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We are back! The trip back to America was long but we made it. It was all the more exciting because when we were driving to the main city in Palawan, Puerto Princessa, we encountered a bridge that had washed out. The solution was that the van dropped us off on one side, porters carried our things over a wooden bridge, and then another van continued the journey on the other side. It was all very well organized and left me impressed with the way everyone was able to work together. Both Chris and I have mentioned that it feels like our year in the jungle never really happened. The feeling is kind of like we were in a time machine. Life is so different between Palawan and America that it is hard to connect the two. I guess that is our challenge, to take what we have learned this past year and apply it to our life here. We also attended a long weekend at the AFM training center in Michigan. It was helpful to debrief with fellow returning missionaries as well as meet the new trainees going out into the field. We want to thank everyone who has supported us this past year financially as well as with prayers. You have helped save countless lives and helped bring the gospel to many who are hurting in Palawan. We couldn't have done it without you! Chris and I have learned so much this year and one question we get a lot of is, "Would you do it again?" The answer is yes. Despite the challenges and growing pains, we would do it all over again. The next step in our lives is to pay off some student loans so that we will be financially free. After that, who knows what God has planned for us. Thank you again for supporting us!

Chris and Amy

June 15, 2012

We are winding up our time here in Palawan, just six weeks left as I write this. I alternate between being excited and sad and the closer it gets, the more I realize how difficult it will be to leave the Palawanos. They have welcomed us into their lives with open arms. Quite often someone will ask, "When are you leaving?" and since their sense of time is vague, I've been answering, "Not for a long time." For most people here, one or two weeks is a long time. They view life as cyclical. There is planting season, harvest season, and rainy season. Unfortunately the incoming and outgoing of student missionaries is cyclical too. With five of us leaving on the same day, I'm sure word will get out as to when we are leaving. You might wonder why we don't want to tell them. I think I've mentioned before that when someone leaves it is like a funeral to them. One of my Palawano friends asked me, "Do you have a house and job in America?" I said no and she said, "Why would you leave? You already have a house and job here." Hmm. It made me think. But we have earnestly prayed and feel like our next step is to pay back Chris' student loans. After that, who knows where God will send us. It is tempting to feel anxious and scared about the future, but we know God has a plan for us. We don't know where we will live or what kind of jobs we'll have, but God has provided for us in the past and we trust He will provide for us in the future as well. A song we have come to love is "Day by Day." The first verse reads:

Day by day and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here.
Trusting in my Father's wise bestowment
I've no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure
Gives unto each day what He deems best.
Lovingly, it's part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.

Propane

Before we arrived here and didn't know what to expect, living in the jungle sounded so primitive. Living in a bamboo hut, having to carry supplies in, fearing the hot climate, not knowing how we would cook, all these things were unknown. Then we got here and realized that living in a bamboo hut isn't much different from a house back home except we have the added benefit of slats in the floor. When something spills you can just nudge it and it falls to the ground where chickens are eager to gobble it up. We realized that there is plenty of food here and that we wouldn't shrivel away to nothing. The hot climate we feared turned out to be very pleasant and now we are fearing the cold winter back home. Cooking turned out to be easy because we have a propane stove. And we have gotten comfortable with it. We have to replace our propane tank about every three months. Six other houses here use propane and it is very unpopular to carry the tanks into the mountains. You can imagine a 50-pound metal tank would not be much fun to carry. All of this means that propane is not usually immediately available when we run out. When we don't have propane, we cook in a little cement fire ring called a "pugen." We fill it with charcoal and start it on fire with a sap called "selang." It's kind of fun to cook on when we want to be adventurous, but it is slow. One hour of cooking turns into three hours of cooking. The first time we had to cook on the pugen was challenging. We wouldn't plan ahead and would find ourselves hungry for lunch with the only option to wait for the food to cook. We learned to plan better, God gave us patience and endurance, and we didn't go hungry. After we got more propane we thought, "Phew, we're glad that's over. And just look how God grew us through that trial." Well, turns out that God still wanted to grow us more. We ran out of propane last week and for a few days it was fine. Chris is quite good at cooking on the pugen, but after a while my patience was wearing thin. On Friday a lot of men were going to carry supplies in and we asked many of them to carry the propane for us, so I was certain that we would have it by the evening. When it didn't come, I was frustrated to the point of tears. It wasn't that I couldn't cook on the pugen, I just plain didn't want to. Earlier Chris had prayed, "God, if you want us to have propane, work it out so someone will carry it." I didn't agree. I just wanted propane. After struggling with this for a while, I asked God for more patience and asked Him to take away my frustration. I had to repeat this prayer many times, but God answered me. I decided to not even think about when the propane might come. A few days later I was studying in James and read, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4) So I rejoiced for this trial I was going through. Funny enough, someone carried the propane in that evening. God continues to provide for us and grow our faith in Him. What a loving God that He is willing to use us and be patient when we don't trust Him.

