Hello friends and family!
We opened our second day at the DR with lots of coffee and prayer and excellent breakfast courtesy of the SCORE hotel! For our second day of clinic, we drove to a village not quite as far as the first but still just as enriching in experiences! We set up our clinic in a one room church full of white lawn chairs and made do with what we had. And it worked perfectly! The children's ministry today had plenty of trees to stand under to keep out of the hot sun; that was a cool blessing (pun intended)! And those of us in the church had those fans working harder than ever before! A few people were able to do some house visits to some of the community members in the village who were too sick or old to walk to the church where clinic was set up. Those who went were able to experience firsthand the cultural differences and the living style of the average person in the DR. One patient in particular (we'll call her "P") was an elderly woman who had survived multiple strokes that left her unable to use the right side of her body and without the ability to communicate with words. With the help of her daughter and the translator, we were able to figure out that her glasses had broken and she couldn't see very far at all. It was clear P had a tough living situation minus her vision problems. So we found a wheelchair nearby, dressed the woman in her Sunday best (per her request haha), loaded her onto the wheelchair, and wheeled her down the dirt street towards the clinic we had set up! P was fitted for glasses by some other students and she found a pair that really improved her vision. We wheeled her back and made sure she was comfortable before leaving for the day. But P's face was so full of joy and light when we left! And what's amazing about this mission is that there's hundreds of these incredible moments-- every student and physician here is willing to do the most seemingly difficult tasks to serve their patient. We saw 142 patients in total today. It wasn't easy by any means, but everyone has put together such an incredible team mentality and put their trust in each other and the Lord to make our days at clinic worthwhile for the village. It's always amazing to me to see the faces of the villagers as we enter the community and leave-- when we enter, we are greeted with confused and stoic faces BUT when we leave, everyone waves and has the biggest grins on their faces! It's such a satisfying day to see that transformation!!! We returned to the hotel for dinner and devotional (and some free time where some people went to the beach or the pool). Our day ended with Dr. Bob giving us an excellent sermon about Moses' early life and talking about our relationship with God. Please continue to pray for us here as we continue to serve these villages and please pray that we continue to grow in our worship and relationship to God and to each other as a mission team!
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