well.. i tried.

Before I joined this ship I thought maybe I would want to do something in the medical field. I mean, where better to find out if that type of job would suite me than on a medical ship right? after shadowing surgeries.... well, lets just say I wouldn't make a very good doctor. I was really excited because it was my turn to shadow surgeries.. so i scrubbed up and skipped on down to the ward. I wasn't feeling very good this paticular day and we were really rocking-- which isnt the greatest set up for watching a surgery. Anyways, The surgery I was permitted to watch was prob. the most disturbing one I could watch I'd say.. first of all.. the placement on the body was a little gross, and it was a big tumor, full of fluid that they needed to get into and drain.. so they cut him open, and as soon as i saw the blood i started feeling a little light headed. so I started talking to the aneasthesiologist (i cant spell.. ) trying to distract myself, looking at all the machines this person was hooked up to.. and asking him alot of questions-- i know alot of random facts now.. but anyways, they burn the edges of the incision so that it will stop the bleeding, so then the room smelled like burning flesh-- yummy.. my favorite smell. So i thought i should prob look back at the surgery because thats why i was there, and alot of people wait a really long time to ger to see a surgery. so I should watch. BAD IDEA. i looked back as they had just cut deeper into the tumoresque thing to drain it.. which resulted in yumness oozing forth. which resulted in me on the ground. hahaha. yes. I wouldnt make a great doctor I don't think. One of the nurses came over and put water on my neck and i started laughing. and she assured me this was "normal" but i just kept laughing.. till i got to the bathroom.. and then i was just sick. and another nurse came in and told me I could go up to my room. i didnt have to come back. yes.. so that was a little bit of a disaster I'd say. My room mates told me i should go watch the eye surgeries.. because they're really interesting, and not so gross.. so i may try that. but you know? I tried.



Market

Chelsea lost her camera at Grand Popo.. which was a little unfortunate.. actually very unfortunate. I feel bad for her :( but we went into town to try to find another one on the street.. because they should be cheaper there. So we went in and found one man that was selling them but he asked us to wait while he went and looked for a digital camera.. so we sat down on these stools outside of a "shop" that was selling (prob. stolen) TV and DVD players.. and Chelsea and I decided it'd be funny if we were the shop owners. and were just talking about how funny it'd be if we started offering "our" merchandise the the people passing by.. like the real shop owners do. Right about then a man came up (into "our" store mind you) and offered us fishing nets of some sort.. and in response chelsea and i both offered him a TV or a DVD player... and he just looked really confused and said "no merci... " and walked off.. ha. I dont know if you'll find that funny. I found it funny.



hospital

chelsea and i adopted a patient together.. the language barrier is always a little hard. Cheslea's learning french though-- and she's gotten to use it a little bit which has been cool.. but whenever we went down to see our patient she had had jaw surgery or something, so i dont think she could talk. We just painted her nails and her toenails.. and the girls nails in the bed beside her.. it's always super awkward at first when you're down there.. becuase you just dont really know what to say or do. It's like that anywhere really. If you go into a ministry site-- at the psychiatric hospital, or the orphanage.. you show up. and then its kindof awkward trying to figure out what to do with yourself. Like I was saying earlier, it's so different to be somewhere for longer than a week or so, becuase you actually have to build relationships with people. You can't just be entirely fake with everyone.. which is usually the temptation-- at church, at school, on a missions trip. You can keep up the mask and not let someone truly get to know you as long as it's only for a few hours or a week or so. You can put up your lovely happy mask or whatever mask you choose.. but here-- im surrounded by people literaly all the time. So i've had to let them get to know me. whether i really want them to or not.

speaking of a hospital... i got pretty sick a little while ago and i spent a night in the ICU. now before you start thinking I was dying or anything.. it was the only ward with an open bed. calm your hearts. I had just been pretty sick for the past week and a half so i was pretty dehydrated. When they took my temperature it was too low... so they retook it.. and retook it. and decided my temperature was actually too low. so they kept me down in the hospital to try to get my temperature back up.. and to rehydrate me. My doctor said she might have to give me an IV to get fluids into my body, but me being my stubborn self didn't want to be stuck with a needle. so i woke up every hour or so and drank this lovely chalky liquid meant to rehydrate you. O! and I went down to the ward just to get some medicane for my throat. It had been hurting for a little while and there were some random white bumps on it.. so i just wanted to make sure I didn't have strep. ANYWAYS. Im okay now, but that was my exciting night in the hospital in Benin! (which actually wasn't that exciting).

