Whew!!! Campaign week is over!!! Out of all of the medical campaigns that we have done this year, this one was probably the hardest for me. It seemed like there was an endless amount of work to be done and most definitely not enough people. Poor Rachel was in the pharmacy quite often by herself, but sometimes had help from others. Jenessa and Wendy did triage for about 300 people per day with the help of a lady from Dr. Matson’s team during the week. We had, at most times, four medical students, and during part of each day Dr. Matson or Dr. Matthews would see patients. I, of course, was holed up in my dental room seeing anywhere from thirty to forty patients a day, more often thirty. Hanna ended up being the Jack-of-all-trades. The first day, she was helping me, the second day she was helping to get consent forms signed, then she ended up testing people for glasses, and finally on the last day she helped to pass out some of the 7,500 worm meds to the surrounding community. We were stretched pretty thin as a team this week, but everything got done that needed to be done!
During this week a team from Eastern Virginia Medical school came down to continue a research project that they have been working on with AMOR for the past three years. The ideal goal is to successfully de-parasite the community of Porto Carrero (where I live) and the adjoining neighborhood Nueva Amazonia. A part of Dr. Matson’s team would walk around the entire neighborhood, which is pretty huge, and survey the families in each home and then ask them for a fecal sample to be tested at the laboratory. Each day we would have people coming in to give us these samples and they would be stored in a trash bag until the end of the day when they would be taken to the lab.
It was such a super busy week! But probably one of the best weeks of my time here in Peru. The team that came down was so much fun to work with and to hang out with. During the week we also had 3 BIRTHS!!!!!! One on late Saturday night, the other early Sunday morning, and the third was born on Thursday! Wow! That was so much work and we only had one set of sheets and towels for birthing!!! We ended up using some of our own sheets and towels for the second birth since it was so close to the first. I´m convince that the full moon we´ve been having is responsible for this! And I´m pretty sure I won´t be an OB/GYN. Births are cool and all, and seeing the new born baby with his mom is awesome, but it´s not quite my thing.
One day while I was doing dental I had a lady come in and ask me to extract all of her teeth except for one. That was twelve teeth in total!!! She was pretty well aged, but I asked her if she was sure and why she wanted them out. She said they hurt her and she didn´t want them anymore. So, I took out eleven teeth, but I couldn´t see anything wrong with the twelfth one so I told her to keep it. lol. That was amazing. This week I also had quite a few five year olds who had teeth that need to be taken out. They were pretty rotted and a few of them couldn´t sleep at night because of the pain. One boy´s face was so swollen that I had to put him on antibiotics and have him come back later in the week. Usually the little ones are very hard to reason with, but all of the young kids I had this week were really brave!!!
All in all this week was amazing. We were swamped with patients, our team was stretched thinner then we thought ever possible, we worked passed sundowm every day for eight days straight, but we survived and had a good time doing it. chau!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
A baby giving birth to a baby...
So we had another birth on friday night! It was really scary though. The girl was fifteen and had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Her baby almost suffocated! It was a baby having a baby, literally. We couldn´t get her to push hard enough and Cecilia explained to her the her baby would suffocate to death if she didn´t push. And then, since she was such a small little person, Cecilia had to cut her to make room for the baby, but every time she saw the scissors coming she stopped pushing. The cutting wouldn´t have hurt if she was pushing because of all of the chemicals and hormones, but she´s 15, she shouldn´t be doing this. The baby was in the birth canal for 45 minutes, which is extremely dangerous, and when he popped out, por fin, he was completely blue and he definately had more of an alien head than the first baby. We ended up taking the mom and baby to the hospital because we needed to make sure he was okay and the mom tore really bad, but she wouldn´t sit still so that Cecilia could suture her back up so the hospital had to sedate her. Bad deal. We got the baby to cry pretty strongly, and we finally got him warm, but his extremities were still cold when they left. And then the umbilical cord was super fragil and tore really close to the skin, so we panicked a little because he could have bled to death if we hadn´t of been able to clamp it. Cecilia had to clamp it pretty close to the skin, so it´s gonna be painful for the baby and his belly button will probably be messed up. She was just too young. She had no idea how to give birth and how important it was to push! She seemed to want to give up every time it started to hurt a little. As a result her baby was very close to having died. I hope everything turns out okay. The dad was 17 or 18. Wowzers.
