
It was a cold night in Nome, AK. There was a fierce snowstorm in progress as well. I was 24 years old, a nurse working at the hospital of 12 beds. It was late on the evening shift, when we got a call on the short wave radio from the village of Wales. It was the Health Aide. She said "you have to send out a nurse because my cousin is delivering her baby 8 weeks early and she already has had 5 stillborns and I just can't do this tonight". My head nurse, who had Labor and Delivery experience, and I called the airport and 2 pilots told us to be ready within the hour and we would be on our way. Ten minutes in the air, and Stinky, a well known pilot for flying in any conditions, turned and said "you are lucky, we are the only ones that would fly in this weather". Although he was gloating we were struck that had we known this we would not have ventured out. Well, an hour into the flight, they said to us, "hope you know how to pray, cuz we should have been to Wales by now but we are not and I am not sure whether my instruments are off or the runway lights in the village were not turned on." My prayers turned to preparing to face my Master; I was newly committed to Him and serving HIm as a volunteer in the frozen north was my first attempt at following Him to the ends of the earth. This was not my idea for the end of my life. He turned the plane around and flew back by instrument since visibility in that snowy dark night was zero. The runway lights appeared in the distance this time and we landed and rushed into the village on snow machine to the house of the mother and her newborn. The little house was packed with loving relatives and the mother was in a back room still recovering from the birth. Terri, my head nurse went to attend to her, while I asked where the baby was. They brought me to a cardboard box with newspaper and there lay a 32 week gestation little boy with a shock of black hair. He was breathing and had a good heart rate. We had no supplies for an infant and were even short on dextrose that night but I knew this baby was going to be a bit hypothermic and was going to need some sugar. So I asked them if they could bring me a bottle of warm water and some sugar. He nippled eagerly as I wrapped him up and finished drying him off from the birth. Suddenly he had suckled to his satisfaction and stopped breathing. Praying to my God with desperation, I started respiratory mouth to mouth emergency breaths. We got him bundled up inside my coat and the four of us were driven back to the plane on a sled behind the snow machine while I mouthed to mouthed this little guy, praying with every breath for God to please keep him alive.
The heater "broke" that night on the plane and was too hot and they could not turn it off, which ended up being a miracle that probably kept the little guy's body temp up while I resuscitated my little patient all the way back to Nome. When we arrived, his body temp was 98.6, his blood sugar was normal at 90 and he began to breathe on his own again. We celebrated that night, the kindness of God and how much He had orchestrated including the navigation of a small plane in a blizzard to deliver safely one very precious little boy and his mother into a hospital where they could obtain the care they needed. It was only the beginning of my walk with a supernatural God and to this day I marvel at the life He saved one cold winter night in the wilderness of Alaska, 1978!
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