine running into one little hand, and a pathetic look on his face. Although, to be fair, if you had a flap from the back of your throat cut off and sewn to the top of your mouth, you'd probably look a little pathetic, too. It was one thing after another with Alpha today; everything I put down his feeding tube came right back up, and since kids aren't really picky about where they vomit, he got numerous baths and two complete linen changes.

All of this would have been fine, honestly, if it hadn't been for Fanta Man in Bed One. He wasn't my patient, but it quickly became apparent that he was everyone's problem. He started the shift with a heartrate over 130 (not good) and breathing that sounded like a sick duck (very not good). He was becoming increasingly confused (also not good, although in my case it's fairly normal), and wouldn't keep the oxygen mask on his face. Just try, if you can, to picture the scene. An elderly gentleman with his gown around his waist and his head wrapped up in a huge white bandage sitting on the side of his bed. A wheelchair is waiting to take him to x-ray, and there are at least five nurses and doctors around the bed. Sheets in absolute disarray, monitor showing crazy numbers, egg smeared all over the floor (not sure how that happened), and a puddle of something best not mentioned on a family blog also all over that floor. And in the middle of all this sits Fanta Man, oxygen mask firmly pulled away from his face, pouring an orange Fanta in the general direction of his mouth, missing completely and soaking his bandage in the process.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be seeing him in the Fanta ads.

It was quickly apparent that Jenn (who, I must add, is a NICU nurse, and not really the first one you'd imagine taking care of a confused old man) had to focus completely on this guy, so we each took one of her other patients, giving me the barfing boy and four grownups with two dressings each to change.

Folks, I'm officially recovered from that arthritis, because I did not stop moving for eight hours straight. They were possibly the fastest eight hours of the past year, and only when it was over, Fanta Man tucked into bed with a clean gown and bandage, a new IV started on my little guy by Jenn (who is, honestly, a rockstar) and all of my tube feeds were given did I realize that I'm still a nurse.

I guess there are some things you don't forget, no matter how long it's been. Changing bandages and holding barf buckets and titrating morphine and juggling the needs of a whole row of people seems to be, at least for me, like riding a bike. I'm just hoping that tomorrow I can ride a little slower.

Thank you for your prayers for James; please pray for his family now. He passed away this morning, but he was not alone. That's all I think about, haunted by the memory of the others who have died downstairs. He didn't collapse in the street or die curled up in a corner somewhere. He was in the best hospital in the country, given every possible medical chance; there was nothing more we could have done. He was cared for until the very end and he died surrounded by love and prayer. I wasn't there, but I have been before, and I know how it is here.

And still it seems so wrong. I think I say this every single time, but this is not what we all sign up for when we come to Mercy Ships. We think we're coming to watch cleft lips be stitched back together, to see crooked feet straightened and blind eyes given sight. Nowhere in the orientation packet does it say anything about how, sometimes, they die.

It's jarring, the disconnect. Last night I went down to D Ward to get the keys for the pharmacy, and a little girl with an as-yet-unrepaired cleft lip lifted up her hands to me. She wound her skinny arms around my neck and planted a series of sloppy wet kisses on my cheeks, and right behind her was the door to the ICU where James was dying and it just seemed so unreal.

So please keep praying for his family. It rained all night, and it's still raining this morning, so I don't know how the roads will be when they try to take him home. Strange, to have to think about that, too. At home it's all so simple; you call the funeral home, and they take care of it. Things are messier here. We're more involved, more a part of our patients' lives than is considered really proper in the 'real world.'

I think it's how Jesus would have wanted it. I look into the Gospels and I see Him weeping outside the tomb of a man He was about to raise from the dead, fully present in the moment, sharing in the grief of his friends. And I think of the ones who stood vigil around James' bed this morning, present in his last moments, and I know that this is the way it should be.

We're not on this earth to live our own lives, untouched by what goes on around us. If that's the example we were to follow, Jesus would have lived his thirty-some years out in a monastery. He didn't. He lived in community with the world; He got dirty and He got hurt. Some days it felt like too much, but always compassion moved Him to give more. He loved the unlovable, had parties with sinners and wept with those who mourned.