Saturday we didn´t end up being able to go to church because the road was impassable, but it ended up being a good thing because a family ended up coming to the clinic for church and steph had had a really good devotional that seemed to peak their interest a lot. It was along the lines of why you should be a christian type stuff. Then, we had lunch with one of our neighbors and then we walked to another neighbors and talked to them a while and they gave us curichi and 3 baby chicks. Unfortunately, the kitchen door got left open last night and pili ate the baby chicks. I feel really bad because they were a gift! We just got them and couldn´t keep them safe for one night. But I guess a dog is a dog. We also got another puppy last night! We named her lady after Lady and the Tramp, her parents are like toy poodle size, so right now she´s a month old and is about the size of a newborn rottweiler. lol. She slept with me last night, and she was starving, but she´s a little young to be eating real food. I got her to eat some mushy dog food, but she still needs milk. I´ll probably buy her some today in Pucallpa.
Saturday we didn´t end up being able to go to church because the road was impassable, but it ended up being a good thing because a family ended up coming to the clinic for church and steph had had a really good devotional that seemed to peak their interest a lot. It was along the lines of why you should be a christian type stuff. Then, we had lunch with one of our neighbors and then we walked to another neighbors and talked to them a while and they gave us curichi and 3 baby chicks. Unfortunately, the kitchen door got left open last night and pili ate the baby chicks. I feel really bad because they were a gift! We just got them and couldn´t keep them safe for one night. But I guess a dog is a dog. We also got another puppy last night! We named her lady after Lady and the Tramp, her parents are like toy poodle size, so right now she´s a month old and is about the size of a newborn rottweiler. lol. She slept with me last night, and she was starving, but she´s a little young to be eating real food. I got her to eat some mushy dog food, but she still needs milk. I´ll probably buy her some today in Pucallpa.
Happy Valentine´s Day!
Blog February 14, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day! All in all, not really that spectacular of a day, but here Valentine’s Day is also known as Dia de Amistad, Friendship Day. So, if you don’t have a significant other, it is a day to celebrate your friendships. I must admit that today I had an excess of chocolate and I watched the chick flick of all chick flicks, “The Notebook”. It’s been raining pretty hard every night here since Saturday night, which results in us not having very many patients because the roads can be almost impassable if you get enough rain. Our home right now at km 8 has turned itself into a lake, and that makes for very interesting trips to the bathroom which sits at the back of our property. It is a true test of balance and your ability to jump over the raging creeks, in the dark. I’ve managed not to fall yet, but the day is coming, I just know it! The good thing about the rain is that it keeps things a lot cooler around here. It just makes it more difficult to travel. I only had one patient today for dental. A cute little man who needed one tooth and four roots pulled out. By the time I was done he didn’t have much more in his mouth. Sometime this week we are supposed to have a birth with a 15 year-old girl who is having her first baby. I’m a little nervous about it because she is so young, but the sonogram she brought us looks really good. That’s all for this week!
Happy Valentine’s Day! All in all, not really that spectacular of a day, but here Valentine’s Day is also known as Dia de Amistad, Friendship Day. So, if you don’t have a significant other, it is a day to celebrate your friendships. I must admit that today I had an excess of chocolate and I watched the chick flick of all chick flicks, “The Notebook”. It’s been raining pretty hard every night here since Saturday night, which results in us not having very many patients because the roads can be almost impassable if you get enough rain. Our home right now at km 8 has turned itself into a lake, and that makes for very interesting trips to the bathroom which sits at the back of our property. It is a true test of balance and your ability to jump over the raging creeks, in the dark. I’ve managed not to fall yet, but the day is coming, I just know it! The good thing about the rain is that it keeps things a lot cooler around here. It just makes it more difficult to travel. I only had one patient today for dental. A cute little man who needed one tooth and four roots pulled out. By the time I was done he didn’t have much more in his mouth. Sometime this week we are supposed to have a birth with a 15 year-old girl who is having her first baby. I’m a little nervous about it because she is so young, but the sonogram she brought us looks really good. That’s all for this week!
