Yeah, the Internet stayed up long enough to get the daily report out!!!
Today we started to settle into the daily routine of mission. Of course, to define the daily routine of mission can be taken in a broad sense. Which means expect the unexpected and celebrate the routine moments. Today followed those thoughts. Take surgery for example. They expected to start at their normal time, but were bumped by a local surgeon in need of an operating room. It happens back home so it shouldn’t be a big surprise to find out there is a two hour wait. Then when they were going to check out another operating room the air pressure line blew off the wall as they came in. The air pressure is used to adjust the operating table height and other motions to accommodate surgeries. It scared the heck out of everyone.
The clinic team had their share of stories. There was the case of the man who couldn’t hear, but was cured. After a half hour of flushing his ear canals, he could hear again. Another challenge for the clinic was trying to explain that arthritis cannot be cured. They can ease the pain, but we don’t have a magic way to eliminate it. One area of surprise for the clinic team is the kids that come in to be treated. A common theme is how well the kids tolerate being treated for painful conditions. Whether being bandaged for a wound or sitting through a procedure, they remain calm and quiet. Maybe some tears, but they are tough kids.
Water With Blessings is still waiting for their buckets. When they went to the factory to purchase them, the factory was closed to do inventory. Tomorrow morning may be a mad dash to the factory for buckets for the training class later in the day. Oh, did I say the buckets still need to have the hole drilled in them? Construction was a little slow today. We spent the morning going to sites we built at last year. The area outside of Sucre is growing rapidly. It was hard to recognize some of the areas we worked at. One of the locations wasn’t recognized until we pulled up to the home. A great joy was to return to Martins home. We built a bano there last year. It looks great. Martin and his family welcomed us, and we celebrated the bano and how it has helped his family. The final piece for to day is the rain. It’s been raining all evening and the construction team will need their waders on in the morning.
Our Global Mission Sites
Sucre, Bolivia - Navajo Nation, Arizona - Bacolod and Borongan, Philippines - Kenya and Uganda, East Africa - Natural Disaster Recovery, USA,
"MissionX" High School Missions throughout the Joliet Diocese
Partnership in Mission is an outreach of the Office for Human Dignity
