Redeeming miracles-comparing...

This past month of June and this month of July, I find myself full of mixed emotions.  From disbelief to relief, from regret to thankfulness and from deep sadness to joy. The constant thought "last year at this time..."  keeps rolling through my head-like remembering a bad movie. 

Let's just for fun do a little comparison- June 2014 to June 2015.

June 2014:

• New cases surface on June 11/12th to ELWA 1 
• By the end of June we have nurses and doctors coming to help at ELWA 1 and to go to the Foya ETU to assist MSF.
• We stand up our second DART (Disaster Assisted Response Team) within the past 3 months. 
• Containers of supplies are arriving, unloaded and sent to ELWA 1 and Foya.
• The outbreak was spreading quickly. 

 ELWA 2 July 2014

June 2015:

• Leave Boone/Canada with the BOYS to come back to Liberia.
• The ELWA campus by June 20th is teeming with SP families, along with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship)  and SIM folks.

 Boys' first swim

• ELWA 2 ETU is being decommissioned.
• Last week of June-Liberia sees it's first Ebola case in over aprox. 100 days. 

ELWA 2 when we first got back June 16th

 

 ELWA 2 July 12-looking more like the kitchen/laundry of the new hospital.

 

These events only have one thing in common, Ebola is still here.  However, the systems and capacity to handle Ebola has drastically changed.  For the better!  Numerous organizations, the CDC and WHO along with the Ministry of Health have done a decent job in containing this recent outbreak that we pray will end soon.  Last year only the CDC had a handful of people here, WHO wasn't helping at all and MSF and SP were the only responders. This change has been one BIG miracle that we are very thankful for.

The events of last July are too many to list, to painful to type and it would take too many blog entries to recapture them all.  However, I will attempt to write on a few poignant milestones and events in upcoming entries. Comparing 2014 with 2015 has reminded me once again that God is constant.  He is the same last year as He is this year and was and is and will be forever.  It's us who change.  Trust me we all have changed. 

I wish I could say that like the systems we have in place now -that I have improved.  In same areas maybe I have, but I have also realized more than ever how small I am, how limited my abilities are and how fragile my faith is. God is so good my people. Even with that list-He allows us to be part of His great plan.  It's not a plan I know, it's not a plan that is going to be all nice and safe-it's a plan of faith.  Do I have the faith to keep trusting Him in my limited, imperfect self to keep on keeping on? Regardless of the past or the future?

 Running for this guy and many more

I think I have found a way to start figuring that out.  A marathon.  Yes, you read that right. Train for a marathon. I haven't been running consistently since last June.  It has been too hard-when I run, I think, I process, I cry out to God and this past year there was just too much.  But it's time.  Lord willing the Liberia Marathon will take place on Nov. 8.  In memory of those who lost their lives and in honor those who survived.  How can I not run it.  But it's going to be a very hard, painful road back. It's going to take a miracle.