Highlights,
Regrets, and Miracles
Margaret Morford
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
It
is Thursday and I am very tired…but it is a good kind of tired. No one got deadly sick on this trip, although
some of our team saw patients between bouts of sickness. God opened so many opportunities for us to
serve and we were fortunate to be present for the numerous miracles He performed
on this trip.
Saturday – Los Flores
On
the way to Los Flores (the first clinic day), our bus driver, Henry, stopped
half way up a mountain side on a dirt
road. He’d looked at his gages and
realized he had lost the pressure in the brakes. Most people don’t notice those types of
things until they press on the brakes and realize they don’t have any. If he
hadn’t casually reviewed his dash board, we would have discovered we had no
brakes coming down the other side of the mountain. Thank you for all the prayers regarding our safety. Truly God’s intervention!
At
Los Flores, three of our team members walked up the hill past the dental clinic
to the local market (la pulperia – think 7-11 in a closet). One of them was Pat Towery, who is quit tall
and muscled. They met an elderly lady
along the way (we think at least 80) who was not even 5 feet tall and thin as a
rail. Some pretty aggressive dogs
pursued them on the way up the hill.
When Pat and his group exited the pulperia, she was waiting with a huge
stick to walk them back and fend off the dogs because she was so grateful for
the care she had gotten in the village.
Try to picture Pat with his tiny protector looking after him!
Sunday – Cofradia
In
addition to the huge clinic we held here, where local churches brought in busloads
of people, Deb Duty held a women’s group for the local women teaching them a
biblical perspective on self-image. This
is her second year to do this and more women came this year than last year. There is a great need for this as the role of
rural women is very hard here. Doug Duty
held the first men’s group and discussed helping you wife (not a normal concept
for Honduran men) and serving your local church. All the attendees were eager to learn more
scripture and Deb and Doug filled them up!
Monday – Guimaca
If
you haven’t figured out by now, this was the largest and longest clinic we
had. While we saw 692 patients, we were
unable to see about 125 people, who had come from the mountains. They were unable to get in line until 11:00 in
the morning because of how far they had to travel. (The line had started forming about 6:00 that
morning.) They stood in the sun all day
hoping for a chance to see someone and we had to turn them away when we finally
closed the gate at 5:15 PM in order to finish by 7:30 that night. Several women begged at the gates for care for
their children and Deb Duty continued to administer parasite medicine through
the bars to everyone that wanted it.
Despite how tired we were that memory continues to haunt us all.
Tuesday- Los Charcos
We
were blessed to have on our team Donna Trotter and Todd Warren who work in
physical therapy and orthopedics back home.
This year we held two physical therapy clinics where Donna and Todd left
our group and did intensive work with 31 handicapped patients we encountered. Los Charcos has a beautiful facility that is
very clean and staffed by very caring people, but who have no training at all
in how to help their patients. Donna and
Todd found them very willing to learn and provided some on-going instructions
for how to help their patients. God
provided exactly what was missing and what they needed on this trip.
We
give out hundreds of pounds of food in each village. Here we encountered two teenage girls (15 and
17 years old) each with a baby each.
They arrived after we had run through the food. Doug Woods approached some of the team
members and they emptied their back packs of all the meals and snacks they had
brought with them for the day. We were
able to send the girls home with two grocery sacks full of food. If you are thinking loaves and fishes, we
were too!
This
was the site of our biggest miracle. We
had not been back to this community in 12 years, but suddenly they made a
request for us to come. We arrived to do
our usual clinic. Late in the afternoon,
a young woman came with her baby, who was severely dehydrated and somewhat
unresponsive. She had walked an hour and
a half carrying her 16 month old baby to get her some care. We happen to have two medical professionals
on our team that specialize in babies and children. They managed to get two IV lines into the
child in order to put 20 plus bottles of saline. I was told by one of the nurses that it is
almost impossible to get an IV into a dehydrated infant, much less two of
them! Susan Davis, one of the infant
specialists, told the group later that she was only able to do this because she
had some very special catheters that she found in her backpack – which she
normally wouldn’t have packed - that she didn’t remember packing! We took up a collection to pay for bus rides
for the entire family to/from the nearest hospital (2 hours away), as well as
to buy food for the family. We
transported them to the nearest bus stop and we are awaiting news of the
child’s condition even as we are leaving Honduras. We will post the outcome on this blog as soon
as we know. All the medical
professionals agree that the baby was in severe distress and probably would
have died in the next day or so. Only
God could bring together so many things that had to work so perfectly in order
to intervene in this baby’s life!
We
are now at the airport in Tegucigalpa WAITing to go home. Everyone is upbeat, but ready to go. However, as we bid goodbye to all our local
translator and helpers, you can hear the words over and over, “See you next
year!” So I will close by thanking those
of you at home that donated, volunteered, sponsored, pill packed, wrote us
encouraging notes along the way and most important of all, prayed for us
throughout this journey, “THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! See you next year!”
Notes from a Newbie: We
don’t have any more Newbies. They are
all veterans of their first mission trip to Honduras!