Casa Ahavá has been on a bit of a bumpy road as of late. Coming home from our furlough we grew to 14 patients at lightening speed, bringing in multiple new patients on the same days. Despite our excitement of a full house, we quickly noticed that the community needs slower transition in order to keep the rhythms we work hard to establish. The result was a week or two of chaos and dissension, some tears, and some hard family meetings. In the future, we will make our intake slower, which we believe can ease some of these tensions.
We also discovered during this time that our infrastructure was not equipped for the 20 people living on the property (14 patients and 6 in my family). Our septic tanks began overflowing into the yard! Yuck. Wednesday, thanks to a generous family who donated, we started construction on an additional tank, which should solve the problem.
Another problem was our kitchen set up. The pots needed to cook for such large numbers were too big for the hot plates currently used. We decided we needed to add a gas stove option outside. Do you know who met this need? A teenager. She heard about our growing and extra expenses and reached out to see if she could help with her hard earned money. I am awestruck.
An extra hiccup was our patient van broke the week we arrived home from the States and despite a month of trying to fix it, we were unable. Can you believe that one family made it possible to purchase our new patient van? The way our Christ-community has stepped in and carried this project is nothing short of glorious.
A few patients wrapped up their treatments, and we were able to send them home with all our love. We are currently down to 9 patients at the house. We have told the hospital to give us time to finish our septic tank before we we accept anyone new. The expectation is another two weeks or so.
The past week has been hectic health wise for a few patients. We have had an ER visit due to hemorrhaging, another bleeding episode, a severe case of delayed Chemo-induced vomiting (she is wrecked), stomach pains late at night, chills, a patient grieving a death in the family, etc.
We appreciate your prayers and love in this season; we feel it.
And now… the people who make it all so very worth it:
