A Miracle!

Verse of the day today read: "Keep putting into practice all you have learned and received from me — everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you." - Philippians 4:9

I witnessed a miracle today! And not in the "this was so cool" way, but like a legitimate miracle!!

A little bit of background, in the dental room, we had lidocaine for numbing patients for extraction and there are different length needles used for different mouths and patients. We saw a lot of pediatric patients who needed the short needles.

Unfortunately, we didn't have nearly as many short needles as long needles. Yesterday we closed clinic with a single short needle left. And we checked everywhere. We dumped boxes, rummaged through bags, and had multiple people check the same boxes and bags, hoping we had just missed them.

We were even considering trying to procure some in country, and one of the dentists and I were bouncing ideas back and forth about how we could modify the longer needles to be the length we needed them to be. But we could not come up with anything. So we started clinic today just expecting to have all the wrong needles every time, which was very scary for our pediatric dentist.

I had been praying that some would turn up, or maybe even that one of our boxes of long needles would be miraculously changed into a box of short needles, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't reopen the long needle box half expecting to find they were somehow the right length, but that was not what I found when we got in that morning.

We eventually got a patient that we really couldn't use a long needle on, and this poor guy was having a bad day. He was about three years old and needed all four of this top front teeth pulled, but the visible part of all of the teeth had already rotted away. Anyway, our dentist grabbed her precious short needle and got to work. We burrito-wrapped the kid which helped to keep him from jerking and fighting and (hopefully) provided a little bit of a feeling of security.

Our dentist rocked the extractions!! She had all the teeth out in less than two minutes! Which was super fast considering how badly decayed his teeth were. The little boy even said (with some prodding from dad) thank you :)

We saw one or two more patients who were adults and thus could handle the long needles, and then just as a little girl sits in our chair, in walks a team member with a bag of short needles! She said that they were looking in the suitcases again for something else, and found a bag full of short needles!

My jaw dropped! I seriously still cannot believe that that actually happened!!! Praise God! He provides for all of our needs! But definitely in His timing. He is never late, even when that feels like it might be the case from our limited human viewpoint. I have to keep reminding myself of this fact. He provides in His time. We can trust that He will do what He says He will do.

I still have chills!

Some other fun stuff happened today, but that is definitely the highlight!!

There was a little girl who was a bit scared of what was going on and her sister was in the chair. I gave her a sticker and kind of got side-eyed, which happens a lot, but I saw her a few minutes later looking at her hand with the sticker and then she kissed her hand and hugged it :)

We also saw an orphaned girl who was taken in by her grandmother. She was really fearful about the teeth pulling part, but her younger cousin (like much younger. I think the girl was probably 10 or 11 and her cousin couldn't have been older than 6) grabbed her hand and comforted her through the whole procedure. Even as the girl cried and screamed and squeezed that little hand so hard it turned white, the cousin never let go or got scared or looked away.

It's incredible to see how resilient these kids are, and how much they are there for each other...

We also spent another very late (or early) morning hanging out with our translators and had such a wonderful time laughing and crying with them! We ended our time together with a time of prayer which lasted into the wee hours of the morning! Again, these women are simply incredible!! I am honored and blessed that I got to pray with and for them. And so lucky that they prayed over me.

It's interesting, there is something that sends chills down your spine when you are getting prayed over in multiple languages. And I'm convinced that Arabic sounds best when it is whispered over someone in prayer ;) I feel as I often do on mission trips: like I am being blessed and cared for far more than I am blessing and caring for others. My cup runs over. And only because my cup is overflowing can I effectively continue to pour into others. I hope (and am pretty sure) that this team looked like one of those MC Escher paintings where somehow every cup is overflowing and pouring into another cup in a perfect circle.

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Today was our last clinic day, which is really sad. These trips always feel way too short, and I'm never ready to say goodbye to my new friends or be done with the incredible work I've gotten to be a part of over the past week. I think I will be processing all that God showed me and accomplished in the short time I was here, but if I had to sum up this trip in one sentence right now, I would say:

Jesus knew how impactful addressing physical needs can be in a person's life, and for a week, we were able to address the physical hurts of these refugees and open the door to addressing their spiritual hurts by pointing them to the One who can save and heal.