Monday, February 14, 2011
The life of a 2 year old
Surgery must be one of the most amazing things to be witness to, let alone be able to assist in a procedure! I had my first opportunity to assist in a surgery today! There was a little girl who came to our clinic that was having problems breathing because of a tumor that was obstructing her airway. It was a very sad case. She is two years old, and she needed this surgery to remove the tumor, but her family did not have the money to pay for this surgery. It was vitally important because otherwise it would eventually close off her entire airway and she would die. Among the eight of us missionaries, we came up with the $300 dollars that it would cost for the surgery. The surgeon we found is a specialist in the head and neck area, and he agreed to do the surgery at a cheaper price. The only thing that we paid for was the anesthesia and the cost of using a room for surgery. Before the surgery, I was elected to be the surgeon’s assistant, which in and of itself was pretty cool but terrifying at the same time. They sedated Celeste a little bit before they brought her back to put her under the anesthesia. She had been in the hospital for 10 days previously, so she definitely had a healthy fear of anyone in the medical profession, and she fought pretty good when you came near her. When they brought her back into the room, I was the only person who she recognized and so I had the responsibility of keeping her calm while they tried to find a vein large enough for the IV. After she was asleep they used an instrument to spread her mouth wide and the doctor began the surgery. I didn’t do very much during the surgery, but I did hold the tongue back so that he could see, and I was holding the suction to keep the area as blood free as possible. It was pretty cool to sit there and watch that. The hardest part came when Celeste started to wake up. She was very disoriented, confused, and scared. Her mom was looking in at her from outside the window, and she started crying because she didn’t know what was wrong and she couldn’t do anything for her baby. Celeste woke up crying strongly, and she threw up a little bit. When mom was finally allowed to come in, that helped a lot to calm Celeste down, and then after we were released we rushed the family to the clinic to administer medicine for the pain that Celeste would soon feel from the surgery. The surgeon pulled out a lot of tumor from that poor child´s neck. There was still a lot more to pull out, but he stopped because he thought it was cancerous, possibly lymphoma, and she really needed to go to Lima to get it taken care of. He took out enough for us to get it analyzed to see what it really is, but he´s pretty sure whatever he took out will grow back and she´ll have to go to Lima. For now, though, she can breathe better and mom doesn´t have to wake her up when she´s sleeping to make sure that she is breathing. We should get the results back today. Life seems so unfair to give a two-year-old a problem so difficult as this. She hasn´t been on this earth for very long and she´s already fighting for her life. We´re praying that everything turns out, and hopefully she doesn´t have to go to Lima because I don´t know where the family would get the money for all of that care.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Babies and such
January 11, 2011
I woke up with my back aching like it usually does after a long day of doing extractions. Lol. I couldn’t do it for a living, but for now dental is okay. There were two screaming children and a crying child. My worst nightmare when it comes to doing an extraction. I got a little bit of anesthesia into the two children before they starting screaming, but the poke of the needle was too much for them. I felt really bad. I tried to make it hurt as little as possible, but they were scared to start out with. Tomorrow, their parents are going to bring them back and hopefully I can try a different technique that might hurt less. Today, in total, there were 38 cleanings and 10 extractions. I couldn’t have done it today without Rebecca’s help with the cleanings. Everyone is starting to get tired, and by the end of the week we are all going to just crash! One of the little boys that I met yesterday came back today to give me a little flower and a small vile of perfume. A little bit later, he asked me to be his godmother. At first I didn’t understand the word for grandmother, and I told him so, and he went to get someone who would understand him. I felt so honored that he would ask, but it would be impossible since I live in the states and I kind of think that a godmother should have known you for a little longer than one day. I had a second little boy decide that I was going to be his godmother too. Hehe.
January 14, 2011
I cut my finger yesterday trying to open up a vile to prepare a shot for someone. It slashed right across the knuckle on my middle finger. Hanna had to do dental for me today. She was so awesome! I know she was really nervous, and I talked her through the morning extractions, but she had it down to a science for the afternoon! She did 13 or 14 patients, and on my longest day this week, I think I only did 15. Praise the Lord that she trained with us or there wouldn’t have been dental today!
