Little Saint Nick

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Christmas Letter

Take one:

Take two:

Take Three:

Got it!  Merry Christmas!

This is the Christmas letter we sent out to a small number of close friends and family.  We wanted to list it again here because there were a lot of people we couldn't send it to.  We're sorting and packing in the midst of the Holiday season, and we appreciate your prayers as we prepare for our 5 months in Kenya.  Read more below.

Dear friends and family,

Greetings to you and your family this Christmas!  We hope this holiday season finds you and your loved ones healthy, happy, and following hard after the purposes of the Lord.

For the Banks, 2009 has been a year of beginnings and endings.  Julie's pregnancy happily ended with the beginning of a new life!  Our son Liam was born in March and it is fascinating to watch him grow and learn something new every day.  Logan's residency ended in June when he graduated from the Cox Family Medicine program in Springfield, only to begin another phase of training at the International Family Medicine Fellowship based in Wichita, KS.  This program is the first of its kind in the nation.  The purpose is to take family physicians and extend their training in order to better prepare them for long-term medical mission service overseas.  The training began this summer at West Virginia University with a two month intensive course in Tropical Medicine.  Then the past five months have been in Wichita, getting further experience in several areas that FP's are not strongly trained.  Logan has learned dental extractions, spinal anesthesia, ultrasound, and he's gotten further surgical training in trauma, orthopedics, and burns while being a junior Faculty member at the Via Christi Residency.

Now our time in Wichita is coming to an end, as we prepare to begin the second half of the one year Fellowship.  Beginning in January, we will be traveling to Bomet, Kenya to serve for five months at the Tenwek Mission Hospital.  Their slogan represents the eternal hope offered to each patient, "We treat, Jesus heals".  Logan will be busy in the inpatient and outpatient department, as well as performing C-Sections, surgeries, dental work, and many other medical procedures.  He will also serve as guest faculty at the Kenyan Family Practice Residency based at Tenwek. Julie will keep busy chasing Liam around as he celebrates his first birthday overseas, and she will attempt to master cooking and laundry in the third world!  We are traveling with World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan's Purse.  There are many service opportunities, and Julie will also be able to serve at the Bible School and orphanages that are close by.  We're also looking forward to a visit from my brother Luke and his daughter Riley.

After the completion of this Fellowship, we plan on returning to Springfield where Logan will join the faculty at the Cox Family Medicine Residency where he graduated.  Liam will be more like a toddler and less like a baby!  We will continue to seek the Lord as we see the possibility of long-term missions at some point in our future.  For now, this semi-long term trip is our priority.  We've gotten our shots, have everything we will need for 5 months crammed into a few suitcases, and are ready to take off!  The only thing we lack are your prayers.

Please pray for

1. Our flight  (Mommy is worried how our 10 month old will do!)

2. Our health

3. Wisdom for Logan as he treats patients

4. Most importantly, the message of the Gospel to be evident in all that we say and do, and for God to receive all the glory.

Follow us on our blog at Banksoffshore.blogspot.com for updates and photos of our term in Kenya.  We would be honored if you would keep us in your prayers while we are overseas.  We hope the beginnings and endings in store for you in 2010 are full of blessing and draw you closer to the Lord!

Love,

Logan, Julie, and Liam

Give Sorrow Words

Give sorrow words.  The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I share this just hours after returning home from the funeral of my cousin, Mark.  He was only 34.  I heard the news yesterday morning, by late last night we were home, and today was the funeral.  It was a whirlwind trip, and it's been difficult to process.

I remember growing up playing softball with Mark and my brothers next to my grandma's house.  He taught me how to play tetris.  I remember when he showed me what it felt like to stick a 9-volt battery to my tongue.  He was jovial.  He loved to laugh.  He was much like his father in that way.

This was such an unexpected death, it still feels surreal.  It really sank in for the first time for me when I saw his mom at the visitation today.  This woman has been through so much in her life, including burying her husband some 15 years earlier.

Today, she was so impressive.  She had just experienced what is ranked as the #1 most stressful life event, the loss of a child, but to me I sensed a deep inner-strength.  Sure, we hugged and cried.  But then she looked at me and said, "I'm so blessed."  I thought, blessed?  You've lost your husband and now your son, how can you feel blessed??  Maybe she saw that expression on my face, because she went on to say, "I'm thankful for every day that God gave Mark to me.  Every day is a precious gift from God.  And I don't know how anyone can get through something like this without Him."

Wow.  There it was.  There's that inner-strength.  I didn't immediately sense what that meant applied to me, but later it sank in.  Hard.  She's right!  She has it figured out!  And it was like I heard another voice saying, "Logan, you have a beautiful wife and son.  They are a precious gift from God.  Enjoy them every day.  God has blessed you with them, but they belong to Him, and you are not in control of them."

God, help me to love my family every day and never take them, or any of your blessings, for granted.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Matthew 5:4

Like Pulling Teeth

I thought I knew what the phrase "like pulling teeth" meant. Simple! It's something that is extremely difficult, or frustrating. For example, "Trying to get a straight answer from [insert the name of your favorite politician] is like pulling teeth."

Earlier this summer I learned just how difficult pulling teeth can really be.

My first rotation in Wichita for the International Family Medicine Fellowship was in dentistry. Now, I have to admit, I came into this rotation with some experience. Which basically consisted entirely of wiggling those little baby teeth I had until they fell out. So in August I jumped into the big leagues. I had to learn how to take some pretty mean-looking tools and somehow get a diseased tooth to come out of this person's mouth. Here is a picture of one of the instruments I used most frequently: the straight elevator. You could practically do almost any extraction with this one tool if you had to.

