A rollercoaster of a week

Hello All,

Thank you for the lovely replies I have received. Wow, what a week, I don´t know where to start..... alot has happened since last week when I wrote. What has been going on with you? How is England or where ever you are?

I would love to start the blog on a good note, but I´m afraid this week has been tough. There have been smiles as well as tears but I want to be honest with you.

The best part of the week has got to be coming home to the beautiful girls. They show me such love and just accept me for who I am. They are fantastic. I´ve shared much joy and laughter with them. Taught one of the younger girls to play snap and it was so funny because every time the cards matched she didn´t want to say snap. She looked at either Kat or I and told us to say snap. I didn´t quite understand why until at the end she had no cards and with a big smile on her face declared that she had won!

The girls love to hear what has gone on at the hospital every day. Some of them are very squeemish and it is very amusing. I´d love to upload some photos for you but this computer has no disk reader on. Sorry.

John very kindly took us to the hospital on the first day. It is the other side of the city to where we live. We arrived to be told we would be working 7am -6pm Monday to Friday and 8am-12pm on Saturdays. On top of this we would be doing one night shift a week and would be expected to work the full day before and the full day afterwards. I know that Drs in England used to have to work 36 hours on the trot but trying to do that in a language you don´t really understand was a shock! I decided quite quickly I needed to learn to like caffeine. The next day we talked to the Captain (The head of the hospital) and he agreed we could work 7.30am-5pm Monday to Friday for the first two weeks. After this we will have to do more hours. I know I would learn alot doing nights but please pray I only have to work 24 hours on the trot and not 36 hours! The day still starts at 5:30am as we have an hour bus ride to the hospital.

There is about 2 people in the whole hospital that speak English. My Spanish is improving, my understanding is coming on a lot quicker than my speaking but hey. I learn so much better in an apprentice style than in a textbook style. One annoying thing is that as my communication skills are slightly lacking, it is assumed that I am dumb and I don´t know anything. When I come across people in England who can´t speak; either through language barrier or disability, I hope I will treat them better. A great thing with Medicine is that alot of words are derived from Latin or Greek and so if you say a word in a Spanish accent you may well be right!

For the first three weeks I am assigned to Paediatrics. Medicine here is so different to back home. Working with limited resources is interesting! Everything is recycled including gloves. (Not that they are worn that often). There is very little equipment and the system is very paternalistic. There is a 10 year old girl at the minute who has a tropical disease and is dying. If the disease was found earlier she could have been treated. How often that is the story. She is so beautiful and her smile is so gentle. Due to the way medicine is done here, she thinks she will get better. She is also being started on medicine that would stop the disease in the acute setting but won´t make any difference to her now and she is in organ failure. It is a dichotomy because I see, hear, feel medical signs here that I only read about in textbooks in England which is great for my learning but at the same time it normally means the child is dying.

On Wednesday I was allowed to get my hands dirty and do some wound care management and help out in the emergency room. Doctors here tend to do wound care management rather than nurses. A traditional health belief here is that eggs make wounds better, a women put egg on a wound on her face. When the bandage was taken of it was not a pretty site.

Unfortunately on Thursday and Friday both Kat and I have been ill. If we were at Spring Harvest we certainly would have been quarantined. The joys of being abroad, my stomach is beginning to settle down. I managed 2 and a half hours at the hospital yesterday. Hopefully by Monday we will both be better and can get down to things.

God Stuff:

This verse from Psalm 27 has been my prayer and my anthem for this week:
13 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

I came expecting to work in a mission hospital with Christian doctors with a Christian ethos. Very few of the doctors or nurses are Christian, they would love more of them to be but Christians doctors and nurses are difficult to come by. Due to this the approach of the doctors to the patients, me and other staff is very different to what I expected and this has required some head adjustment.

God has really been showing me the cost of being abroad and how tough it can be. At the minute I am certainly not looking at the future through rose tinted spectacles. This week there was a celebration service for my grandfather who died just after Christmas. I missed his wedding when I was on my gap year and I was very sad I couldn´t be there this week. Alot of my family would have been there, I had an email to say I was mentioned which brought a smile to my face.

At the minute Kat is skyping with Fiona, this is making me smile. Oh the joys of technology!

God has really been my rock and being here with Kat and coming home to Jon and Linda and the girls is fantastic. Jon as a suprise came and picked us up. It is great to be with friends. Church is quite different here but have some sermons to listen to and lots of music too.

Praise God that we are still safe and that Spanish learning is getting better.
Please pray for language and for stuff at the hospital to improve.
I believe that if I can show the love of God to each patient whether through a smile or a kind word then my time here will have been successful.


I will sign off here. Sending you all lots of love

Zara xx

Arrived safe and well in Bolivia

Hello lovely people.

We arrived safe and well in Bolivia on Thursday. I spent a few hours with family before I left, which was great, although not long enough. The plane journey was amazingly non eventful, I wasn´t sick! Quite a miracle. When we were at heathrow there were a number of other medics there going of on their electives! It is odd to think that many of my friends are all over the world.

This keyboard is really difficult to get used to, so please excuse odd spelling. It was funny travelling through Brazil and hearing Portuguese being spoken again. It brought back many fond memories, including drinking an amazing drink called Guarana. As we took of from Sao Paulo seeing the slums reminded me alot about my Gap Year. I can´t believe that was almost five years ago and yet it shaped me in such a big way. I was so young, well I suppose I still am!!

