June 20, 2008

Dear Friends in Novi,

Thank you very much for your active part in the ministry here at Mucajai. I appreciate your faithful gifts and your prayer support.

This morning the FUNASA team arrived to take over the clinic. Isabel de Oliveira is very happy about this.

Sunday night we had our last big medical project. Late in the afternoon, we heard fighting across the airstrip. Jacqueline dos Santos and Rosa Monte went to investigate and returned to prepare Isabel for the arrival of badly injured people. The first was Elmehe, who had been stabbed from one side of the abdomen to the other. The second was Cristina, whose stab wound reached her left lung. Perhaps another dozen people also turned up for treatment.

Isabel put Elmehe and Cristina on IV fluids and gave them first aid. She used the satellite phone to call a doctor in her home town for advice and
followed that to the best of her ability. We are an outpost, not a hospital. Milton Camargo called in the other wounded people in order of their trauma and dabbed their wounds until he could put antiobiotic powder on them and sent them home. The worst of these was Gilberto, who had a long
split in his scalp along with other cuts. As always, I was amazed at their stamina. If I had had any one of their wounds, I would have been flat out
and in no shape to sit for half an hour let alone walk home.

While Isabel and Milton were working, Rosa, Jacqueline, Marcia Camargo and I held flashlights, found needed items and called Edson Silva in town and
asked him to contact the FUNASA to get a plane in here the next day. We prayed that Elmehe and Cristina would still be alive to go out on that plane.

About 8:30 Cristina's husband, Abel, came in and began to act in true Yanomami style. He loudly declared what he would do the the one who had stabbed her, if his wife died. Jacqueline finally told him that we'd heard it, and he could stop. He did, but then he went to stand by Cristina's hammock with his bow and arrows in front of him based on the ground in a fierce-warrior position. That wasn't helping the medical workers any, but he stayed there. At least he was quieter.

Miraculously, Cristina and Elmehe were both alive in the morning. Elmehe was conscious and talking. A plane came about 11:00 to take them to town. Just before that, Makpesi, a woman with a broken arm, walked in, and she went out on the plane with the two others, Abel and his youngest child. Elmehe and Cristina were operated on that day, and were holding their own the last we heard. There is still the risk of infection, of course, and the wounds were not minor.

Meanwhile I've been working with Adelino, Waldemar and Mario on Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians and 1 John. I've also been helping Jacqueline and Rosa with
their translation of Jonah. We hope to check these books with Miriam Abbott when she comes in August. Pray for the proper terms to use in each of these books.

Sincerely yours,
Carole Swain