Cameron

As we wind down our trip (and this blog) on our last evening in Zambia I wanted to dedicate this post to my son Cameron who has lived this adventure with me.

I used to say that skiing/boarding was the perfect family activity because you have your children captive audience for parent-child interaction for a whole 10 minutes up the chair. I now realize that that is a far distant second to a one month mission trip with your son. What an amazing experience it has been sharing this trip with Cameron! It was great sharing with him in the medical end of things – to show him my world (with a Zambian flavor of course). I love teaching and so being able to share medical knowledge and experience with my son has been tremendous. To see him go from someone who got lightheaded at the sight of blood to someone who was drawing blood numerous times in the lab, and doing a thoracentecis (draining fluid through the chest wall) was exhilarating for his physician Dad, as is his interest in a medical career as a possible path for himself.

It was also great just living life together for the month. Life is fairly slow on the mission field and we often found ourselves in the evenings sitting together (talking, reading, playing DS or watching The Office season 2). We had times of reading the word together and praying for each other. We shared a lot of laughs together and some real adventure (hiking around Mukinge, sharing the wonder of the safari, flipping a boat white water rafting down a level 5 rapid on the Zambezi). Watching him develop a friendship with Humphrey (clerk at the hospital) and patiently teach him some guitar was also very cool. Overall, it was neat to get to know each other at a deeper level. It has reaffirmed my pride in, and love for, Cameron – he is an intelligent, sensitive, good natured guy with a great, fun personality – it is exciting to be not only his father but also his friend and confidant (hopefully he also feels that I qualify for that designation).

I would highly recommend a similar adventure for anyone - beats the chairlift hands down!