Tuesday- Santiago

Today we headed further away from San Pedro Sula to visit the village of Santiago.  We arrived to find the pastor, Andrea, had set up the church for us, which made for a very smooth start to the day.  The construction crew worked on pouring a 3-5" thick cement floor on an entryway to the preschool.  They had to wheel heavy wheelbarrows full of sand down a difficult hillside to get to the work site. The blisters on Matt's hands are evidence of how hard the work was! Due to the 95 degree heat, they often had to triple mix the cement because it dried so quickly.  A kind woman in her 20's  (perhaps a relative of the local organizer) helped in mixing the cement.  They finished about 2/3 of the floor and the man will finish by himself tomorrow. These men brought sweating to a whole new level today.  Vern and Ken's well deserved lunch break was spent inches away from the fan.
     
In the clinic, we had great crowd control and the day ran really smoothly. We gave out 123 deworming pills, had 202 doctor visits, and will refer 10 cases to Children Without Choices.   The people were so appreciative there that it made all of the sweating well worth it.  And Kaitlin got to add "Can I hold your baby" to her Spanish repetoire, enabling her to cuddle a beautiful 1-month old baby. Lots of amazing smiles on peoples faces!

On our drive home, we passed banana plantations, and our bones and brains were rattled from the potholes in the roads; we also got to see a man juggling machetes at a busy intersection near the city. And we of course got to finish the evening with another amazing dinner made by Aurora and a reminder from Rolando about Galatians 2:10 "All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along".

Submitted by Eileen Radeschi and Michelle Rankin