Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Wednesday, April 3

When we entered the ICU, we were surprised to see Elder Babcock disconnected from the respirator.  I explained to President Martinez:

Elder Babcock is now without the respirator, only with an oxygen mask.  He opened his eyes spontaneously and they showed love and thinking, also without medication.  Everything is improving.  The worker at the hostel understood when we declined breakfast and explained that we were fasting and why. Miracles continue.

I was very grateful for my daughter, Luanna.  She wrote some things about each day:

Dad has opened his eyes looking at Mom. She is holding his hand, sitting beside his bed. He smiles with his eyes and wrinkles his forehead and squeezes Mom's hand and mine. Before I held his hand, I saw his arm muscles spasm and thought he might be trying to move his arm. I held his hand and he relaxed.

He just gave mom a big smile!

One of the hospital cleaning ladies greeted Mom this morning, and said she prayed for Dad. Mom and Dad are still missionaries. She was just telling him that he is still a missionary

Dad's eyes are closed and Mom is talking with him about what has happened and who is taking care of him and how.

A nutritionist just came in to give Dad his liquid breakfast in his nasal tube. She puts water in the tube, then the food liquid, and then follows it with more water. Dad's hands and feet are still puffy. Mom is massaging his feet. He still has compression socks on his feet and to his knees.

Mama told Dad yesterday and today that Michael and Sare are expecting a little boy in August. We are repeating the important information every day. She is talking about the communication between the family. It is a blessing to be in better contact with each other. Today more often Dad is opening his eyes spontaneously. Then closes them to rest again. I think he likes holding hands.

Elder Babcock could communicate yes or no.  He also has some eyebrow scrunches that may mean what did you say or I don’t know. His words were whispers, and we could not understand, but they were specific words. He wrinkled his eyebrows to let us know that he did not understand. He could not hear us unless we screamed. He said no to a question about pain. He seemed to understand that he was in Temuco and that he was a missionary. President Martinez came to the clinic and spent time talking with staff for a while. The President is a very patient man and can sit next to a bed for a long time.

Luanna wrote:

When I met with the mission president the first time, it was just he and I in the room with Dad.  Dad was awake and aware President Martinez was there.  Though President Martinez speaks Spanish and I speak English, he was able to tell me (and I understood), that he knew my dad was a strong man.  "Muy Fuerte".   Dad tried to talk and I couldn't understand his whisper.  But then he looked at me and said very clearly "I love you".  He started whispering lots of words and neither the President nor I could understand him.  Dad was very agitated and asked very clearly after that "Where Hermana Babcock?"  Dad relaxed when President Martinez brought a great spirit to the room by anointing and blessing him [a third blessing].  

Right before the blessing was given and for the first time, Dad had moved his hand from its raised straight forward position to his lap.  I know it was his desire to be appropriately reverent for the blessing.   Dad spoke again "Amen" and "Thank you President."  

These were the first words and movement of my father's, and miracles for me to be able to see.  My Dad was dying, but not anymore.  It brought comfort and tears to my eyes and a gratitude to every part of me for the blessings of this whole experience.  I had and will continue to feel blessed with more hope and a strengthening of faith in miracles and God's awareness of me and my family.

I had left the room to write a letter to the family. In my letter, I wrote of our desire to stay in Chile. I had shared my impressions of the night with President Martinez, and he was willing to support any decision we would make. For our family it was a happy letter, but perhaps it was a bit difficult for some of them. They all hoped that we would return to our home in Salt Lake when Babcock Elder could travel. Although I knew it would be difficult, I knew yesterday that we had to stay in Chile. Elder Babcock has to recover as a missionary. He is happier as a missionary. It is a life that he loves, a life that gives purpose.

Here he has my attention without distractions and complications and the expectations of the world and of the family and without the responsibilities of a home. It is a simple and quiet life. It is filled with great joy. Missionaries are not retired. They have an important and active role. Elder Babcock knows what to do and will have the Lord's help to do it.

We will miss everyone. We will miss the birth of baby brother. We will miss the first meetings with our adopted granddaughters. All of the grandchildren will be growing up without us. Everything will change.

But in April 2014, back home together, having accomplished our mission, we will prepare for a grand reunion with all the family to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary and the great blessings we've had together in our lives and in our family .

I expressed my love for my family. In these difficult times I have learned to love my husband, body and soul with a stronger, sweeter and more eternal love, and to trust in the love of my Heavenly Father and in His goodness. I want the whole family to continue loving and serving others and supporting each other. I trust that the Lord will compensate all for our absence and give more blessings to our family than they could have with our presence.

The doctors were surprised when I explained the decision to stay in Chile and not return to the United States for recovery.

Communication with our friends and the family was really important to me. I received many special letters. In one, my son Michael, explained to the family the challenge of faith:

This has been a very long and emotional week. A week as long as a month. A week packed with a wide range of strong emotions, including shock, stress, anxiety, trust, worry, faith, hope, uncertainty, denial, grief, relief, joy, gratitude, reverence, and more. Being emotional is part of being human, especially when we go through challenging, life changing experiences. I have slowly begun to realize how much I have been feeling and how much it has affected my ability to focus on other things, my desire/need to escape through distractions, and not being very productive at work.

I have also been very surprised at how guarded/cautiously optimistic I have felt - even with such great news coming in. Part of it was that I started reflecting on the week, and that alone was very emotionally stressful. In addition to that, Sarah helped me to realize that I was being guarded because I didn't want to go through another day like last Friday, which for me included the emotions of despair - the absence of hope - and grief.

I had a glimmer of hope Friday night when Sarah's dad called and talked about a patient he knew who survived a coma despite the doctors' expectations otherwise. Saturday morning, before hearing good news, I prayed for hope if it were possible for us to have reason to hope. I felt very reassured. I wasn't going to write this, but I decided to because I thought it might be good for some people to comment here about what they have been feeling. I also wanted to encourage us all to think we can still have faith and hope in a full recovery, even though it's been a very emotionally-complicated week.

I responded:

I understand exactly what Michael has expressed so well. I haven't shared with you my doubts and fears. I think the Lord has been tutoring us this week, not lying to us, but helping us work through our reactions to the different options. Each reality was very real and possible. I think that without the faith and prayers of President Martinez and the other missionaries, Ken would have died. If he were not a missionary, he would have died. President Martinez is sending us every missionary within traveling distance to stay with us at the hospital. Luanna and I just game from a conversation with three sister missionaries, one who is serving a 19th month to help an hermana who has been out 4 months to learn how to be the sole trainer of the third who has one week. He is using us to teach and train the missionaries in miracles and faith. It is a different mission than I ever imagined.

The Mission President reminds me that we are having a special conference on April 17 with a general authority and that the Lord wants us to be specific in our prayers. So we will be praying that Elder Babcock be able to leave the hospital before April 17 to be part of that conference.

Impossible, yes, but with God all things are possible, and the difference between last week and this week, and yesterday and today, and this morning and this afternoon, is a mountain of difference. Mountains move.

Elder Babcock talked a lot with the mission president. We understood very little of what he was saying- just think you have a good wife and something about speaking Spanish