Benin Bulletin #14
“And Then There Were 3”
December 3, 2018
Prayer
Requests
1) Time with
family & friends - Praise the Lord for the time we have been able to have
with our friends and family here in Canada.
We’ve enjoyed connecting with each and every one of you.
2) Our
travels - Praise the Lord for the safety we experienced during all our
travels. We were able to visit all the
churches that support us in BC, Alberta and New Brunswick. Everything went very smoothly.
3) Austin
Boyd Crawford - Please pray for Austin as he is still in the NICU (Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit). He has been
improving more and more every day. Pray
that he will be able to go home soon so we can celebrate Christmas outside of
the hospital walls.
4) New Job - Pray
for me as I begin a new job with Skillsoft on December 10th. Praise the Lord that I was able to find work
in my field here in New Brunswick.
5) The future
- Pray for Kathleen and I as we adjust to life as parents and to life living in
Canada. We had envisioned our lives in
Africa so it’s been an adjustment to see ourselves living in Canada. Pray that we would feel more and more settled
here in New Brunswick.
Introduction
Greetings from Fredericton, New Brunswick! Wow, it feels like it’s been a while since
I’ve had an opportunity to write you all.
Actually, it’s been about 6 months now.
Many things have happened since I last wrote to you last. Read on to get all the latest updates!
Lots
of Traveling
As many of you already know, Kathleen and I left
Benin on July 3rd and arrived back in Canada on July 4th. The month of July was filled with time with
family and friends in the Fredericton, New Brunswick area. At the beginning of August, I (Graham) left
for Alberta to go on a camping trip with my family in British Columbia. After about 3 weeks in both BC and Alberta, I
traveled to Toronto, Ontario to meet up with Kathleen and have some meetings
with SIM Canada. After about 5 days in
Toronto, Kathleen and I traveled to Alberta together to visit with family,
friends and supporters. Kathleen’s
parents arrived in Alberta on September 13th, and we embarked on an
epic 3 province road trip to visit our supporting churches. We stopped and visited a number of friends
and family along the way, notably, Kathleen’s brother Dustin, who is living in
Southern Saskatchewan. This was an extra
special trip because Kathleen’s parents had never been to BC or Saskatchewan so
I got to play tour guide as we drove along.
At the beginning of October, we left Alberta to return to New
Brunswick. At this point Kathleen was
getting noticeably pregnant and just needed to stay in one spot until the baby
arrived in January. Or, so we thought…
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| Lots of friends and family met us at the airport in Fredericton |
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| Camping in Lake Country, BC |
Austin
Boyd Crawford
The day was November 26, 2018. A day I will likely never forget. For the most part, the day was just like any
other day. The excitement didn’t begin
until the day was almost over. At
approximately 11:15pm, I heard Kathleen call to me from the bedroom. I couldn’t quite hear what she was saying so
I walked into the bedroom so I could hear here clearly. “What did you say?” “I think my water just broke.” Hmm…that’s interesting. As far as I knew, that wasn’t supposed to be
happening yet. “I guess we should go to
the hospital”, I said, unsure if that was even the correct course of action. Kathleen felt the first thing we should do is
wake her parents, John and Diane Davidson.
For those who don’t know, Kathleen and I have been staying in the
basement of her parents’ house until we figure out whether we are staying in
Canada for the foreseeable future, or whether we would head back to Africa with
another missionary posting. So, I went
upstairs and woke up Kathleen’s parents.
They both felt that the best thing to do would be to call the hospital
and get their advice on how to proceed.
The hospital said we needed to come.
And I’m glad we did. At about
11:45pm, Kathleen and I arrived at the hospital in Fredericton. They admitted Kathleen and put us in a
delivery room. Once we got settled it
was probably around 12:30am. I looked at
Kathleen and thought, “What now?” Kathleen
had not experienced any pain yet. Was
this a false alarm? Having the
experience of absolute zero in delivering babies, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Kathleen decided she wanted to stand up and
that is when she felt it. Pain. Or at least discomfort that she hadn’t felt
before. Ok, maybe it was nothing. Then it happened again. Ok, maybe it wasn’t nothing. Another one.
Yep, this is definitely not nothing.
The doctors that would be delivering the baby arrived to introduce
themselves. Dr. Coady was the head of
the operation and with her was Dr. Williams, a young resident at the
hospital. We also had Kelly the wonder
nurse who was a total champ at doing everything to take care of Kathleen. Dr. Coady measured Kathleen to see how far
along she was. “She’s at 6cm.”, she
tells me, like I’m supposed to know what that means. I say back, “How many centimeters does it go
up to?” I explained that we hadn’t had
our pre-natal classes yet. In fact, we
were supposed to be having a tour of the part of the hospital we were in next
month. She saved me the embarrassment of
Googling it and told me that once she is 10cm she will be ready to deliver the
baby. Whoa. She’s like 60% of the way there! That was fast! At this point I decide it was time to call
Katheen’s parents and tell them this baby is coming. So, at about 1:30am I called John and told
him what was happening. He said they
would be right there. By the time
Kathleen’s parents arrived, Kathleen was about 9cm. I’m glad I called when I did. Diane joined us in the delivery room and John
waited patiently in the waiting room.
Everything happened so quickly I never really noticed the exact time,
but somewhere around 2am Kathleen was ready to deliver. She did really well. There was no time to give her an epidural so
she did everything the old-fashioned way.
At 2:38am the gender reveal party began.