This is the way it should be.

If there’s one thing sure in an uncertain life, it’s that it will move on. James passed away yesterday morning, and the same afternoon a little almost-two-year-old with the same name was admitted to B Ward. Sporting curly hair and a miniature pair of sunglasses, he spent the evening laughing, stomping around the room and snuggling with me. (You can probably guess which was my favourite of his activities.) James had cataract surgery a while ago, and was back to have the sutures taken out of his eyes. It was clear from the way he grinned up at me that he could see perfectly, but he flat-out refused to let anyone touch those glasses, which earned him the nickname Baby Ray Charles. His mama approved.

By the time I came in this afternoon, Baby Ray had been to the OR to have the sutures taken out of his eyes and had already been sent home, so I had no one to play with. The shift turned out to be busier than I anticipated, though, so I didn’t have much time to miss him.

It was one of those shifts so full of both good and bad, one of the ones that has you reeling from the near-whiplash of emotions. For some patients, it was good news. Surgeries to be performed, stubborn wounds healing. For others, it meant heartbreak. We turned one guy away because of a tooth abscess that would make anesthesia too risky, told another that he’s HIV positive and watched his world crumble around him. It’s almost impossible to go from that to a particularly funny ward round where the surgeon tried his hardest to talk like a Sierra Leonean, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I speak Krio like a Liberian.

But that’s the way it is here. Life ebbs and flows and sometimes the only way to survive is to just let it wash over you, arms open wide to receive the joy along with the pain. The sweet and salty mix and it’s a drink that doesn’t always go down easily.

Kisses from freshly-repaired cleft lips help; I got a few of those today, along with a little three-year-old dance party in the now-empty ICU. I printed out the discharge papers for the boy with HIV, and as I headed home down the hall after handover, one of the day volunteers called out after me. Goodnight Liberian woman!

And so it goes on.

There's a single tone that comes over the ship's intercom that marks the beginning of a ship-wide announcement. Usually you hear it when we're taking on fuel, or when the garbage container is full or things like that.

When it sounds at eleven on a Saturday night, you immediately assume the worst. Last night, that's exactly what it was. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU. Emergency Medical Team to the ICU.

We arrived quickly (not hard to do when you're living directly above the ICU itself) and everyone fell into place around the bed as we sought to save the life of the man lying there. I won't go into much detail, as I honestly don't know him, apart from everything that happened last night. Suffice it to say that he has an infection in his brain, and after a late-night trip to the OR, things don't look good.

He's being cared for now in the ICU, his family is on the way, and we're all praying for a miracle.

It's strange, this life. There's a critically ill man just below where I'm sitting, and I'm finding it hard to really care. I know that sounds awful, so please let me explain. For some reason this all feels so different from other times. Maybe because the first time I ever saw him he was unconscious and we were breathing for him, but I don't feel the same way I normally do when someone is so sick. There's no background, no common experience apart from that one, long, frantic hour before we turned him over to the OR staff. He's not a baby that I've held in my arms; I don't even know if he has family apart from the brother we were able to get in touch with this morning.

And despite all this, he is just as important as any of them. I am called to love this stranger in the same way I loved Baby Greg or O'Brien or Anicette, but I don't know how. I stood by his bed this morning, my hand on his arm, and I prayed for him. And I still don't feel anything.

Call it compassion fatigue, call it what you want, but you can't always care enough. Or at least you don't always, even if you should. It's one of the hardest things about this life, a life where you come face to face with pains and death on a consistent basis. Sometimes you just step back, throw up whatever shield you can and go on living despite the fact that there's a man fighting for his own life not fifty steps away. And you feel guilty for doing it, but there's no other way.

This is hard, not because I know him, but because I don't.


Please pray for James and his family. I'll update as I know anything more.

It's a little after three in the morning, and the wards are quiet. I'm working my last night shift in A Ward, since one of their nurses called out sick, so I'm not taking care of little Taslim tonight. I checked on her a little while ago, and she was fast asleep, the steri-strips holding her top lip together looking for all the world like little kitten whiskers. I'm also happy to report that the oldest of my nine patients tonight is fourteen. It would be the understatement of the year to say that I'm relived not to be in charge of any grown men with hernias.

