“What do you do if someone in your family gets so sick from malaria that they’re throwing up and need to take the medicine by injection?” our instructor asked us. “You live so far out in the bush that you aren’t able to go to a hospital, and you would rather not have your family member spend the night at the local clinic.” The answer was simple: we were going to learn to give shots by practicing on each other!

This summer, Jason and I attended AFM’s 12-week training course. One of the practical modules was health for the home. We learned about various tropical diseases and what we can do to prevent or treat them.

“How is your fever? Is your head hurting?” These are examples of the questions we would ask when doing a health history and physical. One day in class we got to practice this. Each of us was handed a diagnosis with a list of symptoms. Then we worked together in pairs figuring out what disease the other person had and what kind of treatment they needed. My patient, an “8-year old girl from Indonesia,” had cerebral malaria, a very dangerous and possibly fatal disease. The exercise highlighted the importance of this training and prepared me for one of the most intimidating things we had to do in training—learn to suture! I am glad to say we didn’t practice on each other, just on turkey legs. I really hope I will never have to do that on a person! Jason thought it was more exciting and stayed after class to make sure his turkey was thoroughly sutured.

With this knowledge and much more, we are really looking forward to heading to the mission field. We plan to stay in Norway until after our next baby is born. He or she is due to enter the world in early December, so Benin will be welcoming four Harrals instead of three!

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