Goodbye :(

I hate that word. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate it. Im sick of it. three of my good friends left tonight-- Leah, (with the braids--from Germany) Kate (from australia.. my room mate slash mother figure), and Irina (a girl from Russia who was also in my small group).. It was so depressing seeing all of them pull away. Life's going to be quite different without them here on the ship. I'm really going to miss Irina. I became really close to her when we started a small group. We have a lot in common, and it was really nice to have someone to talk to. I'm going to miss her a whole lot.

Normalcy

I know I've talked about this before, but it's the thought thats been consuming my mind for the past few weeks or so. The days have begun to go by seemingly without meaning. It's so strange to me. I don't know what I can do more to make myself wake up to the world around me. I know that ultimately it isn't within my powers to "wake myself up" I have to rely on God to keep my spirit awake... i just hate these times when I feel like nothing is happening. The "normal" times. I talked about this during small group, and I was really encouraged by Kelsey (she's semi-new.. she joined our small group 2 weeks ago). She just reminded me that these times aren't bad. It's when we use faith. For me at least, when I get into a routine and the days start to go by I do my devotion and i wonder if I have the right heart about it because i don't feel anything, nor am i really motivated to pray. I don't know, it's just frustrating to me. I don't know if I'm making any sense at all. I've also been really frustrated because I feel like on the ship they make sure you feel like what you do on the ship is enough-- "you're serving those who serve.. you're job is important bla bla.. " so on your days off you just chill out or go to the beach or go to the market. WHAT IN THE WORLD???? if i wanted to volunteer in America I would have. I came to Benin because I wanted to serve the people of Benin. I need to remember why Im here. When we go out into the city we don't just go out as tourists. We're here to love these people. Every person we see we are supposed to be showing the love of Christ to, but it's almost like the attitude is when you go off the ship you're on a "break" This is the atitude I've had within myself. I'm not judginng the people of the ship. I just feel like we're all wrong. My small group and I were discussing this last night and talked about how we just pass the crippled beggars on the street and the sick people lying there without even giving them a second look really.. "we can't help them" we think. But we could pray with them, we could talk to them, we could smile at them we could hug them. we COULD do so many things other than just walking by excusing ourselves because we cannnot help them physicaly. my own mindset makes me angry. We we're studying the story of Jesus walking on water, and peter getting out of the boat to walk to him.. we decided that together, we would "get out of the boat" haha i just realized how cheesy that is.. because we're on a ship. but seriously, we are going to step even more out of our comfort zones. We're going to go into the city and pray with/talk to the different crippled and blind people. We're taking a week to pray about what we think God wants us to do with this ministry. I'd appreciate it if you'd pray about it with me :)

I apologize that it took me so long to write this... I haven't been very motivated to get on the computer. I hope you all have a very blessed week. O! by the way, on October 9-11th Im going to Togo and Ghana! I'm so excited! everythings worked out... :)

every time i sit down to write here I don't know what to say. Sorry it always takes me so long. this week was better than last week was-- thank you for your prayers. I have really felt God's peace. I truly feel content in him. I feel like I'm where God wants me to be right now, and i feel like he's revealing alot to me about future decisions I need to make. It's truly incedible. I'm not going to lie, as you all know... it's really hard here sometimes. I really miss people from home at points, but over all i really love it. I'm so glad i came. okay so now i suppose I'll tell you what i did this week--