Don't get me wrong; general surgery is an important part of what we do here, because sometimes transforming a life isn't as dramatic as rebuilding a face or straightening crippled feet. Sometimes it's the unseen troubles, a hernia that's caused years of pain for a man, destroying his ability to work and provide for his family. When we can step in and fix that, we give life to that family again. But really, at the end of the day, I'm a pediatric nurse. Call me crazy, but I'd much rather be wrestling with a three year-old who's bent on kicking me in the face because she doesn't want her temperature taken (true story, that) than watching a grownup sleep quietly. Seriously, where's the fun in that?

The little ones here in A Ward have all been here long enough due to different complications with their plastic surgeries that they know the drill. (Whether or not they choose to comply with said drill is entirely up to the whim of the moment.) There's something incredibly endearing about a one-and-a-half year old who sees you coming with the monitor and smiles up at you as he holds out his chubby finger for the oxygen probe. Or the six year-old who insists it's cold enough to be wearing a knitted winter hat and then needs to be tucked in when he falls asleep and kicks off his covers.

I'm sitting here, reading down this list of kids on my clipboard, and it's like reading a promise.

Instead of ridicule and stares and whispers behind their backs, they're being rebuilt now. Extra digits removed, fingers burned by fire made straight again, wounds covered, fingers created from webbed masses of skin and bone. These are the things that make you hated here, the things that keep you from school because of the fear that other people feel when they look at you.

Here on the ship, we speak to them of a new reality. We hold their mangled hands, touch their scarred cheeks where skin has hardened like wax, snuggle them into our laps no matter what they look like. We change their bandages, help them bathe, look them in the eye and acknowledge their worth. We who are filled with the love of Jesus can't help pouring that out on our patients and the result is that these nine names on my clipboard are now kids who fully believe that they deserve that love.

It seems like such a small thing, but it's everything. I've been at this for more than three years now, and I'm blinking back tears as I sit here and think about what this all really means.

This place is a promise.

This evening, we had a little excitement, Africa Mercy-style. I was eating dinner with some friends in the cafe on Deck Five when one of them casually mentioned that the retrieval efforts were still going on outside.

Retreive what? I asked, naively.

It turns out that one of the forklifts we use to unload containers had fallen into the sea between the ship and the dock and was buried in five feet of mud at the bottom of the port. The divers (my boss' boss Dan, and dear Aussie friend Tim) were suited up and getting ready to head into the murky water to see if they could attach cables so that the Terex (a huge container-moving machine found in ports, and yes, it's pronounced like the dinosaur) could haul it up.

What followed was easily the most entertaining night in AFM history. The rescue efforts went on until after dark while those of us watching were also treated to a beautiful sunset and a lightning storm off the port side. There were enough people on deck that it looked like we were getting ready to raise anchor and sail away, but really, it was just curiosity and lack of anything better to do. (We're easily amused over here.)

I stayed until the divers resurfaced and it became apparent that the Terex wasn't the man (pardon me, machine) for the job and then watched the lightning storm for a while before work. I headed down to B Ward for my second night shift in a row fully convinced that I had seen the most exciting thing that would happen for a while.

Until I picked up the chart for my little four-month old patient in bed twenty. Taslim was all tucked in and sleeping soundly, making little whiffling, sleepy noises through her cleft lip and palate and when I got to the part about family history I stopped cold.

Adopted. (Child was abandoned.)

Just that. Nothing more. When Taslim was born with a face split wide, her mama couldn't bear it. I dont know why. I don't know what kind of fear or anger or feelings of inadequacy were going through her head when she bundled up her baby in the middle of the night and left her on the doorstep of a woman she knew was a nurse. All I know is that she couldn't see her way clear with a baby born so broken. They found her there the next morning, crying for hunger, and they took her in, fed her, loved her. When the rest of the world ran away, this family ran straight for Taslim, scooped her up and poured life into her.

