Lynskey Update June 2010

Dear Family and Friends,

We want to reassert how much we appreciate your incessant prayers, fervent love, and genuine support. The manner in which you enable us to live overseas surpasses what our imagination conjures up.
We greet you bearing an assortment of celebration, relief, and tension!

Celebration

These past months have been filled with prayer, intercession, and earnest deliberation concerning the well-being of our twin pregnancy. Up to the present time there is a litany of happenings, all of which lucidly celebrate both the faithful provision and immanent presence of God.
A brief contemplation of these occurrences etches indelibly in our souls the witness of God’s interceding people, the strength of the interdependent community of God, and the fortitude of the gospel:

• Early in the pregnancy Sukey had an overwhelming absence of sickness, nausea, and other complications that allowed her to continue life, language, and culture learning at a fairly normal pace.
• Early prenatal consultations were met by an eclectic consort of people (i.e., our fellow nurse/teammate, a Swedish doctor briefly visiting a local/rural hospital, a medical student friend from New York, an expatriate nurse who lived in Tanzania for several years, and a Tanzanian doctor based in Dar es Salaam).
• Sukey, having completely stopped taking malaria prophylaxis, has remained entirely free from malariaduring the high-risk raining season.
• In light of the dearth of nutritious foods, God provided meat, vegetables, and other important items important for the growth, health, and development of the babies.

Relief

In light of these gracious provisions, we were making arrangements to deliver the babies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Other delivery options (i.e., Kenya, South Africa, or United States), made us uncomfortable with the amount of time it would remove us from the village.  We were constricted with a cumbersome decision: if on the one hand we traveled internationally, language, relationships, team-dynamics, culture, community development, and chronological Bible storying would all be drastically affected; nevertheless, on the other hand, we were being constantly advised of the imminent risk of a twin pregnancy if we remained in the country.

We began to labor in prayer, seek counsel, and research the medical facility options in the capital. Due to issues of safety and travel, we needed to make a decision soon:

• It was the evening of Friday, June 4 which we (and others) desperately prayed that God would make it unavoidable clear and conspicuously obvious which option we were to pursue.
• Later that evening, 1 a.m. Saturday, June 5, Sukey woke up with a repeating contracting pain in her stomach every ten-fifteen minutes. This was a similar pain that she had experienced about three weeks earlier, but were convinced that it had subsided. Knowing that she was only 24 weeks made us increasingly anxious.
• One hour later, 2 a.m. Saturday, June 5, we rushed out of the village with our teammates on a long three-hour race to the city hospital. The ruggedness of the rode only made the pains increase.
• Upon arrival at the city hospital, 5 a.m. Saturday, June 5 Sukey was treated. Our investigations led us to believe the if we delivered in country the high-risk of pre-term delivery could not be matched with proper NICU necessities.
• Later that morning, 11 a.m. we arrived to a clinic started and run by European doctors; we wanted to get an honest, outsider opinion about our situation. She was convinced that we needed to pursue options outside of Tanzania. Moreover, if indeed we were needing to be out of the country, than traveling stateside (with a support group of family, friends, and church) would surpass staying in a foreign country (i.e., Kenya) with no local support.

Later that evening, the appropriate flights were booked for us so that we could arrive back in the States as soon as possible.

Tension

Sukey and the babies are healthy, stable, and recovering from the haste of the past couple of days.  Nevertheless, our lives are torn in a mess of tension. So, we are traveling home until the (prayerfully safe) delivery of our babies.  Friday evening, going back home to America was not a real option for us; however, through these circumstances and others which fill in the gaps, in the course of two days we have made it to Kenya and plan to arrive in American later this week.  As soon as we are able, after the birth of our children, we plan to return back to Tanzania.  This decision means several months away from language, culture, and other very key events in the life of the village. Also, due to the emergency nature of the departure we are left with little sense of closure in departing from our friends and neighbors: we wonder what is understood by them. We feel a sense of being “ripped” out of the village—something we never wanted to happen.

This decision also means that we trust that God clearly had brought us out of the village for the safety of my wife and the babies. At this point, it is difficult to sort through what has happened, the secret intentions of God, and what the implications are. We are confident that this is the right decision although, right now, it does not feel like a good decision.

To be sure, it is humbling to know that God does not need us to complete His mission. Moreover, we sense a sobering degree of vulnerability through the sacrificial and compassionate ways people have truly cared for us and enabled this decision to be realized. So now, as grief, consolation, celebration, wonder, confusion, shock, anxiety, and uncertainty bear on our souls we rest with this hope: The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law (Deuteronomy 29:29).

~ Matt and Sukey