Hospitality Center

Before the ship opened for surgery in Benin a church team came and set up the hospitality center. They basicaly cleared out the entire warehouse and put beds in it, and electricity... it's a home for the people that have to travel a long way to have surgeries--or for the families of those recieving medical attention. We can visit the hospitality center whenever we want to. We can just visit with the different people there, or play with the children. It's strange, before now I always thought that my greatest ministry would be playing with the children. Since I've been here though I've really felt more led to talk with the women ( or attempt to talk.. with the tiny amount of french I've picked up) We usually just laugh together, and dance, and watch the kids.. laughing at the ridiculous things they do. I used to make fun of the people using signs to talk to each other because they had a language barrier.. but that's me everyday here. :) i'm drawing pictures in the dirt, playing charades, speaking in spanish (ha.. not that it really helps, but sometimes the words sound more similar than in english) all of which usually ends with laughter. I'm going to attempt to describe the hospitality center to you, and the road it's on. We walk there, down dirt or rock roads. It's only about ten minutes away from the ship. We pass "shops" along the way... which consist of little shacks usually. or open buildings (there's three walls) everything here is dirty. I don't know how else to describe it. You get used to it really fast, if you are a believer in germ X application every ten seconds i woulnd't suggest coming here, even the air is dirty. people use the restroom in the streets, i dont think i need to describe that. people on the ship have started jokes about the smells here now though. One girl suggested we make scented candles with the lovely smell of cotonue.. we have fresh urine, sun baked urine, or stale urine. I apologize.. I know that's discusting, and probably not very funny to you. Anyways.. people always click at you to get your attention, or just full on yell "yovo!" but you just keep walking, unless it's a child.. then you can play with them if you want to. anyways, we walked for a little while down the street and turn into an alley-- a dirt road in between two concrete buildings that leads to a fence.. we walked through the gate of the fence and we were at the hospitality center! hooray! there's a concrete slab out front that we usually play with the kids on-- we bring chalk, and coloring books, and our selves. Theres a few rows of benches with a tent over it people can sit on and talk under or whatever they want to do. There's usually a few mothers nursing there.. It's still really hard for me to get used to-- mothers just nursing away in public. I've also had to realize that my standards for modesty aren't neccsarily the whole worlds standards for modesty. For example, in America of course it would be considered innapropriate to walk around topless... but we don't worry about showing our knees. Here walking around topless is okay.. but if you show your knees it's really innappropriate. I wore shorts when we got to the beach and i felt so strange. ha. I felt like i was being so premiscous. I'm going to come home and be so shocked to see everyones knees! o dear! ha. Okay, so I didn't actually go inside the hospitality center, I just looked in. There are alot of beds lined up, and big tents for different families to stay in. It was pretty nice. It's always awkward when you first arrive somewhere-- on one of the mercy ministry sites.. because you don't quite know what to do. You just want to say, "hello! i'm here to bless you." that sounds quite ridiculous doesn't it? but that's the mindset i tend to have. I'm not really sure what i'm actually accomplishing through all of this. Anyways, I arrived and looked around really awkwardly after i said my "bonjour"s and then i was attacked by the children. First I colored with a little boy named benjamin- he was having surgery on his foot. He taught me the colors in french, and how to say crayon. There was a lady nursing next to me. I attempted to talk to her, but was dragged away by benjamin.. wanting to color with chalk. Since i can't speak french the children and i tend to just make random noises with our mouths (clicking noises) back and forth.. basicaly competing to have the strangest one. It's pretty entertaining for a little while. The women laugh at me. Not in a mean way, they think it's funny. I would laugh at me too. There was one little boy there named Theopil and he had had surgery on his eye-- so he had a big patch over it, and another boy named freddy who had surgery on his hand. there was a little girl there about three who had had surgery on her hand. we all colored together.. and the little girl just ran around singing "do dee da do dee da doe dee da" at the top of her lungs. I joined her of course.. and she made me go stand by the wall. I don't know why. she just pushed me up against the wall and told me not to move. ha. i think i was being punished for ruining her song. Theopil was a really good artist. most of the little boys just scribbled but he was drawing really good detailed things in chalk. when i told he and freddy my name they misunderstood and called me Beningen. Freddy drew an elephant and put my "name" in it. i dont quite know if he's calling me an elephant... or what. I then decided to go sit with the ladies.. and we just watched and laughed. They always want to hold your hand, and show you to their friends.. like you're a prize. It's interesting. The men there decided they should test out cheslea's math skills. So they wrote out these really big multiplication problems for her to do. Math i suppose is a universal language. ha. i hate math (sorry Mr. Walker). It was funny though, they were very entertained watching her work out these multiplication problems. They were all so excited when she got it right. well, the time finaly came for us to leave. The sun was setting. I can see the sunset now which is nice. it's beautiful. somehow when the sun goes down over this dirty city, over the broken down buildings and discusting streets it's so breath taking. I keep taking mental pictures in my mind because i don't think a camera could to anything i see here justice. I feel like I can try as hard as i possibly can to explain all of this to you, but it's still never going to make complete sense. I wish i could just transplant all of you here for a little while to show you what im talking about..