She'll have surgery to correct her cleft lip in the morning. Tonight she sleeps in the care of her new family.

That's the most exciting thing.

When I arrive in a new African country, I like to leave my camera in my cabin the first few times i go into town. I can hear from a million people how safe (or not) a place is, but I like to suss it all out for myself, so I go out with nothing on me the first few times while I get the feel of a place.

Today, that was a terrible decision on so many levels.

It started when we left the port gate and found a poda-poda half-filled with our friends, who were heading out to spend the long weekend at the beach. They offered us a ride to town and so we hopped in. There was music blaring from crackling speakers, a wingman to open and close the door (except they call them apprentices here) and I had to brace myself to stay seated while the bench I was on threatened to tear free from a shaky welding job at any minute. I stared out the window beside me at the streets, more colourful and vibrant than I remembered, filled with people selling anything and everything. Tissues and tank tops and flip flops and feather dusters and cookies and crackers and I could go on. We were ten minutes into the day, and I was already regretting my decision to leave the camera behind.

Once we piled out of the van, I was enveloped by it, by the rush of West Africa. The heat, the smells, the open sewers to be dodged, the quickstep out of the path of oncoming trucks, the hands always reaching for me, to touch my arms and grab my attention for a quick word. How de body? I wan talk small wif you. When I got separated from my group by a few steps, a man grabbed my wrist, and instead of the typical greeting, launched into song. (This is the next moment I was wishing for a camera, set to record.) You are beautiful, white woman, he crooned, and without missing a beat I sang back to him. My husband thinks so too! My marital status seemed to have no bearing on the state of his heart, because he sang right back to me: I don't care; still beautiful!

I extricated myself from that situation, and we made our way to a place commonly known as Fabric Street since all the shops and the little stalls set up in front of the shops and some of the kids walking past with bowls on their heads are selling brightly-coloured fabrics in any pattern imaginable. We browsed for about an hour when we looked up and saw a whole group of white people, a camera crew with fancy equipment and intense looks on their faces. And right there, in the middle of the muddy, dirt road, was Eva Mendes, interviewing a woman selling fabric. The girl from Hitch, on the streets of Freetown. Strike three for camera-less me.

We stood staring for a minute until one of the assistants kindly asked us to move aside. It turns out we're a little too white to be in the background of a movie about Sierra Leone. Eva (we're on a first-name basis by now, I'm pretty sure) was filming for a PBS documentary based on the book Half the Sky, which I don't know much about, but seems to be pretty awesome. It's about women's issues around the world, things like child prostitution and maternal mortality and gender violence, and from what we learned, they're flying around the world with different celebrities, doing interviews in lots of countries and bringing many of these untold stories to light.

At any rate, we got the chance to say hello to her, and it turns out she really is very pretty, totally down to earth, and couldn't have been more excited to hear that we actually had Starbucks coffee on the ship. (Honestly, she almost lunged at me when I said that.) When she found out that we consider these crazy, muddy streets home, she asked about what we do, so we told her a little about Mercy Ships. You want to know what she said?

You guys are freaking rad. Except a different word. But this is a family-friendly blog, so you get the point. Eva Mendes thinks we're all 'freaking' rad, and I couldn't believe I didn't have my camera right then.

The rest of the day went as expected until we were on our way back to the ship. We caught a ride home in a Landrover with some other friends, and were nearly there when, for some unexplainable reason, it just stalled and refused to start again. No one hesitated; all of us girls jumped out and pushed the dang thing a good ways to the HOPE center, where we left it to be sorted out by the transportation guys. I was pretty much past thinking about my stupid decision to leave the camera behind, but did wish I could have shot a video of us ladies heaving on the huge, white vehicle. (Interesting note: it's actually better for guys to push cars not because they're stronger, but because the wideness of women's hips means we can't actually fit so many of us back there. Consider yourself informed.)

This has been set of experiences more deserving than any of the title TIA: This is Africa. So naturally it just ended with Jenn calling me down to D Ward to bring the IPod for an emergency dance party. The sight of a little boy who just lost an eye to cancer dancing his heart out in little stripey socks while another pikin sporting a matching tiger-print gown and tiny black loafers looked on approvingly was just the thing to round out the whole day.

