A Serenade!

I really am so blessed! Despite the short power outage, today ran very smoothly! God’s working in a lot of incredible ways (obviously) and I’m just so grateful I get to be a small part of it.

We had a bunch of school children (possibly refugee orphans) come in for some medical attention today which was utter chaos as you would expect, but their adorable faces made the chaos bearable ;) they also came in two waves which made it more challenging but we handled it.

During the first wave I was still working on triaging adult patients so I didn’t really get to play with any kiddos, and I got real excited when the second wave came in, only to be stuck with another group of adults. But that ended up working out really well — more on that in a second.

I did get to weigh (and therefore hold for an extended period of time) the cutest little 1 year old EVER!!! She had these big brown eyes, and two little buck teeth, and one pony tail sticking straight up in the air to hold her curly brown locks out of here eyes. I was making faces at her while she was waiting to be seen, and then she actually got to come to my table! Score!

But back to the last family I saw today: the ones who kept me from participating in the pediatric tornado of chaos. It was a family with three children: two girls and a boy. The boy and the dad were the only ones needing to be seen, but like many cultures, clinic day is a whole-family adventure. The mother wanted the older sisters to get albendazol like their brother, but I told them they can’t take any home because this pill has to be consumed on-site.

Thankfully, the sisters were just waiting outside so their brother ran and got them and they came in for some of the worst candy of their lives ;)

After choking it down, and sipping on some water, the brother and father went to be seen and the daughters and mother stuck around waiting for them. Like any good mother, she kept bragging about how her oldest is an incredible singer. That she just has the best voice ever and is so talented. The girl was obviously shy about her mom’s praise but I asked her if she’d sing for me and she actually said yes! But then stalled quite a bit and so I let her know she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to. She let me know she was just struggling to think of a song, to which her mom and sister rattled off what had to have been a dozen titles.

And then this sixteen year old started to sing to me.

My jaw probably touched the floor! Her voice was simply angelic! She had incredible projection that filled the whole room and quieted down the children in the pediatric-tornado. Her tone was perfect. Her voice so strong and yet so light. I was not only speechless, but also started crying!

You guys, my words really cannot describe the beauty of that room in that moment.

When she finished singing, I asked her what she was singing about, and she said “Jesus, of course.”

We spent the next thirty or so minutes talking about faith, school, her future, singing, and how she likes living here. She’s only sixteen and is getting ready to go off to university next year to study to become a lawyer. She wants to be a lawyer because “there’s a lot of bad people in the world who should be in jail, and people in jail who were put there for the wrong reasons. Both need justice.” After she goes to law school. She wants to pick singing back up and maybe tour (I’d be the first to buy tickets to her concerts!!!!)

I asked her what she loved about Jesus and she said she loves how he relates to everyone. Just a beautiful soul. This girl was sixteen, and was more confident in her faith and who she was than a lot of adults I know.

She eventually had to leave, and I eventually had to help with the tornado, but by the time I got finished being blessed by this young lady, all of the medical triage stuff was done, and it was just 25-30 kids waiting to be seen by the four providers we had.

Which meant it was time for bubbles!! And facepaint!! I quickly sketched some of my patented designs onto my forearm and worked my way down the line, asking them to point at a design, a color, and where they wanted this “work of art”

This lasted the better part of an hour as the sun set behind the mountains. Some of the girls spoke broken English and we had fun calling each other beautiful and telling our names to one another (and writing our names on our arms with the facepaint)

We ended the day with all our teammates our high-lows of the day and I got to hear more incredible ways God’s working from different parts of the clinic. I’ll share a few:

1. we had two more salvations today!!! Praise God!!!

2. In eyeglasses they were using bibles to test which glasses helped and a woman after getting her new glasses asked if she could take the Bible for a bit and keep reading!

3. A man from Damascus was curious about the whole Jesus thing and was asking God for a sign, and so our doctor told him, this clinic is your sign. Every single one of these people are sacrificing time, money, and energy to be here to tell you that Jesus loves you.

What a beautiful day in the midst of heartbreaking conditions. But isn’t that just like God?