Snake bite in Kulban

     I was standing on the clinic porch going through my mental check list of things that needed to be done for the day when a teenager walked up. "Bing Bing" told me that a man named Ma' aw was sick because he had been bitten by a snake and that he needed medicine.  I asked when this had occurred and Bing Bing replied "sambatu lingu," about one week ago. I asked if he could walk and he said no. "Is there anything else wrong?" I asked. "Yes," Bing Bing replied, "His leg is really swollen, and his face feels like it is on fire."  I asked what type of snake had bitten him, hoping I could identify it and possibly read up on the problem, but Ma' aw had been bitten at night and did not see the snake.  I tried to explain that I did not have medicine I could send for Ma' aw and that they needed to bring Ma' aw to the clinic where I could assess the problem and possibly send him to the hospital.  Bing Bing gave me the usual look and said "Oh Chris, it's too far and steep to carry him".  I kept insisting that they needed to bring him to the clinic and finally Bing Bing left.  He never said if he was going carry Ma' aw or not.  I figured that 1 of 2 things would happen.  Either they would carry Ma' aw to the clinic if he was really sick, or I would never hear about it again and I would assume it was not a big injury.  I had thought about hiking to this village to see Ma' aw myself, but a few months ago people from this same village asked for medicine for a man who could not walk due to a skin disease. I decided to hike the hour and half trail that is extremely steep only to find the patient reclining outside and perfectly able to ambulate.  His only problem was he had a skin rash in his groin area and I had a suspicion he was to embarrassed to walk to the clinic.  Unfortunately this jaded my trust in this village and I was not so willing to rush out and see what was wrong with this new patient.  However, later that day Bing Bing's father also came to the clinic and asked me to come.  I called Leonda, the career missionary, and told her the situation and she thought it would be a good idea to check it out. I brought the clinic backpack with supplies in it and also a box that generates electricity for snake bites.  It's a water tight ammo can with an alternator inside that is turned with a handle on the side to produce electricity. The electricity is then delivered to the skin via two cables tipped with a pen like object.  It's very medieval and I heard from another missionary that it really hurts.  It's the only snake bite therapy we have, though according to the pamphlet inside it has not been proven to work. 
     I found Elias, a fellow missionary, and asked, "How would like to go on an adventure?"  He was up for it and dropped off his back pack. I asked, "Don't you want to bring your water and stuff?"and he said "No, it's not that far."  I shrugged and said "O.K." assuming he knew where we were going.  Later I would found out that he had misunderstood and thought we were hiking only about half an hour away.  Needless to say he was very thirsty by the time we made it to Kulban.  We arrived to find Ma'aw on the porch, and I could already see his right leg was massive.  Elias volunteered to wash the leg while I got vitals and asked other medical questions. Once the leg was clean it was obvious that the main problem was that the bite had become infected and he had cellulitis and an abscess.  His leg was very red and hot, with three out of four pitting edema.  I could express pus from the bite site so I decided to drain it.  I made a 1 cm incision over the area and was able to drain about a cup full of purulent material.  By this time it was dark and Elias and I were using our head lamps to finish up.  I packed and dressed the wound and then we stated our case that Ma'aw needed to be carried to the clinic.  We explained that his wound needed packing everyday and that I had not brought enough antibiotics to give him a complete course.  They agreed and said that when they got enough people they would carry him.  They offered to feed us and we enjoyed palm heart and potatoes with rice.  I was thankful and ashamed that I did not trust that these gracious people would take care of us.  Elias and I asked if we could sleep in the village and they showed us a hut.  I had only brought a very tiny blanket and our clothes were wet with sweat.  Elias and I laid down and tried to share the blanket but it only covered our upper bodies.  Bing Bing later brought us two more small pieces of material that we wrapped around our legs and feet. Needless to say it was the coldest night in Palawan since my arrival. Morning finally came and with a reminder to bring Ma' aw to the clinic, Elias and I headed home.  Three days later two church members who were passing by finally carried him to our clinic.  Ma' aw spent 15 days at the clinic so we could pack and dress his wound before he could walk home. 

