By Doing Brave Acts, We Become Brave

"These virtues we acquire by first exercising them... Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it... By doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave." - Aristotle

This is a picture I took on Tuesday before clinical... the start of an amazing day :) Thank You Jesus!

I became brave in a whole new way this week. Getting my blood drawn causes me to nearly faint. You see, when I decided I wanted to become a nurse, I naively thought that I could skip all the blood drawing and needle poking and just go straight to being a baby nurse. Yeah right! Since I have been in nursing school, I have come against the most intense challenges in my little mind. The first time I heard we had to give patients shots, I was like, "Wait. No. That can't be. I'm just going to be a baby nurse. I don't need to give shots first. I can do this. It's just on another person." And then I found out that we had to give ourselves a shot in the stomach first. The whole skills lab filled with my nursing buddies were chanting for me. "Kelly! Kelly! Kelly"... I eventually ended up giving myself a shot, but then I had to give my professor a shot in her rear end, with an even longer needle. But what I have found throughout nursing school thus far is that whatever God has called me to, He will bring me through. He has faithfully brought me through every situation I have been in thus far that I may have been a little scared or skeptical about. Last Thursday, I was pushed into drawing blood from 8 different patients. I hadn't even watched the nurse do it ahead of me. She simply talked me through it and then I was on my own. This week on both Tuesday and Thursday, I was at an HIV clinic where they were drawing a lot of blood. On Tuesday, the nurse was not about to let me do anything on my own, let alone with her. After about five or six patients, the line was gone so the nurse went to go talk to another nurse and never came back. The line began to get longer and the nurse just kept on talking with the other nurse. So I decided to be bold and ask her if I could draw blood on the next patient. She looked at me with this not so sweet look and said "Have you done it before?" And I was like "Uh, yes. Last week." So she said something like "Yeah. Okay. Go ahead and try." Challenge accepted little nurse! I acted as confident and bold as I possibly could and I drew blood all on my own, well with Jesus' help of course. Once again Jesus brought me to a tough spot and brought me right through it. I would have died a happy woman at that point. But then I got to draw blood on not just one more patient, but 10 more patients! God is so good! And then on Thursday when I went back to the same clinic, the same nurse challenged me again. I thought she would let me do it on my own because I had proved myself Tuesday, but that nurse was one hard nurse to please. She did like five or six patients and then I noticed that there were two stations for blood drawing, one nurse, and a long line. So I asked her if I could draw blood along side her and once again she challenged me with a "If you can." I could alright! I ended up drawing blood on 18 patients on Thursday! God is seriously good. I'm telling you. Just about a couple years ago, I seriously would go ashen white and nearly pass out whenever anyone would try to draw blood on me. Now I am simply fascinated by it and amazed at the wonder of the way God created our bodies. I also got to have an amazing talk with the nurse, Sister Williams, (in the third picture beneath this blurb) about Jesus. She is a right on Christian who has the same morals and standards as me and I found it to be so amazing. We live a world apart and yet we have come to the same conclusion about Jesus and certain morals in life. To me, that just showed how big the truth is. We read the Bible and meet God in two different worlds and know Jesus in the exact same way. AMAZING!!! :)

I was bombarded with so many mixed emotions this week. A nursing buddy of mine, Kayla, was in Pediatrics this week while I was having so much fun drawing blood from all my patients. She had a patient that she told me about later that just broke my heart. The little girl was only one-year-old and she had genital warts. The nurse referred her to another clinic to be examined further for sexual abuse, but the nurse was pretty sure that it was not anything standard and must be a result of being sexually abused. The thought of the whole situation made me want to become a social worker and start taking all the children out of the homes who were abused and put them into my home. I want to become a Woman's Rights Activist, a Social Worker, and a Nurse. I want to become a Woman's Rights Activist in order to defend those women who think they have no rights. I want to become a Social Worker so that I can save all the children who are abused. I want to become a Nurse in order to minister to those patients who are hurting in this world. Basically, I want to change the world and get all of the evil and trash out of it, but the trash is a part of the fall of man. I pray that God uses me in a surreal way that only God can use me. I want to adopt the entire nation, but then how can I possibly love every single child in the nation on my own? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So I have chosen to allow God to use me where I'm at, wherever that may be. One of the amazing little girls who I had the chance to hang out with this week just so happened to walk right into my room on campus. She is the daughter of one of the workers at the campus I'm living at and she is so very sweet. I have no idea how to spell or say her name, but I started with loving her this week and I pray that God gives me so many more opportunities to love people and gives me His love for them. :)

This weekend was AMAZING!!! We got to go shopping in Durban at an open market where we basically bargain shopped and got authentic African things and then we got to spend the day at the beach. But the shopping and the beach wasn't even the best part of it all. The best part of the weekend was the IMPECCABLE African thunder and lightning storms we experienced both Saturday and Sunday night. The sky was literally purple and we couldn't help but sit on the front lawn and stare at it. Whenever there was an intense thunder noise, we would all scream our little heads off and run around. It may not have been the smartest thing to do, as it turns out that according to some association, lying down in an open field is the stupidest thing one could do in a storm because it makes you most likely to get struck, but we had the time of our lives. Watching the beauty of God's creation in action two nights in a row was simply breath-taking... quite literally actually, as I may have lost my voice from screaming so much. I didn't get any of these pictures myself, but a couple of the students I'm here with did and I have no shame in stealing their pictures and sharing them with you :)