Carlyn

We have been busy busy the past 3 weeks.  We had 15 day a row of company visiting us here in Arkansas.  Then the kids and I headed to Tennessee to do some more visiting while James headed to Pennsylvania for his CURE orientation. And, now that we are all back home,  we have less than 3 weeks to get rid of everything we are not taking with us and get all packed up.  As I was going through a stack of CDs today trying to see if they needed to be packed or tossed,  I found a Word document titled "Summer 2004".  I'm not sure what I wrote this for, but it seemed like a really good throw back blog post to me! "I am a newly graduated nurse and my husband is a first year medical school student. We have both been interested in medical missions since our early teens.   This summer we had the amazing oppertunity of going to the middle east for a month.   We flew out just three days after receiving our degrees from Union University, mine a BS i...

Here are a few questions that friends have been asking :) Our prayer requests are in bold.  Q: What will transportation be like? A: We will be living in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.  Addis Ababa is heavily populated and growing rapidly.  No one really even knows how many people are currently living there because of how rapid the growth has been.  A guess would be around 5 million.   So, what does this mean for transportation?  Well, first off, CURE will provide us with a 12-passenger Toyota van.   It is a company vehicle, but it is ours to use for our family.  It is very expensive to purchase a vehicle in Ethiopia.  Even a 10-year-old economy car will be well over $10,000 due to the tax rate on vehicles.  So, we will not be purchasing another vehicle, at least not in the near future.  The traffic in Addis is pretty crazy, not US big city heavy traffic/traffic jam crazy, but more like pedestrian...

I’ve really enjoyed learning about Ethiopia over the past several months.   Here's some of what I have learned: Ethiopia is beautiful nation filled with a rich culture and heritage dating back to ancient times. Yet, it has one of the highest poverty levels in the world and is considered to be one of the most under-developed nations in the world. There is very limited access to health care and the World Health Organization ranks Ethiopia’s health care 180th out of 190 nations.  Location: It is located in East Africa on the Horn of Africa.  Population: Despite Ethiopia's alarmingly low life expectancy and high mother and child death rates, it is currently one of the fastest growing countries in the world. The current population is 98.7 million. It is the 2nd most populated nation on the African continent and the most populated landlocked country in the world.   Land:  Ethiopia is a ...

James went to the travel clinic last week and got a few vaccines: Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Meningitis, and Hepatitis A.    I went today and got: Typhoid, Meningitis, Hepatitis A, Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis, and Polio Knox got his first dose of the Meningitis vaccine on Monday at his 18-month check up.   Pearl got her Typhoid vaccine today.    But, if my count is correct we still have 33 more vaccines/boosters to go before our family is done with this whole vaccinating process!   18 of those are the 3 doses of the Rabies vaccine that we all need.   And, people complain about the vaccine we need in the US!   I have to confess that all of these vaccines make me a bit anxious!   But, I am casting my cares on Him!   I have been praying over and over that all of these vaccines will do their job and strength our immune systems against these diseases and that we will not have any negative side effects. ...