My problem is not that nothing happened this week, but that
sometimes communicating what did happen is quite difficult. I think most people
will have picked up form last week’s entry that I had a difficult week last
week, and to be honest, I was quite nervous at the beginning of this week
probably for the first time since coming back. I was worried if the difficult
issues from last week would carry over into my personal relationships, I was
worried finding wisdom in the face of some big decisions the
Foundation was facing, and I was worried about my mounting level of stress.
I like doing things well; I actually would rather not do
things if I can’t do them well, which is why I don’t play sports, but I guess
that’s another issue entirely. However, I do recognise that this personality
trait of mine isn’t always healthy. Sometimes we are asked to do things that we
just have to do, and we can’t be good at everything. I have found working in HR
hard because there isn’t necessarily the feedback to assure me that I am doing
things even moderately well. I only know when something else has gone wrong or
I have to intervene in another situation. I understand that that’s the nature
of the job, but I have found myself floundering a little, wondering if I am even
remotely tackling the situations in the right way.
So, back to what happened this week… I was nervous going
into work this week because I knew some big decisions were coming up and I
didn’t know how to go about approaching them. To give you some background, I
would like to tell you about Hernan Noza. If you get the FT Facebook newsfeed
updates you’ll know that Hernan is a young Christian of 19 years old that
fractured his C4 & C5 in a swimming accident. Hernan is from the rural
village of San Ignacio, but had to get transported to Trinidad for better
medical care. At the beginning it was very touch and go about whether he would
pull through or not, but he has had spinal surgery and has stabilized, though
he is now a quadriplegic. Through
various contacts with missionaries and churches, Hernan’s recovery was
something that many people in our church and in FT took on board as a matter of
prayer, but everyone has also mustered together to support him practically as
much as possible.
Hernan suffered neglect while in the local hospital and was
moved around a lot before finally being invited to stay in a room in FT’s
in-patient ward. Many members from our church took his medical care seriously
and he was slowly able to recover from very serious bed sores that he had
developed while in hospital which had become infected, and he was finally
starting to receive the physiotherapy that he needed to prevent further sores.
Hernan is now able to move his shoulders and he has some sense of feeling in
his arms down to his wrists. Thank you to all of you who have decided to
support Hernan’s recovery with extra donations specifically designated for his
medical care. The family does not have the resources to be able to afford the
level of medical care he requires and they are very dependent on donations from
other people. If anyone would like to support Hernan, please contact LAM Canada
if you are in North America or FT UK if you are in the UK.
However, Hernan’s care from an HR point of view was getting
very tricky. The board of directors initially agreed to let Hernan and his
family use the in-patient ward free of charge as a way to support his recovery and not one of us on the board had a problem with this. However, what we did
not anticipate was how the situation would snowball so quickly. First our doctors
started treating him, then we needed to use our supplies for dressing changes,
we had to hire a nurse with experience in wound care, our staff nurses had
to start taking care of his needs during the day, and our cleaning staff had
various tasks as well… on top of all their regular responsibilities. People
were getting upset that other people weren’t carrying their weight, others
didn’t understand how we could possibly contemplate this without hiring more
staff, others were upset at the lack of support from Hernan’s family and
keeping everyone happy was getting difficult.
By the end of last week I was at my wit’s end. I had no idea
what to do. I recognised that what we were doing to support Hernan and his
family was important and necessary as we are called to uphold prayerfully and
practically the needs of our family in Christ. However, I was also so conscious
that pushing our staff, especially our staff that still do not have a personal
faith in Christ, to the brink of sanity was not showing them the love of God
that I so desperately want to show people. That was the whole reason I took on
this role in HR: evangelising our staff first and foremost. The tension between
the two goals were becoming hard to balance and I felt that many others that I
work with here maybe were not seeing that tension like I was. Some board
members were working really closely with the family and saw things from their
perspective, others looked at the situation in a purely medical frame of mind,
while I was dealing with our own staff and their needs. This week the board had
to have a very hard conversation and it was really tough that we weren’t all
seeing eye to eye on various points regarding this issue. I felt very young,
inexperienced and out of my depth.
And then God stepped in. Unbeknownst to us, the hospital
where Hernan was staying before coming to us finally decided to take
responsibility for the neglect he received while on their care and decided to try to organise a skin graft that he needs for his serious bed sores free of
charge. On Tuesday, Hernan’s mother decided to move him back to Hospital
Trinidad and it all kind of happened suddenly, actually while we, the board,
were in our monthly meeting. From a medical perspective we are not entirely
sure if this is the best decision, but the family made the call and we have to
respect that. The hospital where Hernan is now staying are taking care of his
medical care, but are not providing medicines or materials, so FT is still in
charge of coordinating the donations received and buying the things he needs
for his treatment. However, from an HR perspective, this was the breather the
Foundation really needed and I was so relieved I teared up in the meeting. That
might sound horrible, because of course I want the best for Hernan, who is a
really sweet, but very scared young man who needs a lot of support, I just
didn’t know how to juggle everyone’s needs anymore. The burden that I felt lift
from not just me, but the whole situation, was palpable. The board actually
turned to one another and said, “Well, guess God took care of that.”
Hernan’s skin graft is looking less likely in Trinidad. The
surgeon here has decided, once Hernan had already switched hospitals, that he
doesn’t want to operate because Hernan has anaemia. There is the possibility of
having the skin graft done in Cochabamba by a Doctor there who seems willing,
but the costs involved in that would be a lot higher. In the future, there
might be a move to a rehab facility in Sucre, but the situation has not arrived
at that point yet. I have been by twice this week to see him and he seems quite
bored and lonely in the new hospital as he gets fewer visitors than when he was
surrounded by the FT community. Craig is going to swing by this afternoon and
try and watch a film with him, so we’ll see how that goes.
While my week from this point on was no less busy, the
evidence of God’s intervention in such a stressful situation was exactly the
encouragement I needed.
Craig talks about himself most of the time when he writes
the blog, right? So I figure you don’t need to know much about what he did this
week. Well, maybe I’ll tell you a little. He actually got up with me at 5:30
this morning to go to a prayer meeting of his own; a pastor’s and leader’s
prayer meeting in Trinidad. However, his prayer meeting came with breakfast,
mine did not. I ate a leftover brownie for breakfast instead and now my stomach
hurts. Sigh… Craig also had various discipleship sessions this week, he met with
Elias and they went over 2 Peter together looking at overall themes for the
church’s next preaching topic, and in his free time he got completely stuck in
Super Mario World 3D.
Rest assured Craig should be back next week… I’m sure his
post will be funnier and make reference to things that generally go over my head.
Prayer:
- Hernan Noza and his continued recovery. Please prayer not just for physical healing, but spiritual growth and a sense of peace. His family are also not believers, please pray that they are introduced to God's grace and love through their interaction with His people in Trinidad.
- Staff interactions - now that some of the pressure has been removed, the staff are settling back down again, but there might be some lingering bad feelings and underlying issues between people that were present before Hernan arrived.
- God's intervention when all earthly wisdom fled us - as explained above.
- A productive week for both Craig and I in our various jobs - Craig is time managing his life months in advance, and as I can't do that, I can only watch in awe.
- Good discipleship sessions with various young people for both.
¡Que Dios les bendiga!
Craig and Amanda
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