1. Why didn’t God send a prophet to China?
2. When Jesus was staying in Jerusalem, did he stay in a hotel? (from the story of Jesus meeting Andrew and John in John 1)
3. In John 1:38 when Jesus showed John & Andrew where He was staying, did He take them to Heaven or where He was staying? Was it a hotel?
4. Jesus genetic make-up? (Was it 23 chromosomes from Mary & 23 from the Holy Spirit or all 46 from the Spirit or some other way? “You’re a doctor. You should know.”)
5. Was Jesus light or God or a man or words? (Prologue from John 1)
6. Is Muhammad a prophet?
7. Was John the Baptist a son of God?
8. Are trees, plants and animals sons of God?
Please us know how you would answer by clicking on Post a Comment.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
It Just So Happened
Sometimes something just falls into your lap, and you know God dropped it there.
Jerry was working at the main public hospital here, and happened to meet a young Chinese man volunteering at the same hospital with a Chinese government program. It happened that this young man is a Christian. It also happened that he lives just down the street from us.
So Jerry went over one day and took some avocados from our tree to Tuki. They prayed together, Jerry in English, and Tuki in Chinese. Jerry invited Tuki to a Bible study starting in our area that happened to be next door to Tuki’s house, run by an English businessman who goes to our church. When Tuki came he brought three other Chinese volunteers with him and the following week he brought five. Through very broken English we found out that these young people had never met any Christians until they came to Africa and that they were eager to learn about God and about what Christianity is all about.
In Ecuador, Elizabeth used a Bible Study in Spanish that was especially designed for people who have never looked at a Bible, and concluded that it would be useful now if we had it in English. She determined to translate it herself. Well, guess what? It happened to have been translated in to English last year.
After printing out scanned copies of the Bible Study sent from Ecuador, we walked over to Tuki’s house and gave homework to a bunch of enthusiastic young people. We started with the Gospel of John. Friday was the first day of the new Chinese Bible study for Chinese volunteers curious about Christianity.
The students came ready with homework done, and loaded with questions like, “Why did God send prophets to Israel, not to China?”
“Was Jesus just light or spirit or man?”
“Are animals and plants children of God?”
“Was John the Baptist the son of God, too?”
After an hour of lively discussion we had only covered the first nine verses of Chapter One but there were smiles all around and enthusiasm to continue on next week. And off they quickly went to prepare dumplings, because tomorrow happened to be Chinese New Year and we happened to receive a last minute invitation.
Jerry was working at the main public hospital here, and happened to meet a young Chinese man volunteering at the same hospital with a Chinese government program. It happened that this young man is a Christian. It also happened that he lives just down the street from us.
So Jerry went over one day and took some avocados from our tree to Tuki. They prayed together, Jerry in English, and Tuki in Chinese. Jerry invited Tuki to a Bible study starting in our area that happened to be next door to Tuki’s house, run by an English businessman who goes to our church. When Tuki came he brought three other Chinese volunteers with him and the following week he brought five. Through very broken English we found out that these young people had never met any Christians until they came to Africa and that they were eager to learn about God and about what Christianity is all about.
In Ecuador, Elizabeth used a Bible Study in Spanish that was especially designed for people who have never looked at a Bible, and concluded that it would be useful now if we had it in English. She determined to translate it herself. Well, guess what? It happened to have been translated in to English last year.
After printing out scanned copies of the Bible Study sent from Ecuador, we walked over to Tuki’s house and gave homework to a bunch of enthusiastic young people. We started with the Gospel of John. Friday was the first day of the new Chinese Bible study for Chinese volunteers curious about Christianity.
The students came ready with homework done, and loaded with questions like, “Why did God send prophets to Israel, not to China?”
“Was Jesus just light or spirit or man?”
“Are animals and plants children of God?”
“Was John the Baptist the son of God, too?”
After an hour of lively discussion we had only covered the first nine verses of Chapter One but there were smiles all around and enthusiasm to continue on next week. And off they quickly went to prepare dumplings, because tomorrow happened to be Chinese New Year and we happened to receive a last minute invitation.
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Adventures of Molly the Catatonic Kitty
We adopted Jessica’s cat on Tuesday. The poor cat was catatonic all day long. She hid between Lorraine’s mattress and the wall all day long. When Lorraine would pull her out of the space, Molly would go right back to the gap. After a number of hours, Molly finally would go about six inches from the wall and let Lorraine pet her, but only as long a Lorraine kept holding her.