Chris Kinney

May 2012

Just when we think that things will get easier, that we’ve got everything under control, something else happens reminding us that we are not the ones in control, God is. We are feeling pretty tired because we have had inpatients for most of the month of April and May. Getting up in the middle of the night to give meds wears you down pretty quickly. Most of the patients have had typhoid but we have had some cases of pneumonia as well. One older lady was carried to our clinic. She had been sick for a long time and had called all her children to her house because she thought she was about to die. Eventually someone convinced her to come to the clinic. She actually recovered fairly quickly and when she realized that she wasn’t going to die, she was full of gratitude. She was hugging us and telling us that we were her children now. We were a little embarrassed and surprised too. Most people who come to the clinic seem indifferent. A lot of the time we have to convince them to take medicine or they are angry because we want them to take medicine and they don’t want to because it’s bitter. We’ve tried all sorts of tricks for getting children to take medicine and hiding the medicine in crunchy peanut butter on a cracker seems to work the best. Anyway, it was nice to have someone say thank you when we were so tired. With everything going on here, we just have to lean on God’s strength and not our own. And while it is challenging, we can see how God is growing our faith and trust in Him.

                We also had our 1^st patient die. While we have heard reports of deaths in different villages, this was the first patient that we were involved with. A family came with three children and all were very sick. They had been sick for two weeks already and were just now coming for help. Chris assessed them and got clearance to send them all to the hospital in the lowlands. They were too sick for the care we could give them in the clinic, so we arranged for them to be carried out. Unfortunately, the oldest girl died on the way down. Because the others still needed to go to the hospital, one of the missionaries brought the body back to our clinic and the church members buried her the next morning. It was weird because there was no funeral, not even a family member there to say goodbye. I’m still struggling with that a little bit, thinking of how different a funeral would be in the states. But the good news is that this little girl has hope. The next thing she sees will be Jesus Christ coming to take her home to live with Him for eternity.

                Other than working in the clinic, in my spare time I’ve still been helping with farming. For some reason I thought that once the rice was planted, the hard part was done. But that’s not the case. Once the rice starts growing, the weeds start growing too. So we have to go through the field and pull them up. I have discovered that I really like weeding. Maybe it’s because I can see the results of my hard work instantly. I was weeding the other day and I had a thought. The farm is like our life and the rice is like the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.). When we spend time with Jesus every day, it is like letting Jesus work on the farm of our life. He wants to plant these good things in our life. But the weeds are like sin, selfishness springing up everywhere trying to choke out all the fruit. It is not possible to grow rice with the weeds, it won’t produce any fruit. Also, this weeding process is continual. I can’t go and weed a whole farm in a few hours. Maybe I’ll finish a little section, but to keep up with the weeds I have to spend time weeding every day. It is the same with spending time with Jesus. If we only spend time with him once in a while, the weeds get thicker and choke out our spiritual life. Only by allowing Jesus to work in our life, by spending time with Him every day, can our lives produce fruit.  

              We appreciate everyone who is praying for us. It really makes a difference! Thank you!

AFM poster

April 6, 2012

A few people have asked about the outreach we are doing in Lep Lep. It is still going strong. We actually go to three different villages near Lep Lep because everyone moved after the Cholera epidemic and no one lives there anymore. It is exciting to see the growth of our high school students as they give Bible studies and to see the interest of the families.

The past few days we have been in the lowlands meeting the Georges and working on team dynamics and communication. One day we did a cultural study comparing the cultural values of Philippinos, Palawanos, and Americans. It was so interesting to see the things we have in common as well as realize the differences. We also had time to do some fun activities. This time together was important because as with any relationship, it's vital to evaluate and improve communication and set goals for the future.

We have a few prayer requests. The first is that God will give the church members strength to resist the attacks and temptations that Satan throws at them. The second prayer request is for more teachers for the high school. They are not learning science and history because there are not enough teachers, but these high school students are so eager to learn. We appreciate your prayers so much! Thank you for taking an interest in the people of Palawan.

March 28, 2011

Hello again to everyone! Thanks to everyone who sends us little messages via Facebook. We've been busy as always at the clinic. We had a stream of inpatients the past few weeks with one patient with typhoid staying 10 days. Typhoid fever does weird things to people and she kept us busy trying to prevent her from pulling out her hair, IV, or urinary catheter. Also, the local public health office down in the lowlands sent a group of people to our clinic to do education about malaria, do blood smears, and hand out mosquito nets.

As I am recovering from my fourth experience with malaria, my mom suggested that I describe a little more about it. Malaria can have a variety of symptoms but the telltale signs are usually fever, chilling, severe headache, nausea, and diarrhea. Malaria is usually cyclical so it is not uncommon to fever at the same time every day. While malaria itself is not fun, the medicine's side effects are not much better. The treatment consists of 3 drugs, chloroquine, primaquine, and Fansidar. I've gotten to the point where I cringe every time I give these meds out to patients at the clinic. With malaria I usually start feeling better by the third day, but it usually takes about a week to get my strength back.

