Pray for Guinea

Today's blog entry is a throwback to the start of our blog, a thankfulness post, and a huge prayer request all wrapped in one.  Our blog was born when we went to Guinea, West Africa eight years ago as a way to keep our family and friends updated on us and what God was doing there.  We spent two years teaching third and fourth graders at Teachus Mission International Christian Academy, a small boarding school for nationals.  After we left Guinea we tried to keep in touch with our students by sending letters or a package every year or two and by reading the full time missionary's newsletters as well.  However, we were only able to receive correspondence back from our students once when a friend went to Guinea a couple years ago and was able to bring back letters our students had written.  Those letters were so precious and we treasured them very much.

Silly picture! Taken at the end of our second year

So you can imagine our excitement when one of our former students sent me a Facebook request this summer!  Guinea is a third world country and we lived in a village with no running water or electricity, so I was really surprised that technology advanced enough there to make this possible!  Since that first Facebook request, I have been able to reconnect with other students and write emails back and forth.  When I see recent pictures of them, I can't believe how much they have grown.  My once little third graders are now men and women!  I am so thankful that we can now keep in touch more regularly as I have missed and prayed for them over the years.

To have the ability to reconnect with our students from Guinea has been a huge and timely blessing because I've been able to keep better updated with how the students and their families are doing.  Many of you know that the Ebola virus has hit Africa hard, and the outbreak actually began in Guinea.  Soon after the 2014 school year began, the full time missionary and his family that we served with made the very difficult decision to temporarily close the school and evacuate Guinea.  To give some perspective on how hard this decision was, I can tell you that they chose to stay in Guinea when one of the first teachers at TMICA died of cerebral malaria in the school's opening year.  In the ten years that have passed since the school opened, their family of five has stayed through many bouts of malaria, other sickness, riots, and other hardships.  In the following italicized paragraphs below, here are their words from their August newsletter regarding Ebola and their decision to leave.

"Liberian president declared the state of emergency for 90 days so that the military could be deployed to search for the hiding Ebola patients, door to door.  In the public announcement, she said, “Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practice, continue to exacerbate the spread of disease.”  I totally agree with her assessment.  Ignorance is the key factor.

Ebola patients have about a 50% survival rate if they are treated but they would rather go to their village witch doctors.  They are simply hiding and spreading their virus to their family members around them.  Without treatment, the patient survival rate drops to about 10%.   Because of ignorance, they are spreading the virus more and more.  It has come to about 2-hour distance from our village.  (Originally it was about 8 hours away.)

Unlike the neighboring countries, the authorities in Guinea are doing almost nothing to stop the spread of the virus that is killing their own people. Life simply goes on.  The Ebola virus is deadly but it is not easily transmitted.  The virus is transmitted only through the bodily fluids like blood, saliva, urine and sweat.  If one washes one’s hands thoroughly, Ebola virus can be avoided.  (The experts agree on this point.) 

Our native coworkers at our center think that Ebola virus is concocted by the authorities to keep the public in control.  They don’t see the detrimental consequence if the virus comes to our center. It will probably close our school permanently.  Over ten years, we have been educating our coworkers about hygiene to keep our center clean so that we can avoid much of the sicknesses prevalent in this part of the world but they do not seem to understand it.  Every year, we are repeating the same things over and over again.  Last week I told them to limit the visitors during this time of Ebola epidemic because they could be carrying the virus.  They chuckled among themselves in a distance.  That made me sad that they don’t see the seriousness of the Ebola virus...  

With heavy hearts, we are making our preparations to temporary closing, not knowing when we will be able to return.  But we will return to reopen the school soon.  We are teaching our students and volunteers about the Ebola virus so that they can keep themselves safe until we meet again.  Though we are closing now, we will return to advance further in M4 missions."  
 
Just last week I read this article in the news that an Ebola education team of eight people composed of health workers, journalists, and local officials were killed. They had been visiting villages to raise awareness about preventing and containing Ebola.  They were stoned and brutally murdered by a mob that believed that the bleach they were distributing to kill Ebola was the virus itself.  The day after I read the horrible news, one of our former students sent me a heartbreaking message that his uncle was one of the eight that had been killed.  His uncle, Moise Mamy, was the head of his clan, a native pastor, and health worker with a Christian relief organization   I read about the tragic events that unfolded from an article in the Washington Post here and was so saddened by the news.  My thoughts and prayers go out to Martin and his family as they mourn the loss of a beloved community leader who died trying to do good.

