We are officially moved back in!!! After 6 1/2 weeks, the painters came today to finish a last couple of touch-ups! It’ll take a while before we’re able to purchase furniture and replace things lost in the fire, but there won’t be any more people coming to work in the house. 🙂 I, unexpectedly, have mixed feelings about moving my things back into the closet. I’ve enjoyed hanging a couple of things in my area of the closet (we haven’t replaced the hangers yet) and deciding where to put each of my things today. I didn’t think I’d have any trouble with it considering we have no reason to believe it would happen again, but I’m slightly nervous anyway.
I finished my first week as a “Student Nurse Tech.” This whole week – Monday-Friday 8:00-4:00 was orientation; learning how to work the computer systems (thankfully this is the same hospital where I did my clinicals so I was already pretty comfortable with it), filling out tons and tons of paperwork, taking tours, learning hospital protocols and safe patient transfering, etc. I really enjoyed having a regular schedule, but man am I tired! I’ve worked full-time before – at the daycare – but this week was so much more exhausting than I remember the daycare being.Â
Anyway, I got my whole schedule for the summer. This next week I’ll work 3 12-hour shifts at the Anderson Center for Mental Health. I’m a little bit nervous about this one because I really don’t know what to expect. I’m glad, though, because it’s my first week so it’ll be out of the way. On each different floor, I’ll follow a nurse “preceptor” around, who will demonstrate skills and then watch me perform them. I can’t wait until the week of June 16th when I get to be in the Birthing Center. 🙂
This week I’m realizing that God is trying to teach me to fully rely on Him. He has given me just enough energy to get me through the day and by the end of the day, I start falling apart and know it’s time to go to bed. “His mercies are new every morning” has new meaning for me. This is one of the many reasons I love Haiti so much. In the United States, we have access to anything we need. We tend to work to make our lives convenient. Every time I go to Haiti, I have to re-learn how to lay everything in God’s hands and let Him take care of me. Not just for safety, but for my basic needs. Yes, we have bathrooms, but they’re essentially outside. You go into the shower praying that as you’re standing there with the water off (since you can’t waste water, you get in, turn on the water and get wet, turn it off and soap up, then turn it back on and rinse off), you don’t see all of the moths, spiders, and bugs on the curtains separating the other showers and a rat doesn’t run across your feet as it leaves the kitchen and enters the bathroom through a hole in the wall. Yes, you have a roof over your head, but you have to make sure you put heavy things on EVERYTHING, including your clothes and pillow, so when a strong wind blows through, it doesn’t blow your things over/through the railings which are the only thing separating you from the ground, and into the neighboring banana field. Yes, there’s food, but you have to remember to take absolutely NO FOOD upstairs or you’ll have an entire colony of ants crawling across your bed to get it (take it from me, it’s NOT fun.) I tend to feel so much closer to Jesus when I’m in Haiti because I have no control over anything. I have to trust Him for my every need every moment of every day. I haven’t felt that to that extent this week, but He is definitely trying to teach me to trust Him more.
I’m so tired tonight, I’m going to go relax. 🙂 I’ll post final pictures of the house soon.
Fruit Worthy 