Lily Anna Ray!

Wow! What a crazy couple of weeks for the Ray family! Lorah gave birth to Lily Anna Ray, a beautiful baby girl last Friday the 19th of February 2010. She came as quite a suprise, Lily was born at 27 weeks and 6 days. She is doing well and making constant progress towards a healthy future at home with Mom and Dad. Lorah was discharged from the hospital Tuesday, the 23rd of February. She is recovering well from an emergency cesarean section.

All of the excitement started with a routine check-up on Monday, the 15th. Lorah was admitted to the hospital with a shortened cervix and then started having premature contractions while being monitored.  She was given steroids to speed up Lily's lung development as well as medications that were intended to slow and, hopefully, stop the contractions.  Lorah was stable by Thursday and she was discharged from the hospital. Thursday night she had more contractions, and at four in the morning Lorah's mom rushed her to the hospital with extreme pain.  She experienced a complete abruption of the placenta (this is a very uncommon thing that happens to one in 200 women). After some monitoring, they rushed her in the OR for an emergency cesarean section at 6:00 AM and Lily was born at 6:11 AM.

Lorah was stitched up and checked into a nice room on the maternity ward while Lily was whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Lorah had a rough couple of days, but has recovered well after a blood transfusion and several days of rest. Lily is also progressing well in the NICU. She is not on any extra oxygen and is only receiving the assistance of 4.1 cmH20 (of air pressure) via a Constant Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) unit which she may be coming off of fairly soon. Lily has begun feeding on Lorah's breast milk. She started at 2 cm^3 every four hours and has increased to 4 cm^3 every four hours as of noon today.

Lily has had a brain ultrasound to check for blood in her brain ventricles (yes, your brain has ventricles, too) as it is common for premature babies for her gestational age to have this issue, which may result in developmental issues. To our pleasure, her scan for blood in these areas came back negative. She also has had an x-ray of her lungs to ascertain their maturity. This scan came back showing good signs of healthy lungs for her gestational age. All in all, she is doing impressively well for such an early premature baby.

Lily started life outside the womb at 2lbs, 2oz and is almost back to that weight now. This is a very good condition for a premature baby of 28 weeks (gestation age). Her color is nice and she is active, stretching her legs and moving her arms quite a lot. When we visit, we often get the pleasure of seeing her crack her little eyes open and look at us for a few seconds at a time. We are so excited for her to continue to progress towards a healthy condition and to be ready to come home with us. It is likely that this will take at least another six to eight weeks before she is ready.

All of that being said, we have been warned a number of times that premature babies often have a "honeymoon" phase during which they do well and, when this stage ends, have some new complications. We are prepared for whatever lays ahead for our family and appreciate your prayers and encouragement during our journey down this trying road.

Flash Backs, Current Events, and a Growing Bump

A while ago I wanted to write a little more about a few people that I managed and worked with during my 10 months in Benin. During a field service the ship hires a special group of people called Day Volunteers. They are people who live locally, but come on board to work with us each day. In my department, I was blessed with five great Day Volunteers....

Bienvenu: our Laundry Man from Northern Benin, has a desire to help the church in West Africa, will most likely be a Pastor someday, has a gift with learning foreign languages (Korean for example) and is currently doing DTS in Ghana. This guy has a heart of gold.

Salome: Laundress and housekeeper originally from Nigeria, Pastor's wife and mother of four. This woman loves to sing, pray and care for anyone she comes in contact with. She's now attending Bible school and keeping busy with her church and family.

Luvia: Housekeeper from Togo/Benin, young and lovely, has a radiant smile and is petite but powerful! She's a prayer warrior, a singer, and loves to laugh. She is applying to work with the ship again in Togo beginning in February.

Terez: Housekeeper from Benin, prays and sings in a beautiful tribal language, wife and mother of two sweet girls, and working on her business/ownership of a women's boutique/shop.

Dennis: Housekeeper from Ghana, a man of integrity and good work ethic, an athlete, has a great smile and laugh, and is coming back to the ship in March as a crew member! He will fit well.

I was blessed to be able to spend 10 months learning from them and investing my time in them. Each of them brought special dynamics to our group and each of them put in an amazing amount of work. We laughed, cried, danced, worked, and prayed together until it was time for the ship to depart.

L to R: Bienvenu, Salome, me, Luvia, Terez, Dennis

Other news:

Currently I am staffing a training school for people who are preparing to serve with Mercy Ships, long term. I get to drive them around in a 15 passenger van most of the time :) I take them to town, to church, local dining favorites, and bowling this Monday night! I am keeping busy with them... which is a good thing because Justin is on the ship. Their first week of school was Basic Safety Training (fire fighting, first aide, CPR, and sea safety). This week, just ending, included topics of prayer, hearing from God, and spiritual warfare (a 24/7 acknowledgment of spiritual issues rather than it being an 'event'). It was great, and they are a great group of people!

Justin and I will reunite at the end of February. Two weeks down, four to go! He has been keeping busy with engineering and studying for an upcoming 'Fundamentals in Engineering' test. This is one of those things that he doesn't have to do, but it will better his career and opportunities in Engineering... I'm proud of him. Wish I could help him study, but one look at some of the questions and/or math problems and I get an automatic headache, it's so far beyond my comprehension.

In the meantime, my baby bump is growing and I've entered into week 24. More than half way!

Whirlwind!!!

Merry Christmas, friends and family!  Lorah and I have had a very busy holiday season. We left Benin a few weeks ago. Since then we have been to or through Tenerife, Gran Canaria Madrid, Frankfurt and Pennsylvania. We're on the way to Connecticut this weekend and we fly to Texas the following Monday.

