When You Can't Trace His Hand - Trust His Heart...

(Leah) So, as you have been reading, the last 48 hours have been crazy. First with sickness, then hospital stays, then being at Sonrise for an entire day with only Joseph and the nannies. The Lord is truly faithful!! I know Amy told you about all of the events of the past two days, but I would like to give you my perspective which is a little bit different in parts.
I started feeling bad Saturday night and immediately thought "OH NO!!" I had been trying to be so careful with the food and water. But we did go swimming and of course you do swallow a little pool water no matter now hard you try not to. Definitely NOT the smartest thing to do!! I never threw up, thank goodness! Not going to go into as much detail as Amy because I think she covered all of the bases, but just suffice it to say that I had to use my Cipro if you know what I mean : ) I talked to my Mom that night and of course she asked about my health and I had to answer truthfully and tell her that I didn't feel so great. She gave all of the motherly advice about getting lots of rest and taking all of my vitamins. Let me just say that I am HORRIBLE at taking medicines on a regular basis unless it's a prescription that I have to take. I just can't remember! I had to take care of Baby Moses early Sunday morning and didn't get any sleep after 5:00am. But I do love baby duty. It is such a joy and privilege to be able to take care of these precious children. Jesus loves the little children...I am finding that to be true as I am falling in love with them all as well!
Back to my sickness...I felt ok Sunday morning so I thought I was over it. Amy and I wanted so badly to unpack the donation bags while everyone was at church, but we were too tired. I suggested a 30 minute rest time and then we would get to work. Almost two hours later, we awoke feeling worse...absolutely NO energy. I think it was at this point that I started crying. I have always joked that my motto is: "You can either laugh or cry...it's up to you." I usually choose the laughter part. This time, I told Amy, it was a time to cry. I guess it was the exhaustion compounded with being sick on another continent far away from home. After I let it out, I felt better, at least mentally! Amy still was feeling far worse than me of which I felt bad for her. She had been up the night before sick as a dog taking care of Baby Moses and she didn't even wake me. I got onto her!! Sunday night, I decide to take a shower to see if that will help me feel better. Mark had mentioned that he hadn't been feeling so hot and I just thought, well he'll get what we have and hopefully we'll all be better in 24 hours. NOT SO!! I had just turned on the water for the shower when I hear Amy yelling..."Leah, can you get in the shower quickly?" I was thinking it was Mark needing to come in and use the bathroom or throw up. I then hear someone come in and get the bucket beside the toilet that serves as our trashcan. I go about getting my shower and can hear something going on in the room, but I'm not sure what. I hear key words like hospital, malaria, but no name so I am thinking it's one of the babies. All of a sudden the door bursts open and Amy (calm as a cucumber I might add) says, "Leah, we are taking Mark to the hospital. We think he has malaria." WHAT?? I'm asking her if anything else could possibly go wrong and she starts laughing. How she can be laughing at a time like this is beyond me...totally the Lord! I question her sanity at this point, but I guess at least she's not crying. BTW: I had NO IDEA that Mark had blacked out or was laying on our bedroom floor sick! Amy said that I should probably come along to be tested as well, but the last place I wanted to go was to a hospital in a foreign country. Thankfully, since I hadn't thrown up they didn't think that was necessary - WHEW!! I finished my shower in a hurry the whole time praying hard. I didn't know what to do!! That left Brenda and me to care for three babies - Mark, Baby Brenda, and Baby Moses. I slept with Moses and Brenda slept with Mark. That left Baby Brenda in the basket on the floor which was nearer my bed. I read some of my Bible while praying for Mark and Amy. Trying to stay calm through the whole process - not easy. Maybe an hour later Betty comes into the room letting us know that they had admitted Mark with malaria and gave me a list of items they needed to take back for their stay in the hospital. I was like a woman on a mission trying to find all of these things quickly in their different locations which was not easy with the huge mess in our room. By the time I got back into bed it was pretty late. I think I dozed for maybe 20 minutes before Moses woke up for a feeding. He ate pretty well, but then decided that he wanted to be awake and look around. He is SO CUTE which makes it hard to get mad at him. He wanted to be held which meant that I couldn't just lay down and try to sleep. Everytime I would lay him down he would start to whimper and I didn't want to wake everyone else up so I would snatch him up. After about an hour of this Baby Brenda woke herself up coughing and started crying. I had to put down Moses to get her which made him start to whimper again. Brenda likes to drink from the bottle like a cup so I unscrewed the top and tried not to make a mess...not easy or successful! Through all of this Moses starts crying, so I start taking shifts between feeding Baby Brendah and feeding Moses another bottle. I felt like I had twins!!! Maybe the Lord is preparing me for something to come...?? Finally, Moses fell back asleep and Brenda went back to bed. I lay down and about an hour later Moses woke back up ready to eat again...ahhh! I changed his stinky diaper and was about to put his clean diaper on when he started pooping again. I RUSHED to put the new diaper under him, but didn't quite make it. Thankfully, it just got a little on the sheet and his blanket so I didn't have to completely change his clothes. This was quite time-consuming and by the time he had finished his bottle about 45 minutes had passed. I think I got a little more sleep during this period of time - from about 3:00am-4:30am. Then Moses woke up again for another feeding and then Brenda as well!! I was so tired, I think I was going cross-eyed feeding Moses his bottle. I kept thinking "Lord, I know you don't give me more than I can handle, but I think this is getting pretty close!" I think I stayed awake the rest of the night and slept from about 7:00-8:00 on Monday morning. Then the rest of the babies got up which is NOT a quiet process as they have "potty time" and "table time".