You can tell by the small size of the blade and the extremely large handle, you can put a lot of torque on this if you need to. If you just squeeze it right between -- well, I'll spare you the details. I know some would be interested, but I'm doing a favor to all of you that wouldn't. You may be rubbing your jaw a little sympathetically right this moment.

The funny thing is, most patients were more scared of the anesthetic than they were of the elevators and forceps. Needles just generally make people uncomfortable.

At first I wasn't sure who was more nervous, the patients or me! I was unsure of the proper angle, I was scared I was going to break off a tooth, or just pull the wrong one! But the dentists I worked with did a great job of teaching me. And I learned a valuable lesson that month after pulling close to a hundred teeth:

Dental extractions were only "like pulling teeth" when I felt so uncomfortable doing it.

Once I learned what to do, I found that I really enjoyed it! It is actually a very gratifying experience. You've helped improve this person's life by removing something painful from their body. Patients were very appreciative, happy to be rid of these problem teeth.

This made me wonder about how long some of them had been dealing with these bad teeth. It was obvious some of the problems were acute, and some patients had issues just getting in to be seen. But some of these patients had hung on to these teeth for years too long. Why did they live with this painful problem for so long? And why was today finally the day they decided to get it fixed?

While I pondered this, I was reminded of an encounter Moses had with Pharaoh. It was right after one of the plagues had struck Egypt. The plague of frogs. Frogs were lying around all over the place, stinky, smelly, loud. They were everywhere! In everything! All over the palace, around his family, in his food, in his bedroom, even on his body. Can you imagine!? So what did Pharoah do? Let's look briefly:

Exodus 8:8 Pharaoh called in Moses and Aaron and said, "Pray to God to rid us of these frogs."

9 Moses said to Pharaoh, "Certainly. Set the time. When do you want the frogs out of here, away from your servants and people and out of your houses?"

10 "Make it tomorrow."

Tomorrow???

What?? Why not now? You've got frogs all over the place, and you want to keep them around for one more day? Now generally when I think about these stories, I usually find myself relating to Moses more than Pharaoh. But here is a spot where I can put myself in his shoes.

We may have a problem in our life, a 'plague' of sorts, that we're dealing with. We may know the right thing to do. God may even present us with a way out. But for some reason we tell him, "Tomorrow."

I think I'll hang on to this issue for one more day. I think I'd rather have this problem that I hate, that I'm covered in, that is stinking up my life, affecting my family, my health, than go through what it would take to get rid of it.

Because getting rid of it may not be easy. It may come with some pain. It may be like those needles at the dentist's office. We know they are there to help us, to take away the pain, but we're still a little afraid.

But God wants me to be free of that problem. It may hurt. It may feel like pulling teeth. But God, the Great Dentist, can get his straight elevator in there and extract that abscessed tooth from my spiritual mouth.

...Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Almost Heaven, West Virginia

whitewater rafting!
Originally uploaded by The Banks

This past summer I graduated from the Cox Family Medicine Residency in Springfield, Missouri, and began the International Family Medicine Fellowship, associated with Via Christi Family Medicine Residency in Wichita, KS.

The first order of business was traveling to Morgantown, West Virginia to take a tropical medicine course with the four other fellows at West Virginia University. We spent eight weeks in June and July learning about all of the "-iasis" diseases (e.g., leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, paragonimiasis, trypanosomiasis, tuberculoiasis, malariasis, etc).

The class was incredible! I feel like it really cemented deep into my sulci the tropical medicine topics I had glossed over in medical school. But even more than the education, I'm thankful for the time to get to know the other four fellows with which I would share this year of training. For most of our time there the five of us stayed in a little 4-bedroom cottage that really afforded us the opportunity to get to know each other REALLY well. Looking back on it, I'm thankful for the tight quarters, because I know our proximity aided greatly in our bonding experiences. Like the weekend we risked life and limb to float the Lower Yough (pronounced Yok). With Class III and IV rapids behind us, we swelled with a sense of pride that we finished the day without turning our raft over. Yet secretly we yearned for the greater challenge of the Class V rapids of the Upper Yough, a frustration we released in song, one of our many "improv" songs of the summer. Other notable improv songs included "Tsetse fly" in the style of "American Pie," "Reduviid bug" in the style of Billy Joel's "Piano Man," and our "Tropical Medicine Improv" with such great lines as:

We met a man, his name is Greg Juckett

He made me bring my poop to class in a bucket

Overall, as we scaled back our lifestyles, studied tropical medicine, learned to depend on the Lord and each other, this summer was a great start to the International Fellowship.

Luddites

We finally entered the blogosphere! We've been talking about blogging for some time, but neither one of us have a penchant for the technological. You can thank my wife for the wonderful job she did getting this started. We definitely wanted to get all the bugs worked out before we left to go to Kenya.

So as I get settled in, I'll probably spend a few posts just recapping what I've been doing for the past 6 months as part of the Via Christi International Family Medicine Fellowship. I hope you'll get settled in as well. Kick your shoes off, relax, and enjoy the blog. I hope you'll check back often.

You can also check out some of the other fellows' blogs here:

Paul and April http://www.mcquilleninternational.blogspot.com/

Rick http://internationalfamilymedicine.blogspot.com/

Our little place!

Ready to move!

We are preparing to move out of our little apartment in Wichita this week. It has been a fun 5 months!