It’s a boy! Unfortunately,
because of the early arrival, our time with him was very short. They laid him on Kathleen’s chest for maybe a
minute before he was put on a cart and wheeled away. I was able to cut the umbilical cord before
they whisked him away which was cool. Since
Diane was there with Kathleen, I decided I would follow our little man to see
what the next step was. They hooked up
monitors to him and gave him a CPAP machine (a machine that blows forced air
into the nose to assist with opening the lungs). His breathing was the thing the doctors seemed
most concerned about. Being born 6 weeks
early, there is some “lubrication” that was missing on his lungs causing them
to be kind of “sticky”. I was asked what
his name was. “Austin Boyd
Crawford.” Austin was the name of my
father’s father (my grandfather). He
passed away when I was about 12 years old.
Boyd was the name of Kathleen’s mother’s father (Kathleen’s grandfather). He passed away in May of this year (some of
you may remember that Kathleen and I left Benin to attend the funeral). Austin had a difficult start to his life but
he has progressed very well. He had the
CPAP and IV for the first 2 days of his stay at the hospital but was doing well
so they took away both of them. He
continued to respond well so they removed him from the incubator and he is now
sleeping on a crib in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). He started life being fed just 6ml of formula
through his feeding tube every 3 hours.
He is now up to 60ml which is considered the maximum for his age/size
(otherwise known as a “full feed”). We
have had chances to hold him now which is much easier with less wires and tubes
attached to him. He has even begun to
open his eyes and take in the world around him.
We are so thankful for all the prayers and well wishes for Austin. He is doing well and we are hopeful that he
will be home in time to celebrate his first Christmas with us.
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| Hurry up and wait |
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| Lets get this show on the road |
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| It's a boy! |
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| Getting better and better every day! |
New
Job
After Austin was born, at about 5:30am I returned
home to have a nap, a shower, a change of clothes, and collect some stuff for
Kathleen. Of course, Austin was born 6
weeks early so we didn’t have a bag packed yet.
At around 10am I stepped out of the shower when I heard my cell phone
ring. Still dripping wet, I glanced at
the phone and saw the name Skillsoft. For
those who have been following our journey, when Kathleen and I returned to
Canada we were not planning to return to Benin.
In fact, we weren’t sure if we were even ready emotionally/mentally to
return to the mission field. As we
prayed about our decision, I decided that I would begin to investigate into the
IT job market in New Brunswick.
Kathleen’s desire was to stay in New Brunswick so she will be near her
parents when the baby was born. I felt
that if I applied to some IT jobs and nothing happened, the Lord was not
directing us to stay in New Brunswick. I
wasn’t even sure if there would be any IT jobs in New Brunswick. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. What I discovered was there was actually a lot
of IT jobs! I was called for a number of
interviews in October and November. One
of the interviews I had in November was with a company called Skillsoft
(Skillsoft.com). Skillsoft is the world
leader in corporate learning. In other
words, they are massive. They were
looking for a “Cloud Application Specialist” which basically means a server
specialist. I applied for the job on
October 15th. I was
interviewed on November 9th and on November 27th they
were calling to offer me the job.
Considering I had been up all night with limited sleep and dripping from
the shower, I wasn’t sure what to say at first.
I began to explain to them what just happened with Austin being born
early. I asked if I could have some time
to get my life in order. Skillsoft was
very generous and told me that I could have until Monday to respond to the
offer (It was Tuesday morning when they called). On Wednesday afternoon I stopped by the
Skillsoft office to pick up the job offer documentation so I could read the
offer (including salary and benefits and company policies and such). On Thursday Kathleen and I went over the
offer and felt that it was more than fair.
So, on Friday, November 30th I signed the offer and
officially became a part of the Skillsoft team.
Skillsoft again was very generous in giving me this week to spend with
my family as Austin and Kathleen are still in the hospital. My first day with Skillsoft will be on
December 10th. Please pray
for me as yet another new chapter in my life begins.
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| My new work location |
The Future
So, what does this all mean? Well, my next action after signing the job
offer with Skillsoft was to call Paul Russell, the Deputy Director of SIM
Canada. I explained to him what had
happened and he congratulated me. Since
I am now starting a job, I am unable (and unwilling) to receive a salary from
SIM so I asked him to discontinue our monthly donations. I take receiving support very seriously and
my belief has always been, if there is no need, there is no need to give. Many of you have given sacrificially to us
and I want to respect that and allow the funds you would send us to go where it
is most needed. As we traveled around
visiting our supporters in September and October I was so blessed by the
willingness of people to continue to support us during our transition back to
Canada. We were so grateful to SIM for
not just dropping us after we left the mission field and our supporters
responded in the same way. We have felt
so blessed to have that support while we “found our feet” here in Canada. So, depending on when in the month you send
in your donation to SIM, there may or may not be a December gift taken from
your bank account. However, by January
there should no longer be any donations being automatically removed from your
accounts. Please let SIM know if it there
is a withdrawal so they can sort that out for you. I’ll keep an eye on things in case something
gets missed as well. Just so you are
aware, there is a balance of funds still left in our SIM Canada account. Since Kathleen is not working we have been
told she is still able to receive those funds so that money will still be
available to her. I want to say a huge
thank you for all of you who have supported me and Kathleen over the years. The Lord blessed us with an overwhelmingly
generous support team. You guys
rock! Some of you may be wondering what
our future is with SIM. Well, I’m not
exactly sure how that works quite yet.
My thinking is that we will become something equivalent to “inactive
members” or something like that. Kathleen
and I are not opposed to returning to the mission field in the future, we just
feel that at the moment, we are just not ready.
However, if we feel the Lord’s call, we would be happy to return to the
mission field with SIM again. For now,
our mission field is New Brunswick, Canada!
Conclusion
So, I think that is about it for now. Thank you so much for your continued prayer
for us. We are so humbled and blessed by
each and every one of you. I would like
to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Blessings,
Graham & Kathleen <><
The opinions expressed in this letter are our own
opinions. They are not necessarily the
opinions or views of Serving In Mission (SIM).