January 21, 2011
I saw a baby being born this morning!! And I helped with the delivery! I have never even seen a birth on an educational video in science class! The mom and the dad came around 5:30am this morning. We were still sleeping, but they managed to wake us up with a “Doctora, doctora!” and a “oooo!” The mom had been having contractions all night, and when Cecilia had seen her yesterday she told her to come when she was having three contractions within ten minutes. We waited a total of about two hours for little Diamela to make her entrance into the world. The mother also has a five-year-old son, which made this her second child. The parents didn’t know the sex of the baby, but I guess the son told his mom yesterday that it was going to be a girl. And it was. The first thing we did was to sit the mother in the birthing chair, and while Cecilia checked the cervix, Rachel and I started getting the Consultorio room ready for the birth and Rachel also attempted to get an IV started in between contractions. Rachel had a little bit of a hard time because the contractions were starting to come faster and harder. I boiled water, haha, just like you read about in the Little House on the Prairie type books. The mom was a very strong lady! It was and wasn’t what I expected to see at a birth. During the contractions she didn’t ever scream or cry out, but once, and it was more like a grunt. She was obviously in pain, but you wouldn’t ever know how much pain she was in. All of the things I observed, of course, are coming through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what it is like to give birth. Since it was going to be another hour before the baby came we started getting ready for the day, brushing our teeth and stuff and I decided to eat a granola bar because I was starving and I remembered my dad saying that you should eat something before a surgery to help nausea, and I thought that would apply here. I definitely did not want to miss out on this! The contractions soon became one or two every minute and they were coming A LOT stronger than before. Pretty soon it was time for her to start pushing, and very soon after we saw a little tuft of hair. Within three pushes una mujercita, Diamela Lisbeth Falcón Barrera made her appearance in the world at 7:59am on January 21, 2011, weighing 3.800 kg, and 50 cm long. Quickly, we moved to making sure she was breathing, and I was responsible for using a bulb syringe to suck out all of the baby gunk out of her mouth and nose. It was a little nerve-wrecking because after the first try, she didn’t cry, so I suctioned stuff out of her throat a second and third time and she still wasn’t crying! She started to turn a little blue and finally after the fourth try she let out a small cry. That small cry quickly got stronger as we carried her over to the table to clean her off after cutting the umbilical cord. Rachel and I set to cleaning her up while Cecilia waited for the placenta. The baby gunk didn’t come off of Diamela very easily. We spent quite awhile cleaning her up and finally we were able to dress her and present her to mom and dad. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! I know it hurts a lot, but what a miracle and what an experience. God designed us in a truly marvelous way!
I woke up with my back aching like it usually does after a long day of doing extractions. Lol. I couldn’t do it for a living, but for now dental is okay. There were two screaming children and a crying child. My worst nightmare when it comes to doing an extraction. I got a little bit of anesthesia into the two children before they starting screaming, but the poke of the needle was too much for them. I felt really bad. I tried to make it hurt as little as possible, but they were scared to start out with. Tomorrow, their parents are going to bring them back and hopefully I can try a different technique that might hurt less. Today, in total, there were 38 cleanings and 10 extractions. I couldn’t have done it today without Rebecca’s help with the cleanings. Everyone is starting to get tired, and by the end of the week we are all going to just crash! One of the little boys that I met yesterday came back today to give me a little flower and a small vile of perfume. A little bit later, he asked me to be his godmother. At first I didn’t understand the word for grandmother, and I told him so, and he went to get someone who would understand him. I felt so honored that he would ask, but it would be impossible since I live in the states and I kind of think that a godmother should have known you for a little longer than one day. I had a second little boy decide that I was going to be his godmother too. Hehe.
January 14, 2011
I cut my finger yesterday trying to open up a vile to prepare a shot for someone. It slashed right across the knuckle on my middle finger. Hanna had to do dental for me today. She was so awesome! I know she was really nervous, and I talked her through the morning extractions, but she had it down to a science for the afternoon! She did 13 or 14 patients, and on my longest day this week, I think I only did 15. Praise the Lord that she trained with us or there wouldn’t have been dental today!