I hope we get to see you, but if we don't, please know that we wish we had and hope to sooner rather than later. Please feel free to email me to try to get together, we're busy but the reason we are in the states is to visit with those who have made our ministry possible. Thank you for all of your help!

Blessings,

Justin

Baby face

We are wrapping up our time in Benin. After 10 months of hard work and getting to know this port city, it's time to move on. A few weeks ago I had to say good bye to 5 local people who worked with me for the last 10 months. ( I will honor them soon in another post!) It was bitter sweet... we are sad to part ways, but excited for what is next in each of our lives. For Justin and I, it has to do with a certain someone due to arrive in May.

Going on 12 weeks

This doesn't mean 12 weeks until we leave Benin, it doesn't mean 12 weeks til Christmas... this means that I am nearly 12 weeks pregnant! Justin and I now have a 'plum' size baby in my 'tummy.' http://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/blogs/1sttrimester/pages/week-12-plum.aspx?r=0

This is not a surprise, Justin and I often talked about starting/having a family while we're in Mercy Ships. In fact, many of our close friends on board have young children.... the kids are a highlight of ship life. We are excited to start this journey and we thank God for this new blessing in our lives!

Here's the new 'plan of action.'

Early December: Sail from Benin to Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.

Dec 21- Justin and I will fly to Pennsylvania and have Christmas with the Styer clan

Early Jan- long weekend in Connecticut to see friends and supporters

Jan 4th- fly to TX to be with the Ray Family.

Jan 8th (ish)- I will go to the Mercy Ships base in TX to staff a school called Gateway, for a month.

Jan 12th- Justin will fly back to the Africa Mercy in Tenerife and do technical work

Early Feb.- Justin sails from Tenerife to Togo

Mid Feb.- Lorah flies from TX to Pennsylvania

Late Feb- Justin flies to Maryland for a Marine Refrigeration course (and I join him!! :)

End of March- Justin and Lorah return to Pennsylvania and stay with Mom and Dad Styer

May 16th- Estimated Due Date!

If all is well, we plan to return to the Africa Mercy in South Africa, in Aug. 2010, for a generator replacement project that Justin will be working on. I will be working on being a 'primary caregiver' :)

We look forward to this change and we hope and pray that you will 'stay on board' with us through this transition. We hope to see many of you while we are in the states. We appreciate your continual prayer and financial support. We could not be part of this ministry without you, nor could we become a family within Mercy Ships without your support.

Below, you'll find a little bump :)

Thoughts on Irena Sendler

My sister likes to email me forwards. Normally, I disdain that sort of thing, but my sister has great taste in her forwards, most of the time. She sent me one today about a woman by the name of Irena Sendler. Irena worked in the Social Welfare Department as a health inspector in German occupied Poland during World War Two. During this time, she smuggled 2,500 Jewish babies out of Warsaw Ghettos as well as producing thousands of forged documents to help Jewish families. The Ghestapo arrested her, beat her, and sentanced her to death. On the way to her execution, some of her co-conspiritors against the Nazis bribed the guards to release her. They complied by leaving her with broken arms and legs, unconcious, in the woods. For the rest of the war, she lived in hiding.

While she was working to smuggle babies out of the ghettos, she wrote down the names of the childern that she took with the hope of being able to reunite them with family members after the war. The majority of the family members had been murdered or were missing.

When I read about the selfless work of this beautiful woman, I realized a clearer picture of who Jesus is. See, I've been having a bit of a hard time lately with the idea of Jesus intending us to fight injustice without violence. I can't conceive how to resolve some injustices that I read about in the news without violence, and this story speaks strongly to me about how it can be done, and one of the things I hear when I listen to this story is, "This is not cheap. This is not the easy way, but this is the right way."

I want to be like Irena. I want to see great value in other people, but sometimes I just see what is easy to see. To look into the depth of another human and to see past the behavior, and into the reflection of their creator, and to redeem that reflection is not cheap, is not easy, but it is right. Sometimes I am too conservative with my time and energy and I find myself holding back some of what I have to offer to those in need because I think that my time and energy can be used better on more fertile ground.

Tonight I have seen that my effectiveness has been robbed by my concern for efficiency. I must pour into those around me regardless of my estimation of their capacity of change or greatness, but with highest regard for the image of their maker imprinted on their souls.

Hard at Work

Wow. Today I just renewed our domain registration for the blog. That means that we've had this blog up for a full year! I'm quite embarrased about the ratio of entries by myself to entries by Lorah, so I'm trying to even it out a little more over the next year. I thought that I would post a couple of pictures of a major installation that I'm in the middle of right now.

When I first arrived onboard, one of the two air conditioning compressors for the top half of the ship had just experienced a major oil pump failure resulting in irreparable damage to the unit's crankshaft. Fortunately, all of the crankshaft damage was isolated to one side of the compressor and we were able to remove the running gear for that half of the machine, plug the oil passages and get the machine running at half capacity (with a little extra vibration) for a few months while we were waiting for a reconditioned replacement.

Last month, we installed and test ran the compressor. Now we are working on getting the rest of the system operational so that we can cool the ship off again. Here are a few pictures from the installation.

The old compressor

No compressor at all

 Me checking the condition of the bearings on the reconditioned compressor

The new compressor, installed!

A lot of the work that is being done onboard is not work that looks like 'missions work.' I enjoy getting to share that with people in the developed world. Often times we can overlook the ways in which we can serve God, but the fact of the matter is that no matter what we do professionally, we are the salt and light of the earth and reflecting our Father's creative, kind, loving, and generous nature points to Him in an undeniable fashion that words seldom achieve. Missions is something that you are, not something that you do, it is not dependent on location or priveledge. It's our call to be like our maker.