Eric and I have been working in the ICU this whole week. It's kind of weird getting used to working 5 eight hour shifts instead of the 3 twelve hour shifts that we're used to :) We've mostly been training the staff on patient assessments and things to look for with each patient condition. Their ICU isn't very well established yet, so we're trying to help them make it better. Most of the staff know English but a lot of the patients don't, so it's a little hard to communicate with them, but we do the best we can. There's a little boy who was in a car accident and had a severe crush injury to his right foot. They thought they would have to amputate it first, but one of the doctors wanted to try to save it so they've been taking him back to the OR every 2 days to debride it (remove the dead skin). Every time he comes through the PACU he is so scared and cries almost the whole time. Since we don't know Amharic it's hard to talk to him but we made him a balloon out of a latex glove and Eric drew a face on it and made funny faces at him- he calmed down after that and seemed a little happier :)
Today we visited an Ethiopian woman who has a ministry for orphans. She is just trying to get it started right now so she only has 5 kids, but she is doing an awesome job with them. She teaches them all about Jesus and does all their schooling. The kids even got in a circle and prayed for us by name before we left- it was so sweet :) Some of them have really sad stories- One of the boy's father killed his mother and a couple of the girls have parents who died from AIDS. Pray for her and her ministry- her name is Tsion (which means Zion) and she has a husband and 3 kids of her own who are adults. The ages of her kids she is taking care of are 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and she is getting 2 more very soon.
One more quick prayer request- we're trying to switch one of our flights on the way back home because we have to fly into JFK airport and then take a taxi to Newark airport to catch our next flight, which is pretty dumb and will be a huge pain, but every airline we talk to says to ask another airline to do it (we are flying through several different airlines and no one seems to want to take responsibility for it). Please pray that we will be able to get that switched.
It's hard to believe we only have a little more than 1 week left here before we leave for India. Thank you all so much for praying- we are having an awesome time!