Well we just returned to Haiti after a brief Christmas vacation in the United States. We had tons of things that we were planning on doing: updating the blog; finishing our December newsletter; visiting friends and families in VA and NC; going to one of Lorraine’s closest friends weddings; and mostly just relaxing, but it was not to come to pass.

After we got to Virginia, we were able to relax a little bit and spend some time with my family. The only thing that wasn’t completely relaxing was the fact that I asked to preach at my Journey Church in Springfield, VA, where my Dad is currently the Lead Pastor. I had an idea of what I wanted to preach on, and I certainly don’t get as nervous with preaching as I do with other things, but preaching to a new set of people is always intimidating.

Things started to get crazy, though, when Lorraine started feeling ill. Previously, before we went to Haiti and while we were in Haiti, Lorraine had a terrible time with breastfeeding issues and she was constantly in pain and not feeling well. When we went back to the States those issues seemed to clear up, which was awesome, until something else fell into its’ place.

After a couple days of being back, Lorraine started to have some intense pain in her back under her ribs. The pain was so intense that it was waking her up in the middle of the night and preventing her from going back to sleep. Sadly, the pain was also making her extremely nauseous, and just generally leaving her not feeling well. Her pain really came to a head on the Saturday night before I was supposed to preach at about 3:30 in the morning, which needless to say didn’t leave me properly rested for preaching, even though I still did. We decided at that point, though, that something needed to be done and we needed to take her into the doctor or the emergency room, and so we did on Monday evening – the first time. Our trip to the emergency room proved long and fairly non-productive, because we found out nothing; and if anything our trip left us with more questions than answers. The pain never really went away, and so we once again found ourselves at the emergency room at about 4 in the morning on Friday. This once again proved somewhat fruitless, except for the last ER Doctor who gave Lorraine a diagnosis of a kidney stone. It was good to have some kind of answer, however, when we took Micah in before we left to our family Doctor, she diagnosed Lorraine with gall bladder issues, which we had suspected all along. What the issues are we don’t know, but we are taking it on faith that the Lord will keep her healthy and safe while we are here in Haiti.

Appropriately, Micah also had a tough time over our break. Some of it was probably being in a different surrounding, and being surrounded by a lot of other people more regularly; but a lot of it, most likely, was his sensing his mommies pain. Micah kept us up most nights and constantly on our toes and so we definitely at this point feel sleep deprived.

Like I said, there was a bunch of stuff that we wanted to do and that we had planned on doing. For those of you whom regularly support us, we wanted to get you all a special Christmas card from Haiti, but we just ran out of time. It certainly doesn’t mean, though, that we didn’t want to or we didn’t try, or that we don’t think about you, or we don’t regularly pray for you, because all of these things are simply not true. We are truly grateful for all our supporters, because it is with your prayers that we know things were not worse than they were and we know that things will get better by. Things never seem to be normal, straightforward, and easy for Lorraine and I, but we appreciate the lessons we have learned and the growth we have felt because of them. You know what they say (or at least what Steinbeck says), “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Blessings!