Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Odds and Ends

I will be posting about each ministry here, soon but I just wanted to post a little note to let you know what I've been up to! Thanks to all the commenters, I just signed up to receive my comments in e-mail, so that should make it easier to respond, but it is sooo encouraging to read your comments. Please feel free to e-mail me at michelleleebissell@gmail.com I love to hear from all of you!

It is still FREEZING here!! Sunday was a crazy day because we went to 2 churches, I'll be posting more about church next week because I will have better pictures. On Tuesday we went to ACTS clinic which is an HIV clinic that has a patient load of 25, 000 people. We were taking one of the mamas and her son there, Mama Elizabeth. I will be posting more about her story after Sunday as well because I want you to have a picture of her family and maybe her home, too!

After ACTS we went back to town to pick up some visitors, and the we drove up the mountain to Msakwaba (spelling subject to change). Msakwaba is an unafiliated church without a roof here is a picture of it


Pastor Marie and her husband are the pastors here. Pastor Marie also heads up the home based care ladies and the children's church, she does all of this with her baby strapped to her back, and he is quite squirmy. Here is a picture of her and him together


The home based care ladies go up and down the mountains to peoples houses praying for the sick and providing any care that they can. Next week I'll be going with them and I'm sure I will have stories. I'm also planning on starting a health database of all the children in the different programs so that when we get the mobile clinic running we will have a baseline for everyone.

I will leave you with a picture of the lovely coffee I can get here : ) Keep the comments coming! Oh, and I deleted the video of the children singing as you can't hear a thing! I will get a much better one for you soon!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

clau clau

I went to the village feeding scheme yesterday and it was so awesome. A young woman who stayed here with Janice a few months ago, Christine, left a legacy of 4 children's "Sunday Schools", my favorite thing about these is that a local woman teaches at each of the places. Its so awesome to see African women taking responsibility for the work here! I was doing the important job of holding a 4 month old while taking the video! Below is a short one of the precious little baby.

My South Africa home

I thought I'd show you our sweet little cottage! I love it!! Above is the kitchen, tonight I'm making apple pie, pray that it bakes in our tiny oven!


This is me in front of the bookshelf modeling my sleeping bag my mom made me, I uploaded this accidentaly and its not letting me delete it, so here you go!
My toilet wears a dress, I forgot to make this go in the right direction before I posted, sorry!

This is a calla lily out in the garden in the courtyard:




This is my room:
I love it here. Its nice to come home from work in the village and have a peaceful, restful place to lay your head!




Loooong post!

Well, I am here safe and sound in White River, Mpumalanga, South Africa!

I think I said in my last post that I was overweight on both my bags, and had to repack things, and leave a few things behind! A lot of the stuff I actually had to put in my carry on, which was literally back breaking! I think my carry on weighed 50lbs!!! It was horrible to carry, and to maneuver on the plane! Stuffing it under the seat in front of me was an Olympic event! Not to mention getting it out again……

The flight to South Africa from Atlanta was looooong! Each seat had its own personal television with different movies and TV shows and music, though, so the entertainment was lovely! I watched the Hannah Montana movie, and I am a bit ashamed to say so, but I LOVED it! I think I watched, like, 5 movies, which unfortunately is not a very spiritual thing to report on my blog……I guess maybe I should have held revival services or something, but I don’t think that would have been well received by my fellow passengers. Plus, the flight attendants were unwilling to sing “just as I am” over the microphone while I held an altar call in first class ( I asked….Just kidding!)

Speaking of first class, there were no extra seats available on the plane, in fact they were bribing people to give up their seats, and offering them a seat on first class the next day! If I wasn’t so eager to get to South Africa I definitely would have taken that offer! So, I did not have an opportunity to upgrade, unfortunately, because let me just say-they have BEDS in first class on international flights now! That, my friends, is an especially depressing thought when you are crammed in coach trying to sleep 7 hours in to the flight!

Besides the normal fun things that international flights have, something slightly exciting happened! About 8 hours in to the flight there was a commotion next to me, and all the flight attendants were gathered around the middle seats across the aisle from my seat. Turns out this lady had lost consciousness and was going in and out of consciousness. So, I grabbed my stethoscope (which thankfully I had to take out of my checked bags at the gate!) and climbed (literally) over the 2 people sitting next to me, and told the flight attendants that I was a registered nurse and what could I do to help? Turns out the poor lady who was about my age had a history of altitude sickness.


A South African MD came over to help with his “nurse”, who I think was actually just his wife, because she was a bit useless until it came time to take the BP….so the doctor is going on about testing her Blood sugar blah blah…I suggested we just give her some OJ, which we did and she perked up quite a bit. Then he gave her some coffee (her BP was low and he thought the coffee would raise it…I was a bit skeptical, but I didn’t want to question him-even on the plane I have a doctor phobia!) Even though she was perking up her BP continued to be in the high 80’s, which I think as long as someone was keeping an eye on her was fine, but the doctor and his wife decided to start an IV and run a bag of fluid! Honestly I wasn’t expecting him to be able to start an IV, but he did it on one try! I was very impressed, and my respect for him raised quite a bit!


