October, 2011 Archive

I knew I was called to go to Haiti.  From the moment WATERisLIFE talked to me about the trip, I felt that internal calling to be a part of a mission to serve God by serving others.  Most of our team for week 2 came from the Church I attend, Summit.  The mission was to provide water for the Grace Missions Barkman Center, in Limbe, so they could construct an Elderly Care Home more efficiently.

We laid out our tools and equipment, and over the next week we worked hard to provide water using manual well digging equipment.  We hit challenges, and overcame obstacles as we served.

Our team hit an aquafer right next to where the workers were staging concrete to build the elderly care center…a perfect place!  We built a hand pump, installed it, and instantly:  lives changed.

Instead of having to travel further to gather a little bit of water, the workers could instead pump out water right next to where they were mixing concrete for the foundation to this building.  Mark Bender, WiL Director of Water Programs, stayed over for week 3, and he said that thousands of gallons of water flowed from that aquifer.

For a short video look at what Waterislife Haiti Week 2 accomplished, please take a look at the video below (via Summit Community Church’s Youtube).  Next year, I can’t wait to see that building, and the lives that are being changed there.

This just in from Mocha Club group that went to Kenya and distributed filters.

It is hard for me to believe that coming up on three years ago, I was bitten by a little old spider in Africa and it would cause my world to go upside down.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of the GREAT folks at The Oklahoma Blood Institute recently and recount my story to them.  Here is the short version.  Bit by a spider on my way home from Kenya.  Being the macho man that I am I totally ignored it.  (I hate to admit it but I didn’t realize I had been bitten.  The bite is in the small of my back.  Not a place I go looking at in the mirror.  For those of you, like me, 50 and above will totally understand that. HA) Anyway, after getting back to the US, my back was sore.  I figured just an old dude and a bad back…little did I know IT had begun to grow.  Started out small, notice a small bump in the small of my back, more pain and discomfort as it began to take on a life of its own.  By the time I wised up to seek medical help, it was golf ball sized.  By the time I made my first ER visit it was the size of a tennis ball.  Next ER visit IT had grown more and that is when my lovely wife and my Doc (Dr. Jerry Childs-MY HERO!) decided that I should not return home.  Wise decision.  I don’t remember much after that until about week later.  Dr. Jerry and team have to breath life back into me, rush me up for emergency surgery and remove a massive hunk out of my back.  Several units of blood from the folks at OBI literally saved my life!

I spent a week in the hospital.  (I remember only the last 15 minutes, so should I have to pay for the rest of the stay?  Hospital didn’t buy my excuse either, they made me cough up the money.)  I spent the next 6 weeks on IV antibiotics to combat MRSA.  A NASTY thing you pick up in  hospitals these days.  After about three months of Wound Care from some of the best folks at Baptist Hospital in OKC I was declared OK!  the giant crater in my back was filling in nicely from the wound vac that they put in me.  SPOILER ALERT-WARNING if you are easily grossed out skip to next paragraph.  (Wound Vac a sponge in the hole, a tube from the sponge to the  vacuum that sucks the tissue so you grow back from the inside out. Sounds gross and believe me it is pretty gross looking at a giant hole in your back.   This is then all shrink wrapped and sealed up so that you have continues negative pressure pulling the tissue inside you to the surface.)

I won’t be wearing any speedo’s again for sure…not just the hole in my back, I would look like an egg with a rubber band around the middle.  It looks like someone took a 9 iron or sand wedge and took a nice little divot out of the small of my back.

All that said, I am so thankful to each of you who prayed for me, sent cards, and even dared to scrub up, gown up and come by the hospital (SIDE NOTE: I have no memory of ANYONE coming to see me-my girls tell me I was really crazy…as in crazier than most days. If I said anything to embarrass you I apologize.  If I mooned you with my great hospital gown I am really so sorry, I know you will be scared for life.)

All that said, I can’t give blood because of the places I travel.  You can!  See my friends at OBI, tell them Ken with the spider bite sent ya! Mine is a life saved because someone paid it forward by giving blood.  Please consider being a donor.

Thanks again for all the support and encouragement.

Here is a pic of me and some the children at an orphanage in Haiti we just drilled a well for.  I am wearing my “I am ALIVE” because of a blood donor t-shirt!