ywam

wow, i just realized i havnt updated this blog for a while. We are north of Auckland about 2 hours drive serving at a ywam school as mission builders. A mission builder is someone who comes to a ywam base for a set time to help with any needs that the school base might have at the time. We spend our days cleaning, cooking, cutting fire wood, building, etc.


we have been very busy helping out. My niece Brittney has been here with us all week after her graduation from australia ywam in Townsville. It has been fabulous having her here! She is such a fun girl and has been helping out so much around the school. We just love that she could come! We have a church conference happening here this weekend. There are 3 local churches with many guest speakers to listen to and food to help serve. so we are very busy helping all weekend. Next week we are hoping to head out to the coast and do some exploring in northland.

I had an appointment with another dr this week. My stitches were taken out and everything looked good. I was then sent to a physiotherapist and was fitted with a removable brace. I need to take the brace off 4 times a day and start bending my wrist front to back and side to side very gently. I have days when i am so scared that my arm will never move like its supposed to again. it feels odd to not be able to twist my wrist or bend it. I know it has not been very long, but still not the most comfortable feeling.

Recovering

The surgery if done! I ended up spending 2 nights in the Masterton hospital. The surgery went better than I expected. Before the surgery, the surgeon explained that because of the complexity of the break. They didn't know what they may have to do to repair the bones until they were in. The options were that they may have to open both sides of my wrist to get at all the peices, they knew they would have to put in multiple screws and possibly a couple of plates, there was also the possibility of plates along my arm with bolts coming out through my skin.
Thankfully, they only needed to put in 1 plate plus screws and nothing coming through the skin! Yeah!
The masterton hospital staff is amazing. I couldn't have had better care. It is a new building in a nice size town and I would highly recommend it as a top notch hospital.
I am now at a farm with a family that we love. They have supported us through this whole ordeal and taken us in like family. What started out as a place for Dean and Colton to do some hunting, has turned into so much more. It is such a great feeling to have people like Adrian and Wendy to help us as we tread through this experience. We have no idea how we could ever show them how much we appreciate all they have done for us.
Tomorrow we leave for northland. It will be the start of another experience. The next part of our trip will be at a YWAM school called oakridge. We will be there helping with some work projects around the school.

Thanks for all the prayers!

arm update

I just realized that I left everyone who doesn't have facebook or our email hanging with my last post.  It has been a busy crazy week. the day i broke my arm, we went into Masterton to get it set. The Dr's there told us the bad news/ the break was not only a very bad one, but a very complicated one. my wrist is broken in 4 places the whole end of the bone was shoved up into my wrist where it completely broke off and also broke again  in half. plus a little chip broke off the other bone. which they are not concerned about.
so the scheduled the surgery for march 11th. but wanted to see me back in the hospital the next day to check on everything. so we drove back to the cabin where we had left the kids and then colton and i drove back the next morning while dean and Miranda stayed back to get some chores done.
by the time we got back to the cabin there was a message from the hospital that they wanted me to come the next morning so they could do the surgery early. we thought, great, lets do it. so we headed back into masterton, stayed in a local campground that had nice little cabins so dean and i could go in first thing and dean could travel back and forth with the kids as needed.
in the morning, we got checked into the hospital, they got me gowned up and i was in the or within the hour. we had met with the Dr right before i went in and he explained to us the complexity of the break again and also told us at that time that i may not get back full range of motion in my wrist. he said it was possible that i may only get about 50% motion. so that felt very scary to me. it was not at all what i had been thinking. but now we knew that it would be a possibility.

so off i went, said bye for now to dean and felt OK up until they were putting the intravenous in. thetas when it really hit me that this was real. i had a moment of fear. but had such a great nurse there to talk to and hold my hand. so nice.

a few minutes later i was asleep and then i woke up 2 hours later i think. the first thing i felt for was if i had screws poking out of my arm. this was my biggest fear. because they had also told us that  they may have to put plates and screws in my arm that would poke through my skin. if that's the case we couldn't leave NZ for about a month or so till they could be removed. not the plan.

so i was happy to not feel the pins. but soon after the nurse came and told me that they had not done the surgery. they had taken the cast off and noticed the xray machine was not working and they could not proceed as planned. they were very sorry about this huge mistake, the chief of surgery came and slaked to us and apologized.

so we came back to our cabin to wait for our original surgery date of march 11th.