This went on for a whole day and night. The next day Molly actually walked around the girls’ room. She wouldn’t venture out of the room, but she would actually sit on the desk, looking out the window and meow to get out. That was an improvement until the early hours of day two with the catatonic kitty, when she started meowing loudly and insistently that she wanted to go hunting at 5 am. In a battle of wills between a cat and a human, even two humans, the cat will win. Molly won. The girls came to our room to sleep, and Elizabeth went to try to sleep in their room for two good reasons: 1) she is a self sacrificial mother who will do almost anything for her “babies” even when her babies are almost her height, and 2) she was so sick that night that she hardly slept anyway, with or without the cat.
On day three the cat gave us a fright that she had run off. Andrew left the back door open and Molly couldn’t be found for a few tense seconds. She had gone to the porch but came back at Elizabeth’s call. Why are we keeping the cat locked up inside? We were told by cat people it takes a week for a cat to imprint on a new home, so we are keeping her locked in the house for a week to let her imprint on our house, then she can go back to her catly duties like hunting rodents and snakes and placing the rotting corpses under our bed. We can’t wait.
We are up to day four now, and Patty the mop dog is about to learn about his new competition for our cuddling affections. Right now he is just confused as to why we aren’t letting him track the red mud of Malawi into our house. In a mere three days we can open the doors again to let Molly out and Patty in. We can’t wait.
This went on for a whole day and night. The next day Molly actually walked around the girls’ room. She wouldn’t venture out of the room, but she would actually sit on the desk, looking out the window and meow to get out. That was an improvement until the early hours of day two with the catatonic kitty, when she started meowing loudly and insistently that she wanted to go hunting at 5 am. In a battle of wills between a cat and a human, even two humans, the cat will win. Molly won. The girls came to our room to sleep, and Elizabeth went to try to sleep in their room for two good reasons: 1) she is a self sacrificial mother who will do almost anything for her “babies” even when her babies are almost her height, and 2) she was so sick that night that she hardly slept anyway, with or without the cat.
On day three the cat gave us a fright that she had run off. Andrew left the back door open and Molly couldn’t be found for a few tense seconds. She had gone to the porch but came back at Elizabeth’s call. Why are we keeping the cat locked up inside? We were told by cat people it takes a week for a cat to imprint on a new home, so we are keeping her locked in the house for a week to let her imprint on our house, then she can go back to her catly duties like hunting rodents and snakes and placing the rotting corpses under our bed. We can’t wait.
We are up to day four now, and Patty the mop dog is about to learn about his new competition for our cuddling affections. Right now he is just confused as to why we aren’t letting him track the red mud of Malawi into our house. In a mere three days we can open the doors again to let Molly out and Patty in. We can’t wait.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Both Hands Tied Behind Our Backs
Professionally, I’m having a blast. I’m at the government hospital in the capital, Lilongwe, which makes Wishard look like Clarian North.
We had two kids die of rabies last week. One of the kids was bitten on Christmas Day. It was a 1/4 inch lesion on the thumb. The parents took the kid to the health center, but it was closed on Christmas day. Since Christmas was on a Friday, by Monday they thought, “It looks OK,” so didn’t take him back. He didn’t start the post bite vaccines at all and died a month later. He had hyperreflexia followed by hyporeflexia, progressive paralysis, and myoedema. The other kid, 12 y/o, had the foaming at the mouth. I’ve now seen four cases of rabies in six years: 2 in Malawi, 2 in Ecuador.
You can ask, “Why didn’t we use the Milwaukee protocol (induce a coma for 3 weeks)?” We didn’t even think about it because there are only three ventilators in the hospital, and only one can handle kids. It’s not right to use such a limited resource for a kid who has a 0.01% chance of living, even after a month long induced coma. There are also only 3 working dialysis machines in the country, all at the hospital where I'm working.
I’ve been a doc for 17 years and only encountered Burkitt’s lymphoma on board exams. In one hour I saw 15 kids with Burkitt’s lymphoma. A General Practice doctor from Nigeria has an interest in Burkitt’s & pediatric cancers, so he does the Burkitt’s kids. (Burkitt's lymphoma has mortality anywhere from 5-30%, depending on the stage when diagnosed and whether they relapse after chemotherapy.)