Monday: Brenda, Richard, and Auntie Norah (nanny) were headed to Kampala to take Baby Brenda to the hospital for further care for her malnutrition (she had been discharged from the clinic after two days and told that she needed further care at a bigger hospital). They were also going to take Baby Mark with them because they think his belly button has a hernia because the umbilical cord wasn't tied off close enough to the body. With them going to Kampala and Betty, Amy, and Mark at the hospital - this left me and Joseph at Sonrise alone except for the nannies. The Lord gave me strength to get up and face this day. I felt a lot better physically and not as exhausted as I thought. All in all it was a pretty good day without Amy. I wasn't really worried about her not being there which was good. It was just different not having ANYONE there. I felt like I fell into a familiar routine though with them. At one point we had two volunteers drop by who were working with Give International (an organization out of Canada). I didn't know they were coming over so that was kind of weird. It was almost stressful because they had been coming over twice a week since December to play with the kids and had started disciplining them by telling them to go into a corner if they did something bad or taking them to their room when they were crying. I didn't agree with what they were doing at all!! But, they were helpful with the kids and you could tell the babies liked them. At one point they brought out some new matchbox cars for each of the kids and that was fun, but don't even ask me where they are now because it gets crazy trying to keep up with 13 cars!! During naptime, I had planned on taking a nap myself, but the volunteers stayed. I was talking with them and then they said that if I wanted to nap that was fine. I did...a whole hour!! I felt so refreshed after I got up. The volunteers ended up leaving after snack time...stress relieved! Then Joseph came up and told me that some other volunteers were coming by Sonrise. It turned out that it was some of the same ones from the previous day coming with Damali to check out a project they were going to work on...turning the garage into a room for the boys so that the current boys room could be turned into a baby room. This required cleaning out the garage, prepping the walls for paint, painting, redoing the concrete floor, and also other painting around the outside of the house. I'm glad that they are doing it...one less thing that we have to do! Amy and Mark fially made it back to Sonrise last night about 11:00pm. PTL!!!! I had been praying all day! Through all of this I hadn't talked to my Mom, but knew she must be worried about me. Thankfully Richard let me use his phone and she was able to hear my voice. Mark, Amy, and I stayed up and talked for a little while after they got home laughing about the incident and giving our views on what had transpired in the past 24 hours.
Like I said before, I really felt good about being at Sonrise with the babies. I felt like I was able to fall into a routine with them and felt more at home!! And I ate almost all of my lunch which made Loyce (the cook) VERY HAPPY!! They had been so worried about me because I haven't been eaing much at all. Part of it is because I didn't want to cause any stomach problems the other part is that the food is somewhat different than I am used to. We do have beans and rice, but matoke is cooked plantains which is interesting. I don't hate it, but I certaily don't love it either. I hated to be offending them or hurting their feelings.
Damali forced us to take a day off today which has been great. We had a rough night with the babies...the first time with all four. We ended up giving Baby Brenda to Auntie Norah for the night because she kept wimpering and crying, but she would't take her bottle. OH, after they went to the hospital for her she came back with antibiotics (for ear infection), couch syrup, iron for her blood, and multi-vitamin drops. Now WHY couldn't she have gotten this at the clinic here in Jinja?? WELCOME TO AFRICA!!!
We came into town to eat breakfast and get on the internet. We are still trying to load some pictures, but it just doesn't want to cooperate. I did get one to upload to our facebook event, but it's just of the three of us which you already have! SO FRUSTRATING!! We looked in some of the shops and may go ahead and buy some souvenier stuff today.
I have been learning to french braid. Amy wanted me to do her hair last week and I thought - I have seen Mom do this a million times. How hard can it be? It was disastrous. I didn't even finish! Amy had to kind of walk me through it and when I finished I was quite proud. It wasn't very tight which I can't seem to get right. Today, I did my third french braid and felt a lot better...it's hard to maneuver three seperate strands of hair with one hand while trying to add to it with the other hair pulling it together. Hopefully by the end of the trip I'll be a MASTER! We enquired about a safari today, but there aren't other groups signed up right now so it could just be the three of us which would make it more expensive. We have a whole month to get it done though so we didn't even book anything. THe lady at the travel office was going to forward us information about two different safari places with prices...crossing my fingers it's not too much!
Rachel and Mary Beth: Thank you for the P&P quotes on the comments from Amy's post. It totally made my day!! When we were in Mbale and Richard kept calling the mountain a hill, Amy started saying "Hill! Hill!" just like Mrs. Bennett does when calling her maid. It was hilarious!
Thanks everyone for your prayers! Maybe add to the list that we will be able to upload pictures because I would love for everyone to at leas see what our new babies look like. OH, and we found out this morning that Baby Brenda is ONE YEAR OLD. She was born 1/6/09. We found this out from the lady who went with us. I cannot believe it! This makes it even more important to get some nutrients into her. We knew she was older, but not this old. It is amazing to me that she has even stayed alive this far! I'm gonna sign off for now. This trip is truly amazing and I hope that we can at least give you a glimpse into what we are doing here.
During these past few days of sickness and stress I know that the devil has been attacking us. It has been hard to get into the Word with such a busy schedule, but I have been reminded how important that is. "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world!" Praise the Lord for that truth!!!