We did a bunch of tasks around the cabin today. dean is still waiting to shoot a deer.

my arm and fingers are black and purple theses days. there isn't a lot of pain that a Tylenol and Advil wont fix. I've been taking a sleeping pill every night so I've been sleeping well. i had to stop the T3's. the codeine was doing a number on my guts.

getting a bit, OK a lot tired already of not being able to do anything with my arm. i cant get dressed, shower, cut my food ugh. it sucks. so does typing and writing with my left hand. though, I'm surprised how well i can do it.

the weather has been sunny and 22ish most days. though its really windy. which i hate. I'm starting to feel a little house bound and ready to head up north. I'm really hoping that we can leave this area after the surgery. i guess we wont know till afterwards when they know more. the dr who was going to do the surgery is out of town on Monday, so the next available guy will be doing the surgery. hopefully hes even better than the original guy. i mostly try not to worry to much about it. there really isn't much we can do anyways.

the best part of being here is that we can here the ocean and see the huge waves all day long. it is my favorite! unfortunately we are surrounded by wailing cows to. but i can usually block them out. even though i blame them for my broken arm. dang mean looking scary cows lol 

a little accident

 

yesterday morning i went for a run down the path. the path goes through a bunch of cattle/sheep pastures. when i left there were a bunch of cattle standing right by the gate. so i thought i would just hop over the fence because i dont really like cows. that went fine and i went for a nice run. When i got back the cows were still there so i thought i would go over the fence again. As i was lifting my second leg over the fence, i touched an electric wire. i didnt know they were electric. it zapped me really good on the leg and so i jumped backwards and landed on my wrist. ya...not so good. i immediatly felt another electric current shoot through my wrist. I knew it was broken. 

At the hospital i had many xrays, a cat scan and a meeting with an orthopedic surgen. it looks like it is a really complicated break and they know already that it is not in the correct position, but have to wait for the swelling to go down vbefore they can opperate.
 my wrist is broken in 4 places. The one bone is broken in 3 places and was shoved up into my wrist and there is a chip off the other bone.  I will need surgery in 9 days once the swelling goes down and they will put some metal in to hold it together.
thankfully we are in nz for another 5 1/2 weeks which should give me time to heal before we leave for Balli

not the greatest news and i still cant really believe it has happened, but thankfully we are in nz and the care here is excellent.

south island north end

We had a great time on the south island. We drove so many amazing highways. Most through the mountains. Every turn just as beautiful as the next. We spent our last 3 nights in a small city call Blenheim. We couch surfed with a woman with 2 daughters still living at home. One was 15 and reminded us all of our neice Zoe. It was so amazing how she not only looked like Zoe but her actions were similar as well. It was a nice reminder of home.
We went on a nice senic drive through the mountains (of course) and we also went on an afternoon wine tour with our CS host driving us from winery to winery. It was very fun.
To see the pictures, you will have to take a look on facebook. I've tried to upload pictures again today to this site, but it jst won't work.
Here is a link
https://www.facebook.com/messages/#!/OurFamilyTravels

The quest

We wanted it. We wanted it bad. We knew it might be tough. We knew it might be impossible. But if we found what we were looking for, we would be in heaven. 

We started our quest driving out into the hills. I drove, while Dean searched. Every once in a while, I'd hear him say in an excited voice. Slow down! I think I see some! I would stop and we'd get out and search the roadside. Only 1 or 2 were to be found. So disappointing. We knew that we had to find them. We weren't going back till we had enough. Eventually, we came upon a better spot. Our bowl wasn't empty anymore. But this was not good enough. The search continued. Again and again we'd stop and take a look. Our bowl started to fill up. But still the search continued. One more stop, then two and three. The hours went by. But if we found the mother load. If only we found the spot we were looking for. We would leave happy. Then it happened! We found the perfect spot. Perfect, except for the most difficult of situations. What we were looking for was smack dab in the middle. In the middle of the most painful hard to reach spots. But it would be worth it! 

So in we went. Every step we took more painful than the next. Why hasn't we worn jeans and runners. What were we thinking leaving on this quest so ill prepared? This was not gonna be pretty in the end. But still it was worth it. All the pain and agony was going to pay off. If only there was enough. But it looked good. If only we could push through the pain and just concentrate on the goal. 

Which is what we did. Every inch forward was easier as our bowl became fuller. All that could be heard was the moaning and groaning and cheering. 

Finally it was done! We could tare our bodies out and return to the car. Battered and bloodied but satisfied with the results. We didn't look to good.  Our legs were dripping  blood. Our arms were full of scratches and my hair was full of broken pieces of bush.  

But we did it. Two bowls of juicy perfect wild.........

Guess what we picked!

Hiking

We went on a 4 hour hike up into the mountains with our new Irish friends. We had a picnic along a creek and hiked back down having to cross over the creek multiple times. It was a great day! To see all the pictures go to our Facebook page. It should work even if you don't have Facebook.
www.facebook/ourfamilytravels.com