Camping!

well, last week i thought i was going to go to Togo, but we found out Visas are $50 for Americans, and I didn't want to (nor could i) pay that. So instead we went west. We took a taxi two hours west of Cotonue to grand popo. It was so great. I was feeling so trapped here on the ship, here in this city. I dunno, i just haven't seen green in a really long time, so I was slightly freaking out. I need to see the sky, I need to see a field, or a tree that's still alive at least once a month to function i believe. We started driving and about an hour out of the city I saw a field of green grass and a row of trees and i almost cried. I know that's so dramatic but I was so happy to see God's creation. We arrived at Grand Popo and sat by the beach for a while, we got to see the people bringing in the fishing nets which was really cool. We set up our lovely mosquito net and then sat around and read and wrote and listened to music all day. It was so nice. so relaxing. I could actually breathe out here. It was reallycool to sleep on the ground with a mosquito net under the beautiful night sky. I'm going to try to put up some pictures.. i need to get back to work soon. o! random fact: the night we got back people from the ship were having a bonfire down by the beach so i got to go to that, it was really nice. I'm glad I went. I hope you all have a blessed week!

well, i'll be honest.. this weeks been a bit of a rough one. I just feel completely drained, emotionaly.. physicaly. I don't even think i can make it through dinner tonight. I know i can.. i just really want to crawl into my bed and sleep.. but i can't.. because i have crazy dreams from my malaria medicane. which also makes me dizzy, and also makes me depressed.. so then we changed medicane and it made me have terrible nightmares.. so now im back to the first one with depression. anyways.. i apologize for complaining. I know i have alot of things to be thankful for... let me think. for some reason i can't quite remember everything i've done this week :/ o! well i worked monday and tuesday.. and then wednesday i read and did alot of laundry and just kindof rested. On thursday I went into the craft market with irena and chelsea.. which was a bit of an adventure i suppose. we started waking in a certain direction because we didn't really know where the market was.. we thought we could just get a zimmy and tell then where to go.. except we forgot that we don't speak french.. except for really random phrases. anyways.. we had to go get change from a bank.. with the language barrier it was quite interesting, but we needed change because if you pay anybody with big bills here they conveniently have no change. so we got change and found some zimmys.. used hand motions and random french words until they understood what we were saying and went to the market! we settled on the lovely price of 200 CFA-- which, if you want to figure out how much american money that is you double it and move the decimal place three places back.. so 200 CFA is $.40 and 2,000 CFA is $4.00.. you understand? anyways.. so we settled on that, but when we arrived he said 300 CFA.. but we argued for a little while and it went back to 200. he kept saying 300 CFA or no deal.. excuse me? were already where we need to be.. i don't think you can tell us no deal after were already there. it's really annoying because everything we buy here is like 3 times the price it would be for an african.. because were white. curse my skin color! ha... everyone at the craft market calls you into their store and shows you everything they have.. i bought some cards to send home-- dont be offended if you don't get one.. i didn't buy a whole lot. sorry :/ and my friend bought a jimbae.. it's actually really cool. it was hand carved. and we watched him put it together right there. we were given a free drum lesson.. but i don't know how much my drumming skills were improved. ha. i wouldn't call myself a proficient drummer. we then had the lovely task of finding 3 zimmys again to get a ride home.. which was a funny situation really. we were attempting to negotiate prices... and they were going off in french.. but we didnt know what they were saying, so i just decided to throw my hands up towards the heavens and yell i don't speak french.. in french.. i dont quite know what possesed me to do that, but they laughed.. and didnt get extremely wierded out which was good-- so we finaly got back to the ship all safe and sound :)


It's strange, how over time everything becomes normal here. You get used to the poverty, you get used to the hunger.. and it's dangerous even over here to begin to be too comfortable. comfort poisons the soul. but it's a feel-good poison.. so you don't even know it's bad for you. everything's become a routine again... it's strange to havea feeling of normalcy over here.. i guess whenever i get home.. that's when i'll be impacted the most.

im so tired right now.. i think it's because i've been pouring so much of myself out... like i was on a short term trip.. because on a short term trip you can give all you have.. and be in a good mood all the time, and love everybody so well... but haha surprise! if you're somewhere longer than two weeks.. that lovely mask fades real quickly. we're alll actually human on this ship.. we all get grumpy, get tired.. then we actually learn what it means for christ to live through you.. i am a completely broken vessel right now. if i was doing things on my own.. i could not clean one more little plate without punching someone... i could not take one more request from someone without crying and telling them to do it themselves. o man... i have to pray all day long. it's only through him only through him that i can make it... there are some people on the ship that aren't christians.. i dont see how they do it. i really and truly dont.

hey guess what? i'm ging camping in Togo next weekend! I have to go get a visa from the embassy... and then i'm all set! i can't wait!! hooray! i just thought i'd share that with you.. okay. i have to go take a nap before i go to work... but i hope you all have a wonderful week! o and in case i havent told you.. i'm trying to update this every sunday... :)