Many of you who are reading this post prayed for us and the country of Guinea while we lived there.  We ask that you please continue to pray for Guinea.  Please pray that this epidemic would stop.  Please pray for protection on the TMICA students, their families, native staff, and the villages of Sambouya, Bilingkoro, Manya, and others surrounding the center that none would get the virus.  Please pray for Guinea and its neighboring countries Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal that have been affected by Ebola.  Having lived in Guinea, I look at what's going on and I am deeply concerned .  In a place where people gain knowledge and understanding by what they can literally see because that is their livelihoods (most of the people in the villages where we lived were subsistence farmers), you can imagine how educating people to trust in outsiders bringing in soap and bleach could be hard to receive.  The importance of good hygiene and sanitation were lessons that we needed to teach our students (we wondered why so many students had high fevers and got sick so often that first year until we did so), and it's telling of why the Ebola virus has been incredibly difficult to contain and eradicate.  So please, please pray with us.  Please pray so that the school can reopen again and the students can return to a place where they receive a good education and are encouraged and discipled in faith and love.  Please pray for the health care workers that are treating and educating people that their efforts would be well received and fruitful.  Please pray that the spread of this virus would cease and that the rest of the world would look at what's going on and see that there is a need to help.  Thank you for your prayers!

Thankfulness Part II- Our Summer in the States

Dear friends and family,

Every single day that we have is a gift, and that statement is something that's been running through my head recently.  I was reminded of this truth this week (I'll share why in my next post) and then again when I thought back to the six weeks we spent in the States this summer.  During our stay we received the gift of time with our parents, who we had not seen in two years!  We also saw our siblings, extended family, good friends (some that we didn't think we would have the opportunity to see!), and we even hosted a Hong Kong friend in Chicago for a couple days.  We got to see firsthand the healing work that God and the team of doctors in Cincinnati had done when we visited the Legers.  We marveled at our friends' new babies and how much kids had grown.  In six weeks we spent time in seven states, slept in six different beds, and praise the Lord, we learned that the kids could handle long road trips even if they weren't used to being in a car. :) The kids marveled at lush green lawns they could run in, pointed excitedly at "foreign" wildlife like squirrels, rabbits, and deer, and became good at recognizing whether a field was full of corn or soybeans. If you need any evidence of how excited I was to see our family and friends and we're friends on facebook, just scroll through my summer posts there and see just how many pictures I posted.  Here are some out of the many that I took.

Cousins!

Josiah hiking with Grandma in the Rocky Mountains

Ava enjoying a ride on Grandpa's tractor

Ava with Harabuji (my dad)

Josiah with Halmoni (my mom)

Kid pic at a family get together

Stanley, our church friend from Hong Kong, visited while we were in Chicago for a couple days

All of these experiences and get togethers (and food!) made for a wonderful summer.  We were so appreciative of the time people took to see us and treat us to foods we had missed, but the best gift we received was during our first two days in States when we flew into Tennessee.  We got to have the precious gift of time with Grandma June, Shannon's grandmother.  Two years ago when we left for Hong Kong we knew we might not see Grandma June again.  And we knew two years later as we headed to the States that she wasn't doing very well.  But Grandma June held on and the night we landed and the following morning we got to stand by her side, hold her hands, and tell her how much we loved her.  She passed away quietly that afternoon and three months later, I still miss her and it's hard to believe that she's no longer on this earth.

Grandma June was funny, warm, loving, and made you feel at ease from the moment you met her.  You would never know from spending time with her that she lived a life full of difficult circumstances because she wasn't defined by them.  She was thankful for what she had and she even dealt with hardship by throwing in humor and laughter.  She loved listening to gospel music and stayed young at heart even as a great grandmother.  I loved that there was nothing stuffy about her. She was genuine and incredibly down to earth.  She loved to tell a good story and have someone play along.  She loved her family and Jesus very much, and that was very evident in the many times she opened up her home and kitchen to all that walked in.  To have had the gift of time with her this summer and to be there for her beautiful funeral service that celebrated her life and the way she joyfully lived it was incredibly special.  I truly thank God that I had the privilege to know her and call her my Grandma June and look forward to the day when I'll be able to see and dance and laugh with her again in heaven.

She lived out this verse. "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad." Psalm 118:24

Grandma June striking a movie star pose :)

Thankfulness Part One- Bijou update

Hi everyone,

I am getting pretty awful at writing posts regularly on our blog and to be honest, one of the reasons why I don't write often is that it takes me a long time to write each of these posts. Plus, writing blog posts aren't really the top things on my agenda after the kids go to bed.  But I haven't written anything since April and so much has happened since then.  This morning I was reading a passage in the Bible from Luke 17:11-19 and it really stirred me to write an update.  In this story, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and ten men with leprosy come to him, asking Jesus for healing.  Jesus tells them to go to the priests and on the way there, they are all healed.  Only one of those men actually comes back to Jesus to thank him and Jesus tells him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."(Luke 17:19)  The passage really struck a chord with me this morning because one of the main reasons I write on this blog is to share what God is doing and when I think about it, it's a record and reminder to me of what He has done when I go back and look at past posts.  So, it may be another four months until I get another post out, but I will keep sharing and I apologize that these posts are so far and few between.

