A Meaningful Difference

I love the emergency room. It's quite an adventure. Yesterday, I had no idea when I came into work where my adventure would take me. I had a fairly busy morning, but then around lunch time was when my main adventure started.

I was actually doing the admission and triage on a patient in the E.R. when I heard someone talking English a couple of rooms over, and then I heard "no Español." I knew what my next job would be. A boy had arrived in the ER with his mom, neither of whom spoke any Spanish.

The boy came with complaints of abdominal pain, a symptom we see often in the ER. Actually, the reason they came in was because they were planning on returning to England this morning and didn't want to fly with him feeling bad. After a physical exam, blood test, and ultrasound, it was determined that he had appendicitis and would need to have surgery that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day with him and his family, helping them figure out what they needed to do and also what was going to happen. I even went into the operating room and watched the appadectomy and then was there when he woke back up to help talk with him and answer his questions. Then we went up to the inpatient floor where his family met him and where he is currently staying for the next few days (no, travel was not an option).

I went up to his room a couple times today to see if I could help out at all. It's been really neat to build a relationship with this family. I know God placed me here in Ecuador for many reasons, and I believe I've found one more of those with this family. They were simply tourists who had the circumstance of being caught in a country where they don't know anyone and where they don't speak the language. I'm thankful God has given me the opportunity to reach out to them, befriend them, and show them His love. Please pray for me as I specifically am interacting with this family and am showing them what it means to follow Christ and to have had him transform my life.