Let the Work Begin

So there's been a lot of things happening and I haven't had time to post anything on here in a while. So here I go, a recap of the last few days. On Thursday morning I was able to get my HIPPA paperwork filled out which meant I could begin looking at patient data but I couldn't work on anything until I had my computer access code which didn't come until late Friday. I spent the rest of the day Thursday at the sand art therapy when my dear friend Betty asked me over to her house some weekday for dinner and to hang out. I couldn't believe my ears! And what an opportunity to build a connection to this community. My day was made! So on Friday I spent the whole entire day (830a-5pm) shadowing around Dr. Meade at the clinic, got to witness 2 acupunctures in the Hoagon (the ceremonial building almost every family has here). Apparently when you walk into a Hoagon you're supposed to walk in clock-wise to keep the energy flowing. As the hours drew by I witnessed how incredibly difficult of a job this is. When patients come into the clinic in excruciating pain and you're supposed to help them not be in pain but they don't want to do PT or acupuncture, all they want is the meds. The lines get blurry right there, because you want to treat the cause of the pain but when the patient doesn't want to treat the cause then that's where medicine becomes really sticky. I learned a lot and got to witness a doctor's care from the fly on the wall position instead of the patient's position - that job is so so hard. On Saturday Pamela and the kids and I drove 2.5 hours north to Lake Powell, to swim at this beautiful beach just on the inside border of Utah - yey, I can cross that off my list! We had so much fun and I got to take the kids deeper into the water where they got to practice their swimming while I assisted. It was so much fun. And we built a sand castle - I loved that sand there, you could build almost anything with it when it was dry! And even though I piled on the sunscreen - almost every half hour, I still got fried (although I don't hurt). We had a blast and Pamela and I had some good conversations on the way back. Sunday we went to this Baptist church in town. I was so excited to fellowship with other believers but it was rather disappointing. They had a holier than thou mindset and kept bashing other churches because they wouldn't preach about heaven and hell - which I know needs to be mentioned in church just to keep us in perspective. But they missed seeing the Bible from the perspective of grace and just exactly what Jesus did on the cross. God's wrath has been appeased, and He sees us through the blood of His Son, which means He sees us as pure, righteous and He asks us to let that purity and righteousness come forth into our lives - letting our being become our doing instead of our doing becoming our being. When we got back I spent the rest of the afternoon napping. Then today I spent the whole day doing paperwork. In order to begin my project I have to go through this 2 foot pile of papers that I have to place the answers into a survey monkey survey and then I can proceed. I didn't nearly get as far as I wanted but I did get a couple hundred done today. Yey! This morning I discovered what a Jerusalem cricket is as I came face to face with one. Yuck! But all in all it was a good day! Tomorrow I get to help out with a wellness day at the clinic - so I should really get to bed. Keep praying for me. It has been hard to share Christ with people in this community (but oh they are such precious people) just because there are so many different religions here. And it seems that everyone has argued with everyone about which religion is the best for too long and so now if you bring up Christ with an LDS or a Navajo spiritualism person they will smile, nod their head and go on their merry way. I need to surrender my desire to lead people to Christ to God because it's the Holy Spirit's work not mine that will do it.I just need to keep on being the evidence of Christ's presence in this community and pray that someone will want to know what makes me so different. Goodnight beloved!!!