Back in April, I wrote about Bijou, and so many of you prayed for her and asked what you could do to help.  During that time, I felt absolutely helpless to do anything but to pray and love and support our friends as they feared for their daughter's life.  Besides the fact that the Legers are good friends and that I love their daughter, one of the things that helped me keep going in writing updates for the Legers was that each night as I heard the update and prayer requests, I would also look back at my notes to see what happened the day before.  And without fail I would read how God had answered Cara and John's prayer requests from the previous day.  Some of the victories were tiny and others were huge, but it was extremely encouraging in the midst of a really difficult time for their family.  It gave me hope.  I learned that God was going to take care of them, and this was made even more evident when he provided their family the funds to move from Hong Kong to Cincinnati and to provide Bijou with the best care she could receive at Cincinnati Children's Hospital through the love and care of so many people all over the world.  They were welcomed into Cincinnati with love from others that found out about their situation, and we had the JOY of being able to visit them when we were in the States over the summer holiday.  To see Bijou smile, laugh, and be able to play with the other children again was a sight to behold.  And I can't help but tear up as I write about it because I saw with my own eyes where her little body was in April and how far she had come just a couple months later in June.  I am so incredibly thankful because I had the privilege to witness God at work.  And if I can't give him glory for what happened there, then shame on me. :)

You can continue to keep updated on Bijou's progress at www.caringbridge.org/visit/bijouleger.  In May, Bijou met with the cardiologist and pulmonologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and during those appointments the doctors determined that Bijou did not have pulmonary hypertension and that her heart was normal.  If you want to understand what the doctors' words meant to Cara and John, go to the caringbridge website and read from the beginning.  I think you'll be amazed.

Cara wrote it beautifully when she said, "Each day with this girl is an amazing miracle.  It is a miracle to have her alive and breathing.  It is a miracle for her to not need to be on oxygen or any other machine or support.  It is a miracle that she has been steadily gaining back muscle and strength.  A few months ago, my little BumbleB was confined to a hospital bed, was breathing artificially, and had multiple organ failure.  Today Bijou sings, Bijou giggles, Bijou swings, Bijou climbs, Bijou plays, Bijou crawls, Bijou dances, Bijou walks, Bijou hugs, Bijou talks, Bijou rides, Bijou lives."  

So I say, "Thank you, Jesus!" for what He has done and ask that you continue to pray for our dear friends.  Pray especially for Bijou's lungs, as she currently receives oxygen at night and for longer physical activity.  Pray for Bijou's spine that therapy will be able to help her mild scoliosis.  Pray for complete and full healing of her body.  Please also pray for John that he will be able to find a good job to provide for the family soon.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this Thankfulness post!  I'll try to put another one up soon about the rest of our summer. 

Blessings for Bijou

See this beautiful little girl? 

Her name is Bijou, and she's six years old. 

 She's good friends with Josiah and Ava.  

Like "I love you SO much" good friends. 

She has a sense of humor and she's smart as a whip.  

She loves life and knows how to have fun. 

I mean, laugh out loud, "let's go on an adventure" kind of fun.

She was Josiah's first friend when we first moved to Hong Kong almost two years ago.  On the first day of staff training at ICS where Shannon works, we saw another family with young kids like ours.  They had two beautiful little girls, Bijou and Ami.  And it just so happened that we got to be next door neighbors our first year in Hong Kong when we lived in staff housing at the school.  Our kids quickly became friends, which meant we (the parents) became good friends, and we lived out the whole "su casa es mi casa" line pretty darn well.

This is their beautiful family, now a family of five.  Bijou's parents are John and Cara, and Bijou is older sister to Ami (3) and Dax (1).  

And even though we aren't neighbors anymore, we're still GOOD friends. 

  

Silliness on the train, Josiah's 5th birthday

It's a beautiful story of friendship, right?  Well, this wonderful little girl also happens to have an awful autoimmune disease called systemic onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis.  It's a rare, life threatening disease that affects Bijou's joints and organs.  It's put Bijou into the Pediatric ICU fighting for her life since she's come to Hong Kong. Twice.  During her first stay in the PICU at the end of February this year, the doctors discovered that Bijou's lungs were heavily damaged and that she would need a lung transplant sometime in the future.  In addition, Bijou also had macrophage activation syndrome, a complication of JIA.  Basically that means that although macrophage cells are supposed to destroy only foreign cells, her cells think that every cell is a bad cell.

