From: Charles & Bev Truxton Subject: SHORTer Shermeen update "To Him who is able to keep you from falling & to present you before His glorious presence without fault & with great joy...be glory, majesty, power & authority through Jesus Christ our Lord." Jude 1: 24-25 Ya Ya Jiki? (how is your body?...) Hey Everyone!! How's it going?? This is my attempt to write a brief update so I won't lose people in the process!! It's been a great, action-packed week. On the personal front, I am learning tonnes about 'grace' and 'ungrace' reading Yancey's "What's so amazing about grace?" and then having great fun reading through Chapman & Campbell's "The 5 Love Languages of Children". These are exceptional reads, and I hope some of you will get a chance to digest them. Well, I think I'm now unofficially 'Nigerian' after Sat afternoon's venture into the market. I think I've figured it out: if you have boundless confidence in your pathetic Hausa, possess the innate ambition to eat well and have an ability to throughly enjoy mingling with people, no matter how much they call you 'baturi' or 'CHINESE!', THEN you will love Nigerian marketing!!! We had the most fun on Sat, I bought enough groceries for a couple of weeks, I think! And we even found this cool new N.American style cafe and had hamburgers, fries, salad and yes, even ICE CREAM. We thought we were hallucinating!! Sun was great at church. I love church here. The singing is just great! And I was humbled and just in awe at the fact that we were worshipping in an ECWA church with bros and sisters who were here directly/in-directly through the ministry of SIM more than a century ago! God is amazing! Thank you for praying for our chapel times this week. They were wonderful times of fellowship and getting fed. We were challenged as health care providers to see people wholistically, to share Christ's love along with medication. We sang on Wed and THurs and would have sung on Friday morning too but Dr. Kogo had to rescue a baby in Maternity during CHapel...only happens in hospitals... Well, I got my fill of 'action' this week. I was both shocked and excited to be asked to 'scrub in' (ie. not just stand and observe) with Drs. Ushie and Carshima for two surgeries. The most fun one was the femoral rod insertion which required alot of strength, complete with drill bits, hammer (for lack of the medical term). The second surgery was the delicate closing of a hole in the bladder that resulted from a birth. It was a VVF case (will explain at a later time). I got to suction, cut sutures (harder than you think), hold instruments for a long time (sure tones your muscles) and see lots of cool structures. I felt like 'Dr. Carter' off ER, you know, like you're excited to get your hands dirty, but then also you're feeling like a 2-yr old, not knowing what you can or cannot touch and feeling very inadequate. I also got my fill of baking this week!! I baked oatmeal raisin cookies, apple crisp, bannana muffins... Last night, we had our 'girly' sleep-over with the MKs and it was just so much fun, complete with a fashion show too!! Those kids crack me up! I was quite emotional this week. I waver between being distant and de-sensitized to being emotionally tied-in to the people and events that I'm witnessing here. I guess it's good to 'feel' instead of being 'hardened'. One event stands out which broke my heart. I saw a family discharge themselves out of the Paeds ICU after they found out that their baby, and themselves had AIDS. The father was irate, the Mother sobbing uncontrollably and the baby, very very sick. They refused to accept their HIV status and wanted to seek 'traditional medicine'. I witnessed the discharge and was and still am trying to process what I saw. AIDS runs rampant here. One stat I've seen is 1/3 Nigerians have HIV. Lord, Help! Prayer Items: 1) Please pray that the HIV/AIDS counselling centre here at Evangel will continue to be effective in its ministry to these special people. 2) Pray for our orientation to Urban Frontiers Mission (UFM) this week, the mission that works with Prostitutes in brothels here, as well as our time with Gidan Bege, the ministry to street kids and orphans. 3) Please pray for us as we teach/evaluate and support effective CPR procedures here at Evangel. We will be working with the nursing staff in the various wards starting this week. 4) Pray for peace throughout Nigeria. As you may have heard from CNN/BBC, there has been trouble between 2 tribes in Benue State (about 4-6 hrs away). Kano is still under curfew, as is Jos. Jos is very peaceful still, Praise God! 5) Pray for our Wed morning Chapel time at Hillcrest this week. Pray that Helena and I will be able to connect with the students and lead them into a time of worship before God via music. ALso that we'll be able to gain some teaching experience while we're there every wed. Thank you!! SHERMEEN