Short term: Matt is now working at the Owatonna Clinic (part of the Mayo system) as a Family Medicine doctor. He will mostly be doing acute visits (meaning less high blood pressure, diabetes, annual physicals, etc--hooray!). He is fortunate to be working only 4 days per week, so we will get some much needed family time. Kristi is now fulfilling her desire to be a stay-at-home wife and mom. She has wanted to do this since Charlotte was a baby, but was encouraged by many people (including Matt) to finish out her education and training. So now that residency is over, she is taking advantage of this time to be home with Charlotte and then in a few short weeks, baby Wiggles!
Long term: We are working towards moving to Ethiopia to live and work! We have been moving toward this goal for many years and we're so close! We traveled to Ethiopia spring 2011 to check out a potential location and we loved it! This past winter we were accepted by our missions organization, SIM (Serving in Mission). We anticipate being able to leave for Ethiopia sometime between January and July 2013, but those plans depend on lots of details that we have very little control of! Matt will continue working at the Owatonna clinic until we're ready to leave. Kristi will be whittling down our possessions, packing, planning homeschool for Charlotte, etc.
We are starting with a two year term serving in rural Ethiopia, in a town called Langano. Town might be too strong of a word since there isn't actually a town of any sort, it's really just an area where some people live. :) We will both be working about half time in a small clinic, while the other half of our time will be spent taking care of our kids and homeschooling Charlotte (no formal school there for her). We anticipate serving in Langano much longer than two years, but we will start with that to see if it is a good fit for us and if we are a good fit for them! We will be joining a team of Americans and Ethiopians, who are serving with SIM in several ways--the clinic, a kids soccer camp, and a school (not one for Charlotte though).
There are lots and lots of things we could tell you about our lives and anticipated work there, but it would be easier to have you check out our new Ethiopia website where we have explained lots and lots of this. The address is www.FloreksInEthiopia.weebly.com. There are many tabs on the website to explain various things and with lots of pictures to look at too. There is a tab labeled "Blog" where we will be posting stories and news updates. We will still be keeping up this blog for more personal things/stories/pictures for our family and friends. You'll just have to check both blogs for all the latest with our family!
This is what typical homes in Langano look like.
The clinic where we'll be working.
The clinic has three exam rooms like this, a labor and delivery room, small lab and pharmacy, and one small room for keeping sick patients overnight. The nearest hospital is an hour drive away.
This shows the top 10 diseases for the clinic, broken down by age (5 years to adult in the middle column, under 5 years in the right sided column). Malaria, GI parasites, respiratory infections, and diarrhea are the most common things we see in the clinic.
A very sick 6 day old baby that we took care of.
I was able to deliver a baby while we were there!
One of our Ethiopian teammates, Asse (Ah-say), broke her arm while we were there. Matt diagnosed the break with an ultrasound machine since we don't have an X-ray there. Then we casted her arm and left instructions when to take it off after we left.
Our house in Langano is right next to Asse's house, so we'll be neighbors! She is an amazing soccer player and coach for the soccer camp.
The people on the right are our team leaders, Shane and Allyson Smith. They have three kids, two of whom are pictured here (Mia and Moses). We LOVE our team!
We are so excited to continue on this journey toward serving in Ethiopia. Follow along with us on this blog and at www.FloreksInEthiopia.weebly.com!
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