This past Thursday, Bijou was taken to the emergency room because she had an unexpected seizure.  On the way to the hospital she had another one, and since then doctors have been trying to stabilize Bijou's body.  They still do not know exactly the cause of the seizures Bijou had, but Bijou is starting to recover.  She remains in the PICU and this week they will do some invasive tests to try and figure out more information regarding the seizures.  Despite all the stuff going on inside Bijou's body, her personality is the same.  She is happy, talkative, and wants to go home and be with her whole family.

Here in Hong Kong the doctors have been great, but they are limited in expertise for her very rare disease and they are unable to do a lung transplant here.  The family is trying to raise funds to be able to take Bijou to Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio, because it is a leading hospital for children with Bijou's condition and the doctors in Hong Kong have specifically urged them to go there.  Due to Bijou's present fragile condition, she will need a medical escort for the flight back home.  The medical transport alone is expected to cost around $35,000US dollars.  

As their good friends, this whole experience has been heartbreaking.  I don't know how to express how I feel but to say that it hurts.  It hurts to watch a six year old suffer from a terrible disease.  It hurts to watch her parents have to go through so much pain and suffering.  And I realize that the only thing I can really do is to be there and love them as their friend and sister, and to pray huge miracles for their sweet little B.

I want to get to get mad and cry (and oh, I HAVE) and there have been times my heart has been so discouraged, but then I remember of how Jesus wept.  I remember that his love for the Legers is much deeper, much wider, much longer, and much higher than my love for them could ever be. (Eph 3:18)  And I pray that our God, who is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us" (Eph 3:20), would use this body of people that love Him to do immeasurably more.  

If you've taken the time to read this blog entry, thank you SO much.  Would you stand alongside them as well and pray on behalf of their daughter that she would be healed?  Would you please pray for their family, especially John and Cara?  If you would like to keep up to date with Bijou's progress so you know how to pray for Bijou, you can do so here.  You will need to make an account but it's free and updates are sent out regularly.  If you would like to help the family raise funds so they can provide expert care for Bijou as soon as possible, please click here.   Thank you so much for loving, supporting, and helping our dear friends.

Ava, Josiah, Ami, and Bijou

A Never Ending, Never Failing Love

Friends and family,

It's been a long time since we last posted and I've been working on finishing this post for what seems about a month now.  I have had a really hard time finishing it because the last part of this post has been a really emotional one for me to write.  So I've decided to write this post in two parts, the first part talking about January and February, and the second post about March and April.  Sorry for the delay.

If there's been an overarching theme for us since the beginning of the year, it's been friendship.  The older I get (and I know I'm not THAT old), the more I seem to see people experience hardship around me.  But through that pain or those difficulties, I have also seen the peace, hope, love, and comfort that God gives and that has been a real encouragement to me.

That being said, this whole post will be about people.  It won't show a ton of pictures or fancy places we've visited, but it will show stories of how God really, really loves us and I think that's worth a read. :)

One of the youth at our church, who likes to call herself Christy White :), was in a really hard place a couple months back.  Her grandmother was very ill and in the hospital.  Christy comes from a family where her mother chose not to be a part of her family and she was raised mostly by her dad.  She is the oldest of three, the only Christian in her family, and has spent the majority of this year studying diligently so she can pass her DSE exams in order to attend university.  I have gotten to know Christy well and love her like my little sister.  She is sweet, kind, loves my kids, and we spent a lot of time together in the past year. On Thursday afternoons while the kids were at school I would tutor her in English to try and help her get ready for the English portion of her exams.  She just finished her exams this week and will look for a part time job until she receives her test results in July.  Please pray that they would be favorable and most of all that she would trust that God has good plans for her!

Hanging out with Christy now that her exams are over!