(Sorry I don't have any photos to go with all these words. Did I mention I left my camera behind?)

Some succulents, a campfire, and a bee on a flower. These are a few of the pretty things I've seen since coming home from Peru, and they're also the wallpaper choices for October. Only of of these has traditional 'fall' colours in it, so I think I might be clinging to summer a little more than I usually do. (Which is weird, since I've been dying for a few cool days before heading back to Africa.)







So if you're ready for fall, there's some yellow and orange, and if you can't bear to let go of summer, have one last campfire by the lake. It's your desktop.

I'm posting these early, because I'm getting ready to pack and go back to Africa, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to forget this if I don't do it now. Happy almost-October!

(Click the photos to get a full-size version that you can use as your background.)

It turns out that when you're home for an entire summer with nothing to do but rest and get over a nasty case of dengue-induced viral arthritis, you get a little crafty. At least I do. Did. Whatever.

My cousin Rae (who's really more like a sister than a cousin, if we're being honest here) is having her second kiddo in just a couple weeks here. If she (the baby, that is; my cousin doesn't have a lot of say in the matter) cooperates, I'm going to get to be there when the big event happens, and to celebrate the imminent event, I decided to throw a party for Rae.

This is the point at which I made a near-fatal error: I went on the internet looking for ideas.

Don't get me wrong; I love the internet. I more specifically love Pinterest, and so I hopped on there and typed baby girl shower into the search bar.

That, my friends, was the beginning of the end.

Over the following days (it could have been weeks; time is blurred together at this point) I scrolled through countless photos of pink, frilly decorations and scrumptious-looking treats and silly games until I had put together all the best bits. I've been slightly obsessed with this party for the last couple of weeks, always coming up with new ideas and more details and different foods to prepare. The last few days have seen me in the kitchen, apron firmly tied, preparing treats from morning 'til night. (This, in and of itself, is a testament to how much better I am health-wise; my ankles hurt by the end of it, but my hands are feeling great!)

And today we partied. We ate until we were stuffed and crafted until we were tired. It was a sweet time with some amazing women, and we made the most of it together. Would you like to see some photos? Of course you would!

Let's start with the treats, shall we? Clockwise from the top left: A shot of the cake (more on that later); rainbow fruit skewers; sparkling white sangria with raspberries, kiwi fruit and peaches; the drink cart (including pink lemonade, of course) and the treat table with lots of other delicious things; grilled brie with thyme-infused honey and fresh figs. That last one? To. die. for. If you ask nicely I'll send you the full-size photo. As long as you're willing to drool. You have been forewarned.



Moving on to the cake! I saw this cake on someone's blog and knew it was the one. I made cupcakes, too, so I just made skinny little layers, four of them, each in a different shade of pink. The little birdies are made of fondant, and their friends were sitting on the cupcakes. I love rainbow cakes, and this monochromatic one was just beautiful. Mine didn't turn out nearly as beautiful as the one I saw on the blog (an unfortunate effect of some sticky pans), but I think it was quite good for a first attempt. (Also, you're allowed to hate Rae; she's due in less than three weeks and she really does look that incredible.)



Here's one of my favourite bits about the shower. Although we weren't giving gifts (other than the onesies we each decorated, but we're getting to that), we decided to bless Rae with some diapers. And rather than just handing her the boring old packs, we broke out the markers and decorated them with pictures and jokes and little words of wisdom for the coming months. Some of my favourites: Let the potty-training begin! Since I probably won't remember to tell you this when I can talk, thanks for keeping me clean and dry, and of course the ever-popular, This one's for daddy!



I also made some 'wish cards' for the baby. Each guest got one and filled it out with wishes for Angelina to read when she gets older. I get a little choked up just thinking about how special this will be for her someday, to know that we all gathered together to love her and pray for her before she was even born. There are even a few extras that are going to go out to family members who weren't able to be here today.



