Welcome back to the blog!
I have been a little MIA recently but I promise is was for a good reason. I was sick AGAIN!!
After a 60 hour travel day and a quick layover in NYC we made it to Nicaragua! My team was paired with another team to do ministry together this month in Ciudad Darío. We would be working with Light & Salt ministries by teaching English lessons, playing soccer with the boys, landscape work, or by helping lead devotionals for elderly women in the community.
Our first day there I got to run around and play soccer with the boys then teach English to them before they went home for the day. I had a blast and couldn’t wait to be living at the ministry site full time. Since there were so many of us we had to separate our living situations by teams. The first week my team planned on living at our host’s house and helping her with yard work. Then halfway through our stay there the teams would switch and our team would then go help out at the actual ministry until we left.
On our first night staying at our host’s I slept outside in my hammock and woke up covered in sand fly bites. Definitely avoid them if you can! Some of the other girls who slept inside had them too, so we just planned to take extra precautions before going to bed each night. Over the next few days we did landscaping, had a rest day, and took Sabbath.
On Sunday while we were enjoying Sabbath my stomach and head started to really bother me. As the day went on I started developing a fever and just wanted to go to sleep. Since I had been hanging out at the ministry site and everyone else was at church I had no choice but to wait for the host to come back and pick me up. While waiting on her I found a tick on my neck.
Okay, so now I am covered in bites, found a tick, and I am getting sicker by the hour. Obviously the next step is to call my mom freaking out begging to come home. Both of my parents answer and say, “You knew you would get sick at some point when you signed up. It will pass. You will be fine. Keep us updated.” Lots of help those two!
After a few hours I get picked up and inform my host that I’m not feeling good and should probably go to the doctor the next day. Then I listed off my symptoms and she lost it when she heard about the tick. Well now I’m freaking out because here I am in the middle of Nicaragua without anywhere to go see a doctor in the middle of the night! Luckily I have the sweetest teammates who checked up on my all night and made sure I was comfortable. Also my fever broke that night!!
Long story short over the next week I saw multiple doctors, had 3 IVs, got a ton of medicine, and thought I was dying multiple times. I barely slept because of the symptoms and how much pain I was in. There was a point I could barely walk because I was so dehydrated and my muscles refused to work. I had an ultrasound on my abdomen and several different rounds of bloodwork done. All to find out that I had an intestinal infection.
The doctors came to the conclusion that when I was sick back in Lesotho my gastrointestinal track didn’t heal fully and left me vulnerable to getting really sick again. This time is was a million times worse.
Keep reading for some gnarly details and a healing!!
Friday night, I actually thought I needed to go home, be admitted into the hospital, and stay there for as long as it took. I couldn’t keep my medicine down, it had been a week since I had ate a full meal, and I had no energy to move. I honestly didn’t know how I would get my body home if they were to send me home. I just knew I needed something big to happen or else I would starve to death. That’s when my host got a phone call from Scott, a missionary who works at the AIM base in Granada. He had heard that I was sick and called to see if I would want to go to the base a little early to be in a more comfortable spot, be closer to doctors, and just maybe closer to a plane to get me home. Heck yes!! Of course I wanted to go there.
I handed the phone back over to my host to make some of the final plans for the trip and I was back throwing up before their call had ended. This time it was worse than it had been the rest of the week. It was so violent that my blood started coming out of my nose! I didn’t even know until someone pointed out that I had blood all over my shirt. Super gross and a sure sign that I needed to get out of there.
So the next morning my team leader and I got picked up and drove down to Granada to start the healing process. When we got here we found out that a gap year squad would be here until the day before the rest of our squad arrived. At this point I realized that God had something up His sleeve because this would be the fourth gap squad I had met and got a chance to interact with. It is probably pretty normal to meet a few other squads but 4! That is a sweet, sweet gift.
We weren’t even here for an hour when a few of them asked if they could pray for me so we all took a seat and prayed. Afterwards one of the girls said while they were praying she was given a vision of darkness leaving my body and that I was healed. She was totally right too! God healed me of each one of my symptoms, I was able to eat two meals that day, and had more energy than I had in days.
I don’t know why God lead Farrah and I here early but I sure am thankful for what He was able to do for me when I got here. For now, Farrah and I will continue to encourage the gap squad, rest until our squad arrives, and praise God for what He is doing in our lives.
