How different one week can be from the next at the ELWA dental clinic! Last week was overloaded with swellings; several people in such a state they couldn’t open their mouths enough for me to identify the offending tooth/teeth. I had to go back into the clinic on a regular day off to treat 3 women who had been placed on antibiotics earlier in the week and couldn’t wait until Monday for treatment. This week there hasn’t been one swelling yet and most of my patients have been women. That doesn’t mean their teeth are any easier to remove!! Not by a long shot! Aloysius and I are a regular tag team. He can see things from his angle on the patient’s left which I may not see from my side on the right. He gives suggestions, which often work, or, I give the instrument to him to use from his vantage point. I don’t know how I could do this clinic without him. Everyday I see something that hurts to the core of my being. It is something different each day, usually to do with someone’s suffering or aloneness. I realize how adept I have become at just keeping these things to myself but they gnaw at me constantly. Sometimes I wish I could just quit noticing things for a while. Examples: -Yesterday it was a woman who has been in my clinic 2 different times with pain in teeth that are absolutely sound. It has been in different teeth each time and I couldn’t give her a treatment that would relieve this pain. As I searched about in my mind for a reason I simply asked her, “Are you worrying a lot about something?” Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded. After she talked we prayed together. She is to return in one week for reassessment. -This morning I passed a very skinny woman as I hurried to work. I was astounded at how skinny she was but took no further notice, nor did I offer to walk with her. An hour later I stepped out of the hospital to make a phone call on my cell (poor reception inside) and there she was, lying on a cement and dirt planter, too weak to sit up. She looked too pitiful. I asked her whom she was waiting for. She had come to ELWA to pick up her retroviral drugs for her HIV/AIDS condition. She was completely alone! No one had escorted this painfully thin, sick woman to the hospital. Who loves her? Who grieves for her in her state? Who abandoned her because of her sickness? She had walked in the ½ mile from the taxi drop-off. By the time I helped her across the yard to the right place she was breathing in short gasps, barely able to place one foot ahead of the other. How many others live in her sort of aloneness, with no one to care for them? -Tonight I talked to a fellow missionary woman here on campus that 2 weeks ago had a rogue in their house late at night, who had first tied up her 17 yr. old son and put him in the back porch, threatening him with a cutlass if he didn’t say where the money was. Tom and Melanie, the parents, met this rogue at the bedroom door, had time to defend themselves with a chair and their own cutlass and the rogue fled, taking only the keys for the house and car (and my bike, which was in their back porch.) Needless to say, Melanie feels very vulnerable. A new missionary, in a strange land with her husband and 4 children, arriving full of ideals of what mission life is to be; only to be met with sickness, break-ins, people who she can’t trust, sensory overload; all the while aware of the “safe” home they left behind in the States. How does she remain faithful? How can she keep herself from packing up kids and simply bolting for home? By prayer, determination, tears, deep breaths and friends who come by and pray with her. Pray for Tom and Melanie. A total change of subject; the kittens have potty trained themselves! It is so cute to watch them being so grown-up. They tease their mother something awful but she just licks them into submission. Mr. Fuchs has taken to attacking anyone who is running toward, or by, me. I make apologies every day to someone! Did I mention my Maringa trees before? 4 weeks ago I planted three 12” Maringa trees (look them up on the net), which are now 3 feet tall. The leaves are most edible, tasting peppery and green and are very high in protein; the bark, when boiled and used as a tea treats malaria and typhoid as well as glaucoma and hypertension. And then, this last week a patient brought me a Neem tree, another wonder tree God provided to treat many ailments. This I’ve planted in my front yard. Things grow like weeds here and I love it! Next to be planted is lemon grass for cooking and to repel insects. What does it mean to be a missionary? Let me know your thoughts. Somedays I find myself wondering too. | 