Aside from medical things, it is planting season here. Most everyone has slashed and burned an area for their farm and now are planting rice. The farms are located on the sides of the mountains and I sometimes wonder how they manage to keep from falling off. It is an exciting time for the Palawanos and you can hear whooping and hollering all over the hills. Everyone gathers to watch when someone is burning their field. The next step is to gather all the sticks that didn't burn the first time and stack them in piles to burn again. Then the field is ready for planting. They plant rice by poking a hole in the ground and putting 6-8 grains of rice inside. They don't plant in rows, just wherever. Helping out with the farming has given me a new appreciation for the food we eat here.

Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement!

Picture ubdate

                                                         Surlin making linidgid

                                                                Amy planting rice

                                                       Unweeded vs weeded rice

                                                         Kemantian, where we live

                                                                     Chris and Imir

                                             The family of the man who had a snake bite

                                                            Chris doing a house call

Chris and Manyar (who was recovering from Typhoid)

Sounds of the Jungle

When we first arrived here in Kemantian, one of the most noticeable things was the plethora of new sounds. About halfway along the trail to our village, the sounds of the city are exchanged for the sounds of the jungle. At first, the combination of cicaidas, crickets, and other bugs sounded so loud, but now they are background noise. At night we hear bats flying around our hut and there are owls that sound like someone is prank calling us with heavy breathing. There are tucky lizzards that call out, "tuck-y, tuck-y." There are bugs that sound like wind-up toys and others that sound like they are tap dancing. At daybreak (and usually before) the echoes of rooster crows bounce back and forth across the mountains. If 1 rooster crows, it gets them all going and inevitably one comes under our house and crows under our bed. Later we hear baby chicks, various bird calls, and the local cats looking for a meal. At 6:30 am we can hear the laughter of the school kids washing up. Before it starts raining, you can hear it coming toward you. It's nice to have that warning when we have laundry on the line. All day long is filled with sounds of people talking in the high-pitched, sing-song language, crying babies, and school children. This is just a sample of what it sounds like in Kemantian. 

February 10, 2012

Things have slowed down here at the clinic, or maybe we have just adjusted to the number of people we see. But no more cholera epidemics or big crises. Here are some interesting facts. In 2011, the medical clinic saw a total of 4,551 patients and 2,059 of those had malaria. There have been more births this past month as well. I have had more experiences walking into a hut and finding the baby and placenta lying on the floor. I was also called to "help" at a delivery and it was the first time the mom was still in labor when I got there. I say "help" because I was basically moral support. The mom was very shy and I don't know anything about delivering babies so I was reading a book equivalent to "How to Deliver Babies for Dummies." The more I read, the more stressed I became because it pointed out all the things that could go wrong. When I first arrived at the hut the room was full of women, but after a while I found myself alone with the mom. I thought to myself, "This is crazy. All the other women here know more about delivering babies than I do. At least they've had their own children." I felt like I was giving them a false sense of security. So I decided to take a break and told the women to come get me if they had any problems. Not long after, they called for me again and when I got there the room was full of women again and the mom had a baby girl. As soon as she was born I was allowed to cut the cord and take care of her. She's probably the warmest baby here in Palawan because she didn't have to lay on a cold floor for a few hours. I praise God for answering my many prayers that afternoon.

We have also been dealing with spiritual attacks among some Christians here. The attacks sometimes start with stomach or kidney pain and when the person is in the middle of it, they are not with it at all, sometimes screaming, sometimes sleeping. We pray, sing songs, and keep the person from getting injured. We know the devil is mad and doing everything in his power to discourage the church here. But we know that God's power is greater and the battle has already been won by the blood of Jesus Christ.

While Chris and I have been here we have had more time to study the Bible. It is becoming very obvious to us that God is calling every person to work for Him. His return is very near and while we are saved by grace, that doesn't mean we should just go to church once a week and be content to keep that knowledge to ourselves. God has a work for each of us to share what we have learned and show the love of Christ to those around us. Whether that work is being a missionary overseas, supporting the church financially, or being a missionary to those around us at home. We are already thinking about what God's plan is for us next year. Of course we have our own wishes and desires, but do they fit in with what God wants us to do? Please continue to pray for the Palawano people and for us as we seek God's will for our life.