As I said I am planning on posting these first posts over a few days, because there’s so much here! I’ve almost written a novel here, and I haven’t even gotten off the plane yet! Here is a picture of my first “proper African” meal, Beef and Pop, which is basically a tasty beef stew over a starchy mashed rice tasting stuff…it was very good, although I still would prefer mashed potatoes!!


So, when I finally landed in Johannesburg the flight had ended up being an hour late due to tail winds apparently! They checked and stamped my passport without saying a peep to me, and since I didn’t have any seeds or vegetables to declare I bypassed customs entirely! I’m still a bit puzzled about that, but since my luggage was last to come off the plane I was grateful for any timesaver, poor Janice, I think, was worried that I wasn’t on the plane! She looked soo relieved when I walked through the gate!

Janice had planned for us to stay in a guest house in Pretoria; I became a little alarmed when she told me that I would have to navigate for her, as my spiritual gift is definitely not navigation! Long story short we spent 2 hours driving around Jo-burg and who knows where else trying to find our way. Between the driving around and the 15 hour flight I was ready to toss my cookies! In fact a few times, I was *this close* to asking Janet to stop so I could “cast up my accounts” on the side of the road! Thankfully we finally made it to the lovely guest house, I was never so grateful to see a bed!!! It gets soooo cold at night here, but my mom made me a lovely fleece sleeping bag which keeps me so toasty. Here is a picture of it; it’s like having a hug from my mama every night!

The next morning we headed up the mountains to White River, Mpumalanga. Its lovely scenery and Janice says that in the summer (its winter here) the hills are covered in flowers and green grass! She gave me quite an orientation to the culture and the ministries and the politics of South Africa! Honestly its all a bit of a jumble now, but I will eventually be able to formulate my own thoughts and opinions and I will share them here as I acquire them : )

Something exciting that I will be a part of while I am here is helping Janice prepare her mobile medical clinic! She has lots of resources as far as some training manuals for the community health advocates. Its very interesting to read her training manual for teaching the HIV/TB workshops! I am already learning sooo much! So, I will be coming up with something definite for a manual for the mobile medical clinic. I’m also looking into getting some basic textbooks from Amazon to leave here as references for people working at the clinic. We’ll be primarily dealing with women and children, so the references will be for those mostly.

I am learning so much about the culture here, its very interesting and the politics are crazy! Its funny because they all hate America, but looooove Obama! He is incredibly popular here! More so than in the USA! Its wild!

The coffee situation here is very nice, there is a cute coffee shop with yummy espresso drinks within walking distance of our cottage, plus I have my precious little French press, and praise the Lord Janice is one of the chosen people (coffee drinker)!! So, in case you were concerned now you can rest assured that my coffee addiction is being enabled and going strong here!

Monday, July 20, 2009

still in the states, but on my way : )

well, I'm in the Fort Myers airport and I had a bit of a stressful time! Both my bags were overweight, so I had to repack right at the check in desk. The most stressful thing was the two ladies behind the desk making suggestions............I wish they would have just let the few lbs slide! Also my dad was commentating the whole thing........so, I had to leave a few things behind and my carry on backpack weighs 5,000 lbs, but I am on my way!!!!! I am soooo excited! Next time I blog it will for sure be in South Africa!

Its South Africa time!

Well, the promised video post is not going to happen, trust me it was a painful packing experience, so you should probably be glad that I didn't video any part of it! I hate packing, and the more available space I have the worse off I am. I don't know why, I am definitely an emotional packer, when I start trying to fit everything in the bag and it doesn't all want to go in, I start to get irrational. I had a system this time, which was completely abandoned half way through for the more exciting "roll things up in a tiny ball and stuff them in, then have your mom sit on your bag while you try to zip it up". Not fun.

Now that I'm all packed and ready to fly off in a few hours I am getting more and more excited.

I'm nervous and excited! My next post will be from South Africa!!!

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Leaving on a jet plane

I am getting so excited to go to South Africa. I've been packing, and I'm thinking of doing a video update once I finish packing so that you can see the beauty of my handiwork. Let me just say that I have utilized Ziplock bags in a slightly excessive manner!!

I'm also getting nervous about the 15 hour flight! I'm going to admit that most of my thoughts lately have been centered around upgrading my flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg to first class! If its less than $200 I'm going for it. I had a patient the last 2 days I worked that made me cry, so I am considering the money I earned those days as especially hard earned, and am allowing myself to get a luxury with it!

I am going to try and post on here at least every other day if not every day when I'm in South Africa, and I'm going to try to use video posting at least once a week! I'll be posting a couple more times before I go!