Day 5 Gracias A Dios

Day 5. Gracias A Dios

The end of the week!!!  Today we were in Pastor Juan's community.  It was wonderful to see the children we sponsor and their families.  And since it is a well know destination we managed to get there on time without getting lost.  I failed to mention that yesterday we perfected the San Pedro Sula U turn.  The reason our van was not with Gustavo's van is that some one forgot to put the paint brushes in the vans, so Aurora's van had to go back and get them!  We stopped and asked directions a couple times (hey, you seen a van full of anglos go by?) and when people would nod their heads, on we would go.  Our destination yesterday was way out in the country.  Today we were across town.  A nice change.

Another nice change today was that we were back to full strength with everyone healthy and able to work.    The building team painted a school which pleased all the students who loved having classes moved outside for the day.   Although Terri was supposed to be with the paint crew, she was most obviously not since at lunch there was not a drop of paint on her.  And, this evening there were an awful lot of pictures playing with kids on her laptop.  She tried to tell us that the building crews work hard and play hard.  The medical teams work hard and work hard.

In the clinics we saw over 295 patients.  By Friday we were getting good at this.  The new church made a great venue where we could make a good line of travel from registration to Vitamin A, Worm pill, Hemoglobin, and on to the consultation and finally to the pharmacy.   Sometimes we just function as a pharmacy as some of the people will bring us medical reports from visits to the doctor and prescriptions for what was deemed necessary.  We often have the medications they need.  It is strange to us that we would get a prescription but then not get it filled, but medicine costs money.  One patient today was diagnosed with a bladder infection and had the urinalysis to prove it, but had not taken any of the prescribed medications for a month.  We were both very happy to get that prescription filled! Another elderly woman with diabetes came through the clinic and luckily she only had one infected toe that she might even get to keep as it is merely infected and not necrotic.  We renewed her diabetes medicine and gave her a bag full of bandaging materials and discussed taking good care of herself.  If she runs out of medicine this time Children Without Choices will see that she gets more.  This week over 1100 people were seen, touched and ministered to in one way or another.  Schools and churches were painted, walls built and floors poured.  Tomorrow half of us will take a well deserved weekend in Copan and the rest of us will go home to our families.  We are thankful for families that accept that going to Honduras is a good thing to do.  Although they miss us and perhaps wonder what we are doing here, they let us serve in this way.  Thank goodness for internet, facebook and the ability to keep in touch.   for the team, karen