Back in January on a Sunday morning at church, Christy told us that her grandmother was going to pass away soon.  The pastor's wife, whose name is Helen and I felt really compelled to visit her grandmother in the hospital and be a support to Christy.  When we went to visit Christy's grandma the next day, my heart just broke.  Christy's grandmother, who she dearly loved looked like she was near death.  But as we came into her room and spoke with her, she was able to respond to us by nodding her head yes or no and even spoke in soft whispers.  She was fully aware of who Christy was and that she had brought her friends.  And in that moment and room she shared with two other patients, the tv blaring, and doorway open with nurses and people coming in and out, we just loved her and got to know why Christy loves her popo so much.  Her grandma spoke so sweetly of Christy and of us.  Although I wasn't able to communicate with her grandmother due to my lack of being able to speak Cantonese,  I could sing of God's amazing grace as Helen translated the words of the familiar hymn.  I prayed in those moments as I sang that her grandmother would come to know the amazing grace, love, joy, and peace that comes with knowing Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Then Helen, this petite, normally soft spoken woman, spoke with such boldness, power, and love.  She shared the good news that Jesus loved Christy's grandmother so much, that He died for her sins, and that He wanted her to spend eternity in heaven with Him.  She told her that when we accept Christ, our sins are forgiven and that we become children of our Heavenly Father.  Helen proclaimed of how Jesus gives us true peace and hope forever.  Then she asked Christy's grandmother if she wanted to believe in Jesus, acknowledge Him as her Savior, and follow Him as Lord of her life.  Popo nodded her head yes and became a Christian!  She then softly said, "Jesus, I believe in you.  I thank you for your salvation and eternal life."  It was one of the most touching, beautiful moments I've ever had the privilege to witness.

The day after our visit she told her family that she specifically wanted a Christian funeral.  Two days later she passed away.  It was a very sad and painful day for Christy, but she had peace.  Helen, Christy, and I look back on that day we visited the hospital together and know that God ordained that very moment.  To know that Jesus loved Popo, that he has always loved her and wanted her to know Him until the very end of her life here on earth, that just was utterly amazing.  It speaks to the never ending, never failing love that God has for every single person and how he longs for them to know Him personally and call Him Daddy.  That moment reminds me that when God tugs at my heart to do something, I need to just do it because we get to see how God works when we choose to say yes.

In February, we were going to foster an adorable one and a half year old orphan girl from China named Qun (pronounced Choon) for two weeks.  She was staying in Hong Kong for medical care and the family taking caring of her was going to be on vacation during the Chinese New Year.  We looked forward to her stay with us and a couple days before she was going to come, the family said they didn't need us to watch her after all because they had decided not to travel.  We were disappointed because our kids were looking forward to her stay and we actually had gotten to meet and play with Qun a couple times in previous stays she's had in Hong Kong for various surgeries and treatment.

Ava having some hat fun with Qun

Qun being her typical cute and happy self

A visit with Qun last week (April) before she goes back to China tomorrow

Although we were bummed, that whole process started a connection that was made with Christian Action.  They are a wondeful non-profit organization and one part of their work is that they organize medical trips to Hong Kong for Chinese orphans that need life saving surgeries and care.  I have gotten to know one of the Christian Action staff whose name is Lydia, and she frequently shuttles back and forth between the orphanages in China and the hospitals and families that take care of the children while they are here in Hong Kong.  Her service, heart, and love for the children is nothing short of humbling.

What is so funny about this all is how much of a ripple effect one blessing can lead to another.  I was originally introduced to Qun through my friend Emily who fostered Qun and has fostered other children.  Meeting Qun opened my heart to foster a child too.  Although I haven't fostered any children yet, even just my willingness to do so has had a ripple effect as well.  In March Lydia needed a home for a five year old boy named Xiao Bin that was coming here for surgery.  When she first asked me about it, I wanted to see if I could help find him a Mandarin speaking home during his stay here so he could communicate and feel comfortable with the family hosting him.

Since most of Josiah and Ava's schoolmates are from Hong Kong, I decided to ask the parents on their classroom phone chat boards if one of their families would be willing to host Xiao Bin while he was here.  One of the moms in Ava's class said yes, and the reason she agreed to it was because she figured that if I could open my heart and home (at the time we thought we going to foster Qun), she could do the same as well.  Samantha and her family thoroughly enjoyed hosting Xiao Bin, and she would regularly send me pictures of the fun they had and what a great influence he was on her kids!

In addition to that, a different family also agreed to host Xiao Bin when Samantha's family was traveling over the school break.  I look at blessing upon blessing repeated and think it's so neat how God can use even your willingness to love more deeply as a means to encourage others to expand their hearts to love as well.  I have been blessed to have people in my life that have really expanded my heart to love simply through their example with their actions of love.

If there could be a Bible verse to sum up what I learned in those two months it would be 1 John 3:16-18 which says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

March and April have been one of the most emotionally and spiritually difficult months I've had.  Please read my next post on Bijou.  She is a six year old, one of Josiah and Ava's good friends, and she is fighting a rare, life threatening autoimmune disease.  I can't even fathom what her mom and dad have gone through because whatever I've felt, I know has been even more amplified for them.  As you read the next post about Bijou, please pray for her family and if you feel led to give, support them financially if you are able to through the links provided in that post.  Thank you for reading!