Juan Miguel

its been a couple weeks since my last blog. hard to find time to sit and reflect when so much happens so fast. right now i sit here amazed at it all, and want to share just one quick story.

we had some friends visiting from watershed charlotte, and we were hanging out in the village of Buena Vista with some locals. a woman who is the local midwife for the town yelled my name and i walked over. she was in a panic. she explained that she was delivering a baby (in someone's home) and there were serious complications. "come now" she yelled... so we went.

when we got there, Marina was lying in the bed. she was dilated 10 cm, and had been in hard labor for a couple hours, but contractions had stopped. she was drifting in and out of consciousness. our doctors who were with us told us immediately that she needed to get to a hospital.

for most people who live in Buena Vista, this is not possible. this is a village where people earn a few dollars a day (if they have work). catching a bus to the hospital is hard enough, but the bigger challenges are the actual money it takes to have the baby, or the education to even know what to do or where to go. in extreme poverty when these things happen, it is considered "their time" and someone simply dies.

to sum up what was a CRAZY next couple of hours... we rushed Marina, along with her husband and mom, to a hospital in Antigua. through the help of some great friends who i called along the way, we were able to contact the hospital from the car and they were ready when we arrived.

as i drove like a maniac to the hospital, the docs in the van were fully prepared to deliver the baby in the car. they tried to get Marina to push several times, for fear that it may already be too late, but she couldn't do it as she was barely awake.

when we arrived, John, the emergency paramedic from charlotte, was yelling out all of the vitals to bring them up to speed. with no time to waste, John was given some scrubs and he went into the ER with the local doctors. the local OB doctor did a quick exam and decided to try one time to induce the labor and have the baby naturally before going to an emergency C-section.

we all waited with the husband and mother, looking through a small square window into a hallway in the ER... after just a few minutes, John came around the corner holding a crying baby up in the air. we erupted into shouts of joy and praise to God.

they named him "Juan Miguel"... "Juan" after the gringo EMT who delivered him, and "Miguel" after his father.

since then i have done all of the "what ifs" and the one thing i know for certain is that God had us there in that moment to fulfill His will for that mother and baby to live.

one thing about these "mission trips" that people take here is that it gives them a week without cell phones, TV, email, facebook, twitter, and all of the other distractions. it allows time for constant prayer and seeking. time for reflection and time for discussion. time to ask God to lead us and use us.

He sooo desires that we seek Him, follow Him, and make ourselves fully available for Him to use. and it is truly incredible what He does with us when we do.