The Gimbie Chronicles

So today marks 4 weeks until I take off on my mission trip and one month until I leave the country.  I am stopping in New York to visit a friend. I leave the country on August 14. I am so excited and can’t wait. Since my last blog I have definitely made progress. I got all my vaccinations including Yellow Fever (that one is required by Ethiopian law), got both my passport and visa, have bought several pairs of scrubs, got my plane tickets, got a water purifier, got my insurance, started fund raising, and much much more. I have thanked many of you but I would like to take this opportunity to thank all who have not only given me monetary donations but have also given me words of encouragement and kept me in your prayers.  Thank You!
The end (more like the beginning) is in sight. I cannot believe how smooth things have gone so far. The staff at both WWU and Gimbie Adventist Hospital have been very helpful and my different applications have gone through without any problems in a timely manner. God has blessed my plans and has blessed me with many kind people that are willing to help me.
I got a money belt, which I didn’t know even existed until last week. I am going to be carrying several thousand dollars in cash initially.
I am starting to form a plan of how I will document my trip. I am going to have a daily planner to remind myself of where I was each day and very briefly what I did. I will also keep a journal of what I did each day in more detail. I want to do interviews while I am over there too. I think it would be extremely interesting.
A few months ago I thought of a way to describe how I felt as time went on. It felt like there was a drum playing. At first it played very slowly. As time went on it went faster and faster, louder and louder. I suppose it will continue to do this until I get to the city that I am staying in.
After I got my visa I really felt like things were coming together and now that it is 4 weeks away it feels very close.
Both the hospital and man starting up the butterfly project want me to bring some supplies with me. I am happy to do this. Just from seeing pictures and talking to people that work there and have been there I know I want to help out the hospital in anyway I can. Bringing supplies will help them right off the bat.
Cassie, another student missionary going over there, and I have talked several times about are expectations. We came to the conclusion that it is better not to have any because what it will undoubtedly be a lot different then what we imagine. Of course I can’t help but to wonder what it will be like sometimes and I have had 2 dreams specifically about Gimbie. Both dreams were pretty unrealistic but if nothing else they reflected that I think about my mission a lot.
It feels like I have a lot to do. I think I do in fact. I need to get back to it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my preparation. I will write my next blog the day before leave on August 10!

After that things seemed to flow pretty well.  He told me about some guys that were in there first few years of college (like me) that went over last year and did a documentary, medical work, and also some business work.  They just happened to live in Spokane and they were almost back from their trip.  I only had to wait about a week before I could get in touch with one of them.  I talked to Justin Davis.  We had a great conversation about his experience and what it was like and what exactly he and the other two did.  At the end of our conversation he gave me the contact information for Gimbie Adventist Hospital.  I got in contact with the volunteer coordinator over there and she began asking me questions and also asking for my resume.  I got her my resume and answered her questions.  I remember on question in specific.  She asked me how I would feel about leading a group.  I thought about he question very carefully and decided to just tell the truth.  I told her that I would be “terrified”.  I also said that I am always up for new challenges.  After I sent that email I waited.  The emails that went back and forth were within a day or two.  I waited for about a week and a half thinking that my answer to the leadership question had done me in.  I emailed her and within a few days on April 7 she sent this back, “We would be happy to have you here at Gimbie. Let’s start preparing for you to come!…”  I was shocked and extremely excited.  I still am.  From there my goals shifted from looking for a position to preparing for a position.  Everything that I did was one more step closer to Gimbie and I liked that prospect.  Get vaccinations, one more step.   Get a passport, one more step.  The more I got done the longer the list of things seemed to get.  I found out that there are at least 3 other student missionaries from the United States going.  One from Walla Walla, Nick and two from Southern Adventist University, Cassie and Bobby.  Nick, Cassie and I are going over to do mostly medical work.  Bobby is going to do other projects.

From talking with the hospital, the other Student Missionaries and looking things up on the internet I found many details out.  The terrain is pretty mountainous.  The hospital is at about 6500 feet above sea level.  Because of this Malaria is not much of a problem.  The rough terrain also made Ethiopia the only county in Africa not to be colonized.  Because of this the still predominately speak native languages with several dialects.  Most of the people living in areas around Gimbie live off of less than a dollar a day.  The main hospital has 71 beds. There are six rural clinics surrounding Gimbie Adventist Hospital.  The farthest is more than 100 miles away from the hospital.  The internet is generally very slow and a lot of the time unreliable.  There is so much more to know too.

Gimbie Adventist Hospital keeps up a blog: http://gimbieadventisthospital.blog.co.uk/

The three guys that went over made a documentary.  It is on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQl1pS0-jBE

Welcome to my blog.  Thank you for deciding to take a look.    About 9 months ago I was at church and Kristina Rhuman went up front to talk about her upcoming missionary trip to India.  She went to do teaching over there.  Growing up in the public school system, not many people do missionary work my age but nevertheless I always knew that someday I wanted to do some type of missionary work.  After hearing Kristina’s story I went and talked to her after church.  I found out more about her and how she got involved.  After that something just clicked.  I really can’t explain what it was because I really don’t know.  On the way home I told my parents casually that it would be interesting to check out mission opportunities.  Over the next few months I thought about it more and more and then on January 1st I contacted the Walla Walla Student Missions office.  From there it got pretty intense for me.  I have never been over seas or done a mission trip before so the amount of preparation definitely intimidated me.  Through each step though I knew that I was getting closer and closer to doing a mission trip what ever it would be.  I filled out paper after paper and frankly got tired of signing and dating documents.  I heard that the medical missions were harder to find and people often had to go out on their own to find them.  Even though I really wanted to do a medical mission I was open to doing something like teaching.  As I looked around I found positions that interested me.  One of them I remembered was teaching high school math.   I found plenty of teaching but not really any medical.  One Saturday I was talking to Dr. Greg Loewen.  I was telling him about what I was doing and the positions that I was finding but that I really wanted to get a medical position and he told me that he knew a doctor that had medical missionary connections all over the world.  I told that I would definitely be interested in getting in contact with him.  The doctor was overseas at the time.  On March 2nd Dr. Greg got back to me.  He said, “I heard back from my friend who is the doctor who does missionary work; he just got back from Ethiopia. Are you still interested? He thinks that he can help you…”  This was the turning point…