In spite of all the treat-eating and diaper-drawing and wish-writing, we spent a good amount of the time decorating onesies. And let me tell you something, folks - this was one creative bunch!



(That one with the flowers was made by my friend Heather, and I'm considering giving her one of my own t-shirts to work on.)

And now, I present, for your viewing pleasure, the finished products.



Now all we need is for little Angelina to show her face; her wardrobe is all ready! Stay tuned, because if the timing is right with a trip to Texas I'm about to take, I'm hoping to have some beautiful photos from her birth to share with you in a couple of weeks.

Moral of the story: Go on Pinterest if you want to throw a super-fun party. Just stay away if you have any other commitments for the two weeks prior to that party. Because you're going to find a lot of ideas, and you're going to want to do them all!

These are a day late, due to the fact that I dropped the dear HoJ off at the airport yesterday morning at the awful hour of five. In the morning, people. Is that even legal? Which then meant that I had to get myself back to bed until eleven. (I only admit that given the fact that I am still recovering from a tropical disease. That's why I sleep so much. Please don't think I'm lazy.) And when I woke up, it turned out I was heading into the city to hang out with a good friend (more on that later), and by the time I got home it was most definitely time to sleep again.

With no further apology, a few calendars to grace your desktop for September.







It's all things I love to mark the season I love best. St. Patrick's at night, bokeh shaped like things and texture on walls in the third world. As always, click on the photo to get to the larger version.

Happy Septembering, everyone. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head back to Canada to see a couple of the cutest nieces in the world.

Since July is my birthday month, I decided to use some of my favourite photos for these wallpapers. I'm potentially biased, but I think this is the best set yet. You've got a tropical island in Fiji and a nice cool drink to choose from. Or, if it's already too hot where you are, you can cool things down with some snowy mountains and lupines.







What's not to love?

Sometimes coming home looks like this, like a room full of sunshine and breakfast brought to me by the dear HoJ before my feet ever touch the ground.



It's not Bolivia, and it's nothing like the adventures that we could have had there, but it's home. It's familiar and comforting, and long days of sun and rest are going to make this better. They have to. Because there's a ticket to Sierra Leone with my name on it dated exactly three months from today, and I am fully planning on being on that plane.

Until then, I'll see doctors and wait for test results and rest in the beauty of summer, in the promise of days spent lounging by the side of our friends' pool and nights enjoying pizza fresh off the barbecue while fireflies brighten the dusk, one spark at a time.

This week over at I Heart Faces, the photo challenge theme is props. I wasn't sure I'd be able to enter, as I don't often use them, but then I remembered this photo that I shot in Peru a few months ago. This is a little girl from an indigenous tribe in the Amazon jungle a few hours outside of Iquitos, and I think her blue necklace and traditional face paint (made from the juice of berries) are the perfect 'props' for this photo.



Be sure to head on over to the I Heart Faces website and check out the other incredible entires; there are some absolutely beautiful photos this week.

When I enter photos in the I Heart Faces photo challenges, it's usually just that; a challenge. I'm often sitting around, wracking my brains to come up with an idea for a submission. When I saw that the theme this week is water, I knew exactly which photo I was going to use.

My sister has been working with Campamento El Faro de Esperanza (Camp Lighthouse of Hope) in Playas, Ecuador, for as long as I can remember. It's a camp founded by Canadian missionaries who live and work in the invasion area in Guayaquil known as Bastion. I've had the privilege of working alongside them twice, once to help with the construction of the new camp buildings, and once as a leader of a team of youth from our area during the camp season. Since the HoJ and I are full-time in Africa now, sister carries the torch in Ecuador, leading the team each year to help out for a week of camp.

That week spent at El Faro was one of the best weeks of my life, spent drenched in sweat, covered in sand, and filled with the kind of delirious happiness that only comes from working with kids.

This photo kind of sums up the entire week. Janna, the one smashing the water balloon, is one of the Canadian missionaries. She has been living and working full-time in Ecuador for a number of years now; her joy is nothing short of contagious.



As usual, head over to I Heart Faces to check out all the other wet and wild water entries!