It was fantastic to be met by old friends at the airport. So many of my friends would have been met by people they didn´t know. To see familiar faces is amazing, it almost feels like I never left. I seem to have slot right back into place. Other friends I have been reaquainted with is the sun, although winter has officially started, and my personal favourite the mosquito. The mosquito has currently made me look like a teenager with bad acne - but I am hoping its love for my juicy skin will fade away.

I can´t believe how the girls remembered us so well. Almost immediately they started singing the Hokey Cokey and wanting to play clapping games with us. (Bex and Claire they are sending you lots of love. Linda says the fab two doesn´t have the same ring as the fab four!) It is great to see how the girls have changed. Last time two of the girls that were so quiet and timid last night suddenly showed who they were! It was fantastic to see. We were dancing around the house with broomsticks as air guitars singing to Delirious in Spanish! Well maybe I should correct myself there, they were singing and I was mumbling and then singing the words I did know very loudly.

Seeing how well the girls remembered us, challenged me of the difference you can make in a few weeks. I have recently been chatting with Jess, a great friend of mine, about whether Short Term mission trips make any difference to the people you go to see. It seems like they can, which gives me lots to think about on a developmental front.

Monday work starts. We touched base with the hospital yesterday. It seems like our supervisor doesn´t speak any English, so it could be fun. Have been hearing all sorts of stories about how if someone develops an open fracture (When the wound breaks the skin), Bolivians pack it with cow dung! So much for trying to stop infection. Monday could be very interesting especially as doctors think they are God.

Lastly, my phone seems to be working alright. I´ve been receiving texts. Jamie if you are reading this well done for getting to the top of the mountain, I wonder which one of us is at higher altittude. To the two fantastic people who just got engaged! Many congratulations. It is fantastic to share such great news across the globe.

God Stuff:
It is great to have had alot of time in this last week or so to spend time with God. I am really enjoying reading my Bible, I´m reading Acts and am trying to read it through the eyes of the disciples. I´m also reading a Mark Driscoll book and it is giving me food for thought. Those of you that know me well, will know just how much I dislike thinking! :-D. A quote I am pondering on:

´¨God´s mission is not to creat a team of moral and decent people but rather ro create a monemeny of holy loving missionaries who are comfortable and truthful around everyone and who, in this way, look more like Jesus that most pastors do.´´

Please praise God for our safe arrival and health and that we didn´t loose our bags. Praise God for the work he has done in the girls and the work he has done in me this last year. Coming back here makes it easier for me to see how I have changed.

Please pray for Monday, I am so excited about it. I love the fact it is unknown but my Spanish is going to be very important. Some of you know how difficult I find it to learn things and how frustrating I find it. It is a bit like my Achillies heel. Please pray that Spanish speaking will come more naturally to me. On the otherhand it is great to see how much more I have learnt since last year and how communicating with the girls is much easier.

Have a great rest of Easter holidays and I´ll be in touch soon. Please let me know what is going on with you. I promise you it doesn´t seem boring.

Spring Harvest

Today I arrived back in Bristol from Spring Harvest down in Minehead. I was part of the all age celebration team, we came from different Vineyard churches in the UK.

It was a great week, a real laugh and suprisingly very relaxing. I found I learnt alot, shared ideas and felt re-invisioned for kids work. I can't wait for June when I have to plan more discovery zone. The week ended in a very peculiar way, but more of that in a minute.

Each night we did two celebrations that are meant to be for children and their parents. We found that many others came along, maybe for a more relaxed atmosphere. The night consisted of games, drama, worship, teaching, puppets and a time for prayer and reflection. The event ran at a fast pace, due to how much we had to fit in an hour but also so that we maintained the kids attention.

Each day we had a team meeting to plan the evening and also to hang out and get to know eachother. The team were fantastic, we gel-ed together quickly and there was alot of banter and laughter. It was great to spend time with more experienced kids workers and to learn from them, as well as to share ideas.

The kids were fantastic, they wanted to have fun and to learn more about God. It was a priviledge to minister to them and see them grow in their faiths. I loved praying for the adults, chatting to them and seeing them inspired.

I realised what an honour it was to have grown up in the type of churches that I grew up in. Churches that look out, churches that are more bothered about justice than what type of chair they sit on, churches that are a mobilised group of people rather than an empty building.


Yesterday, one of my chalet buddies and a fellow all age team mate came down with a tummy bug. At 4pm she felt really ill and it was time to notify Butlins and the Spring Harvest top dogs. It ended up with the four of us in the chalet being quarantined. I felt slightly like I was a monster in monsters inc that came back with a bit of human on me. We were not allowed to leave our chalet and so couldn't take part in the all age celebration.

This was a bitter disappointment for the four of us and for the team. This left the team of 5 guys to run the whole show, with an hours notice. Before coming to Spring Harvest I was looking forward to being critiqued of my teaching skills; last night was the night I was due to speak. I had to hand over my talk, but the guy who did it told me what he thought of it! The guys had to talk in forsetto voices to do the puppets, one parent remarked that they seemed 'drag'.

The time was then enforced rest that can't have done me any harm. We had a girly evening eating chocolate and playing cards and this morning went to see Faz, a housemate of mine from Brum. Looking back, I don't feel I missed out on anything and I think it was awesome that 5 guys ran a kids venue for 3 sessions. Firstly it shows that there are men in the church and men that can rise to a challenge and two that there are men that do kids work!

So, it was a great week and I would jump at the chance to do it again. I am looking forward to singing songs without doing any actions though! So tomorrow I get on a plane to Bolivia...... I will write again in a few days.