Amy



Life at the Clinic

I thought it might be nice to share a typical day at the clinic. We open at 8:00am, and it is not uncommon for people to be waiting on the porch for us. A student worker from high school meets us Monday through Thursday to help us with our workload while learning valuable life skills. Some of the tasks they help us with are:  prepacking medicine for quick dispensing, washing cups and syringes used to give medicine, as well as daily clean up around the clinic. The staff is also responsible for teaching the students how to weigh people, taking blood pressure and temperature, finding charts, and filing them away. Some of the more advanced students are given opportunites to practice giving shots to the staff. 

Once the clinic has been cleaned up, we begin asking who is sick or needs medicine. It's basically run just like a doctor's office back in the states, except your doctor checks you in, gets all the vitals, and then takes you back to the exam room. Once we determine the illness, we prepare the medicine for the patient. The medicine is placed in plastic bags and knots are tied in the bags to separate doses for different times of the day. Each bag then represents the number of days to take the medicine. We pack it this way because most people can't read.

On a daily basis we see from 5-20 patients, depending on the weather, or if there is an event that requires people to walk by the clinic. Pediatrics makes up the bulk of our patients. The most common thing we treat for is malaria and second to that is upper respiratory illness. There are also a fair number of cases of RSV and pneumonia in children. We also see lots of kids who have sores covering their legs and bodies and I think this is due to poor hygiene.

The adults who come to the clinic most commonly have upper respiratory illness or malaria as well. However, I have seen a few cases of hepatitis, typhoid, and other interesting pathologies.  There are also lots of rashes here including ringworm, athlete's itch, atopic dermatitis, and a jungle rash that does not seem to respond to any medicine that we have.  Many adults also have dental problems and they often come with symptoms of a tooth abcess.

One of the stranger things that I have only seen in the Palawanos is that sometimes when they eat fish, green mangoes, or passion fruit, they develop severe gastritis.  They complain of sharp stabbing pain in their epigastric region, and are unable to walk around. Often they vomit once and then go into a comatose-like state and do not respond to verbal stimuli.  Usually I go to their home to treat them and they recover in a day or two.

So that is a quick snapshot of what we do here in the clinic.

Chris Kinney

Chris talking with one of the patients

 Alanna, the nurse who works with us

 

 

 All the school children

Chris is listening to the palm heart (it's the heart of a palm tree)

 

 Coming back from the farm with pulug

 Cute

Everyone helps clean the rice at the store. They are picking out worms.

Friends

Friends

One of the births I attended

One of my best friends, Naklin

 Our house

Preparing food

Science class

This is the baby girl from the story

Visiting with friends from Lup Lup

January 8, 2012

What a crazy month! It all started when a man named Labas died. Labas fell from a coconut tree 15 years ago and crushed his pelvis. He lived in a village called Lup Lup, about and hour away from our clinic, and he depended on his family to care for him. He had slowly been declining and before he died he asked to be put in a tree house instead of being buried. I'm guessing this had some spiritual meaning to him because those who are not Christians are afraid of what will happen when they die. Even the way they normally bury the dead is different in that they make a bamboo covering over the body so that the dirt won't touch them. We didn't hear about his death until a few days after it happened. The village was told that they needed to bury the body in the ground but no one was willing to because they were afraid of his spirit. In fact, half the village had moved to another hillside because they were also scared. About 1 week later, a woman was carried by basket to our clinic. She had been sick for a few days and by the time she got to us she was severely dehydrated and had heart arrhythmia's. We started an IV and sent her down to the hospital. Soon after, two more people were carried in from the same village. More came by walking. Chris diagnosed it as Cholera and we started treatment. In all, we treated 16 people from Lup Lup in our 4 bed clinic. There were people sleeping on the back porch, the front porch, everywhere! We sent 2 of our missionaries to properly bury the body and to educate the village about cleanliness and the need to boil water before drinking. Once everyone was feeling better at the clinic, we had them all shower and wash their clothes. It was quite the social event with everyone eagerly waiting their turn. Some had never seen water come from a shower head before. One older man we treated was fiercely independent and when he needed to get up and use the bathroom , he would say, "Don't walk with me. By myself only," but he was so unsteady that we would have to walk with him anyway. Later on when he was feeling better, he told us, "If it wasn't for your clinic, there wouldn't be anyone left in our village, just chickens." We are so grateful to be able to help meet the needs of these Palawanos. We we are the only medical care that they have access to. The village of Lup Lup hasn't been very receptive to our clinic and school in the past, but this outbreak of Cholera has opened the door. The past few Sundays, market day, they have been the first ones at the clinic with smiling faces. A group of church members and high school students went last week to share Bible stories and hopefully they will all one day know and accept the love and salvation of Jesus Christ. Please pray for the village of Lup Lup.