I took a sample of peritoneal fluid to the lab on January 3rd. Since I couldn’t find a lab tech anywhere in the lab, I put the sample down on the counter, right next to a sample of peritoneal from the SAME patient dated December 31st. It had been sitting on the counter for 4 days, untouched by human hands. All the crud growing in the test tube wasn’t so much of an issue because we can’t do cultures here. You are lucky to get a cell count, glucose and protein. My issue was that I had done all I could for the patient and if no one could do even five minutes of work over four days to help another human being, and the systems were so nonexistent that labs samples can go untouched for four days, there wasn’t anything else I could do. So, I just got in my car and drove home.
I did come back the next day. (That’s the difference between being fed up and giving up.)
Mind you, this is the free labor I’m doing in the government hospital to get my medical license. Tomorrow is my last day. Not that I’m counting, (20 hours).
Next week I start at Partners in Hope. It’s not a perfect place, and it has similar problems with motivated staff, but we can fire people who don’t do their work, pray with our patients and at least know that most everyone at the hospital cares about the patient.
This is getting long and might look depressing, but since most of the patients get better and go home, and we actually can make a huge difference. “We had both hands tied behind our back and STILL saved the patient.”
Three factoids before I quit.
1. There are three residency trained pediatricians in a country of 14 million, two here in Lilongwe and one at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre.
2. Every day at morning report on the pediatrics ward they discuss the admissions and the deaths. There are 3 – 9 deaths per day. That’s one death every 3 to 8 hours. (In the US, if a child dies in the hospital, the whole building goes into mourning.)
3. No one can get reliable data about admissions and deaths, but the estimate is that the mortality rate is 9.1% of all pediatric admissions, down from 9.6% last year.
We had two kids die of rabies last week. One of the kids was bitten on Christmas Day. It was a 1/4 inch lesion on the thumb. The parents took the kid to the health center, but it was closed on Christmas day. Since Christmas was on a Friday, by Monday they thought, “It looks OK,” so didn’t take him back. He didn’t start the post bite vaccines at all and died a month later. He had hyperreflexia followed by hyporeflexia, progressive paralysis, and myoedema. The other kid, 12 y/o, had the foaming at the mouth. I’ve now seen four cases of rabies in six years: 2 in Malawi, 2 in Ecuador.
You can ask, “Why didn’t we use the Milwaukee protocol (induce a coma for 3 weeks)?” We didn’t even think about it because there are only three ventilators in the hospital, and only one can handle kids. It’s not right to use such a limited resource for a kid who has a 0.01% chance of living, even after a month long induced coma. There are also only 3 working dialysis machines in the country, all at the hospital where I'm working.
I’ve been a doc for 17 years and only encountered Burkitt’s lymphoma on board exams. In one hour I saw 15 kids with Burkitt’s lymphoma. A General Practice doctor from Nigeria has an interest in Burkitt’s & pediatric cancers, so he does the Burkitt’s kids. (Burkitt's lymphoma has mortality anywhere from 5-30%, depending on the stage when diagnosed and whether they relapse after chemotherapy.)
I took a sample of peritoneal fluid to the lab on January 3rd. Since I couldn’t find a lab tech anywhere in the lab, I put the sample down on the counter, right next to a sample of peritoneal from the SAME patient dated December 31st. It had been sitting on the counter for 4 days, untouched by human hands. All the crud growing in the test tube wasn’t so much of an issue because we can’t do cultures here. You are lucky to get a cell count, glucose and protein. My issue was that I had done all I could for the patient and if no one could do even five minutes of work over four days to help another human being, and the systems were so nonexistent that labs samples can go untouched for four days, there wasn’t anything else I could do. So, I just got in my car and drove home.
I did come back the next day. (That’s the difference between being fed up and giving up.)
Mind you, this is the free labor I’m doing in the government hospital to get my medical license. Tomorrow is my last day. Not that I’m counting, (20 hours).
Next week I start at Partners in Hope. It’s not a perfect place, and it has similar problems with motivated staff, but we can fire people who don’t do their work, pray with our patients and at least know that most everyone at the hospital cares about the patient.
This is getting long and might look depressing, but since most of the patients get better and go home, and we actually can make a huge difference. “We had both hands tied behind our back and STILL saved the patient.”
Three factoids before I quit.
1. There are three residency trained pediatricians in a country of 14 million, two here in Lilongwe and one at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre.
2. Every day at morning report on the pediatrics ward they discuss the admissions and the deaths. There are 3 – 9 deaths per day. That’s one death every 3 to 8 hours. (In the US, if a child dies in the hospital, the whole building goes into mourning.)
3. No one can get reliable data about admissions and deaths, but the estimate is that the mortality rate is 9.1% of all pediatric admissions, down from 9.6% last year.
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