We are about a week and a half late on this, but we wanted to let everyone know we made it back safe and sound to Ohio. Please keep both countries in your prayers. Just after we left India, we found out the area we were located has had many bombings and flash flooding.

Our time in India is quickly coming to a close. The people here will leave a lasting touch on our hearts. We continue to spend every day in the hospital seeing some of the sickest people we have ever encountered. It's sad that people will not seek out medical care till either something is falling off or they are unable to open their eyes. They are so poor that they don't want to "waste" money on a taxi ride if it's truly not needed.
On monday we got to go to a remote village and share our testimonies and passages from the Bible with some in the community. On tuesday we took the day off from the hospital to travel to the wildlife reserve. We saw a few rhinos and played with a tame family of elephants. I'm still trying to figure out the culture, and when I think I have a handle on part of it, new things arise. Just yesterday, there was a thing called a banh. It's our version of a strike. No one knows why people strike, but the general feeling is that they are unhappy. They are unhappy with the infrastructure, lack of food, influx of military, and the violence. So what do people do during a banh? The members tear up things and set fire to whatever they can, destroy food storage's, and kill people. This causes the government to send in more troops. Completely counterproductive. The people are just upset and need an outlet. All the more reason for the need of Christ in this area. The banh was just for 24hrs and over now, but another one could be issued and if it is, it's between us and the airport. This could make things interesting getting home. The plan is already to make our two hour drive for the airport very early in the morning. We have faith it will all work out.

Once again thanks for your prayers, love, and support

We wanted to thank everyone for your prayers. Besides an occasional intestinal bug, we are healthy. The rash on my(Eric's) body is almost gone. And the Lord has kept us safe. In fact, the town we are in has a huge military compound down the street. One of the top ranking generals lives less than a mile away. So security should be at its best here.
Continue to pray for the church here in India. It is still under persecution in many areas. We are also finding that many who do call themselves Christian is by names sake only. Last night we had the opportunity to share our stories with the hospital Bible study, and tonight we are going out into a village to help with a Bible study. We are trying to get together a trip for mid week to go out into the edge of the jungle to see the conditions and probably offer some health care. So far, we've seen many illness' while in the hospital. Severe cases of TB, tetnus, malaria, typhoid, and stroke. We have seen a patient was run over by a bull, one who was run over by an ox, and even saw one who was run over by a rhino. Please pray for the hospital and for the patients. Recently there has been many patients who have passed away. It's not the fault of the hospital, but it can sometimes be seen that way by the family. The people in this area are so poor that they will wait to seek medical care till they are completely unconcisous and totally sick. By the time we see them, there isn't much we can do except pray.
Also, pray for us as we start our multi-day trip back home starting on saturday. We will not officially be landing in the Cincinnati airport till late monday.

Hey everyone! It's hard to believe we've been here a whole week already. We've been working in the hospital for a few days now. Eric is in the ER and I'm in the ICU, and then we'll switch places after we've worked one week. We went to church Sunday at the church that's on the mission compound and then went to the Bible study on Sunday night at the medical director's house. Church was in English and Assamese, so it was nice to be able to understand the language. The Bible study was completely in English. We both really enjoyed the Bible study. It was fun getting to know the some of the staff that work here at the hospital and being able to worship and pray together. We are the only Americans here. Everyone else is Indian except for a neurosurgeon and his family who are from New Zealand, but they're only here for 2 more months. The food is ok- in the U.S. we love to go to Indian restaurants, but that food is not like real Indian food :) Here, the food pretty much all tastes the same and they use a ton of curry and tumeric and serve everything with rice. It tastes pretty good, but sometimes we just eat peanut butter and bread for a change :)
We're getting a little better after being sick, so that's definitely a praise. We found out that the fighting is now as close as a 3 hour drive from us. It's actually in the city we flew into from Delhi, so please pray for continued safety for us and the Indian people.
Thanks again for praying! We can't wait to see all of you again soon!
-Kelsi and Eric :)

Sorry we haven't written in a while. Last weekend, while in Ethiopia, we traveled outside of the capital to visit a church and some hospitals in the country side. It was both cool and sad seeing how the people live. So much poverty, but so much joy. In the areas we went, the church was strong and the people were very loving. On monday we left our friends in Africa and headed to Delhi, India. On tuesday we left Delhi for our long journey to the middle of nowhere India. Luckily today is Eid and Ghandi's birthday so we have the day off due to the holiday. We ask for your continual prayers. The spiritual warfare is definitely hitting us. Kelsi and I have both come down with some sort of flu. I have this bad rash on my chest, arms, and back. Her phone and glasses are gone. Our camera is broken. And the people who were supposed to meet us are gone, so we feel a little lost in the shuffle. Despite all of this, God is good and we have high spirits. We just need the prayer to maintain this thought and attitude. We are excited to be starting in the hospital tomorrow.
Now for what some of our friends back home want to know. Mom and mom 2 can stop reading from this point on. The bombings and unrest in India is still happening in different parts of the country. Luckily, the area we are in is calm right now and we feel safe. Keep the whole country and Christian community in your prayers.
Thank you.

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!

We were wondering why we couldn't log on to our blog and we found out today that the Ethiopian government has blocked all blog sites :) So, we've been emailing what we want to write to my (Kelsi's) mom and having her post them. We'll still try to update as much as we can.Last week we were able to spend some time in the hospital. Their ICU is combined with the PACU (post-anesthesia unit) since they don't have their ICU set up to be on its own right now. They only had 2 patients in the ICU, but both of them were very sick. Both were on ventilators and both were craniotomies. They have a couple of neurosurgeons here from Norway, so they are able to do some pretty complicated surgeries. We spent most of our time learning how they do things here since it's very different than in the US. The head of nursing at the hospital wants us to look at how they do everything in their ICU and see if we can think of ways to make it better and help train the nurses. We got to see a little bit of the city last week. We visited a couple of Ethiopian Orthodox churches (kind of like a cross between Judaism and Catholicism) and had some real Ethiopian food. Today we went to the English service at an Ethiopian church (they have another service in Amharic, which is the national language). There were mostly Ethiopians in the service but there were also quite a few internationals there from various countries. We really enjoyed it- they definitely know how to worship! :)We'll try to post some pictures soon if we can, but the internet connection isn't that great so hopefully it will work. Thanks for your prayers!