A Little Bit of Everything

Wow what a first day!! This trip has already been so different from other missions I’ve been on, and it just keeps going!!

Like I said in my last post, the mayor came down for an opening ceremony for the clinic! They sang the national anthem, prayed, had a bunch of important people say words, and then they had our team line up and they all presented us with these beautiful lanyards!! I don’t think the photo does them justice or scale (the medallion is the size of my hand)

It’s incredible how much preparation has gone into making this trip a reality. It’s truly humbling to be surrounded by so many brothers and sisters in Christ who are working so hard to go before us and make sure that we are most effective in our work :)

…speaking of humbling… the very first thing I got to do to today was the one thing I was desperately hoping to avoid: foot washing. I know Jesus did it and it’s important, but I just really really really hate feet! I jokingly said “watch that be what I do the whole trip because I don’t want to” and there I was. But, it was really good. It wasn’t as bad as I thought either ;)

I washed about 30 people’s feet and gave them brand new flip flops before switching out with another team member. Boy were my hands pruny! I’m pretty sure I melted off any baby callouses I’d been trying to nurture for guitar.

Anyway, after washing feet, I relieved a team member who was helping with check in.,And then I relieved another team member (that was kind of my job today ;)) in the eyeglass clinic and helped a few people find the right pair of reading glasses in for a few minutes. Next, I worked in triage for about an hour while the teammate I had switched out with had lunch. After lunch, I assisted in draining an abscess (delightful after-lunch activity, I know ;))

And then all of the sudden, I had four students following me around saying they were ready to start learning! So we scrambled to find a quiet place to learn and grabbed our supplies. It’s going to be a fun few afternoons — we have the pastor’s wife, a pastor from a different church, and two twenty-something girls (and another translator who decided she wanted to learn too but I don’t know if she’ll be back tomorrow or not 😆)

We worked through vital signs together and I had so much fun working with them on learning how to take each one!! There’s still a lot of practice that needs to take place, but I am confident that by the end of this trip, I will have all four, maybe five, working in triage.

Worship also went pretty well, although I needed an assist from my team on 10,000 Reasons because I couldn’t for the life of me find the starting note!! Some blessed soul knew where it was though and got us on track and we were back to making a joyful and pleasant noise once again. Our guitar has been well loved, and I feel blessed that I get to use it this week. At one point the headstock had been completely broken off and they screwed and glued it back into place (I feel like there’s a lesson in there somewhere…)

Tomorrow is sure to bring its own bag of excitement, but I am thrilled to see how God will use the people and the patients that we have in the light of a new day.