January 21, 2011
I saw a baby being born this morning!! And I helped with the delivery! I have never even seen a birth on an educational video in science class! The mom and the dad came around 5:30am this morning. We were still sleeping, but they managed to wake us up with a “Doctora, doctora!” and a “oooo!” The mom had been having contractions all night, and when Cecilia had seen her yesterday she told her to come when she was having three contractions within ten minutes. We waited a total of about two hours for little Diamela to make her entrance into the world. The mother also has a five-year-old son, which made this her second child. The parents didn’t know the sex of the baby, but I guess the son told his mom yesterday that it was going to be a girl. And it was. The first thing we did was to sit the mother in the birthing chair, and while Cecilia checked the cervix, Rachel and I started getting the Consultorio room ready for the birth and Rachel also attempted to get an IV started in between contractions. Rachel had a little bit of a hard time because the contractions were starting to come faster and harder. I boiled water, haha, just like you read about in the Little House on the Prairie type books. The mom was a very strong lady! It was and wasn’t what I expected to see at a birth. During the contractions she didn’t ever scream or cry out, but once, and it was more like a grunt. She was obviously in pain, but you wouldn’t ever know how much pain she was in. All of the things I observed, of course, are coming through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what it is like to give birth. Since it was going to be another hour before the baby came we started getting ready for the day, brushing our teeth and stuff and I decided to eat a granola bar because I was starving and I remembered my dad saying that you should eat something before a surgery to help nausea, and I thought that would apply here. I definitely did not want to miss out on this! The contractions soon became one or two every minute and they were coming A LOT stronger than before. Pretty soon it was time for her to start pushing, and very soon after we saw a little tuft of hair. Within three pushes una mujercita, Diamela Lisbeth Falcón Barrera made her appearance in the world at 7:59am on January 21, 2011, weighing 3.800 kg, and 50 cm long. Quickly, we moved to making sure she was breathing, and I was responsible for using a bulb syringe to suck out all of the baby gunk out of her mouth and nose. It was a little nerve-wrecking because after the first try, she didn’t cry, so I suctioned stuff out of her throat a second and third time and she still wasn’t crying! She started to turn a little blue and finally after the fourth try she let out a small cry. That small cry quickly got stronger as we carried her over to the table to clean her off after cutting the umbilical cord. Rachel and I set to cleaning her up while Cecilia waited for the placenta. The baby gunk didn’t come off of Diamela very easily. We spent quite awhile cleaning her up and finally we were able to dress her and present her to mom and dad. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen! I know it hurts a lot, but what a miracle and what an experience. God designed us in a truly marvelous way!
a couple weeks worth of blog. :)
January 3, 2011
After two weeks in the states for Christmas, I arrived back in Pucallpa this morning around 5:15am. It’s now 9:30pm and I haven’t slept since 11am yesterday morning. I’ve had a mini naps in the airport and on the planes, but that’s about it. Coming back is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve really missed family and Jacob a lot, and in a lot of respects going home made it worse. I’m so grateful to have been able to go home, but I don’t think I would advise other SMs to do the same thing; it’s too hard to leave the states again. I’m okay with being back, and will be interested to see how this semester goes. I lost my debit card today! Thankfully, I was able to cancel it before someone was able to withdraw any money from it. It’s going to be a little hard to live on twenty bucks for the next three weeks though. Here goes Peru, round 2!
January 4, 2011
We ate a regional food today, that is absolutely yummy! They call it Guanes (not sure on the spelling, but it’s spelled gwah-nays), and it is best described to be like a tamale except rice is used instead of the corn and it is wrapped in a banana leaf with chicken and a greek olive in the center. It has to be one of my favorites that I have tried so far. First, they cook the rice and then mix it with garlic and other seasonings. After that they wrap the rice, along with an olive and a piece of chicken, in the banana leaf and boil it the rest of the way. Que rico! I spent a good majority of today cleaning up the dental instruments and figuring out what supplies need replenished before the big medical campaign next week. There’s quite a bit missing, and since I lost my debit card as soon as I got back In Peru, I won’t be able to help replenish is. Haha. I left my debit card in an ATM in the Pucallpa airport, and when I went back to retrieve it, it wasn’t to be found. Fortunately, I was able to get it cancelled, but for the next three weeks I’ll be rather poor until my new card gets here. Rachel has been very kind, and will be spotting me for food until I have money again. We will start the campaign next week with eight of the original eleven missionaries. Laura was only planning on being here until January and then the two boys Caleb and Chris have decided it would be best for them to not come back. We’re going to miss them terribly! This next week will be quite the test of endurance. Praying for God’s strength.
January 5, 2011
We came back to Km 38 today on our day off. I found a lot of supplies in the boxes here for the clinic next week. I’m a little worried about next week just because I’m the only one from the original dental team. It won’t be too bad though, because Caleb and Chris taught Jonathan a little bit about dental and Hanna trained with us at the very beginning. I got a message from one of my professors today, and I possibly have a job next semester! That’s good news, I was a little worried about finding a job next year with so many students at Southern competing for jobs. The rest of the day today, Rachel made pumpkin cookies and bread. (yum!) And we just hung out the rest of the day.
January 10, 2011
Today wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be. We started our medical campaign this week at kilometer 6, in a little village called La Gran Via de Manantay or Los Mangos. This campaign is different than other campaigns that we have done in the past. This time we have an evangelistic team that will be going to the houses of the people here talking to them and offering Bible studies. In the evenings we have meetings for the kids and for the adults separately. We didn’t have a great turn out tonight of adults, but there were at least sixty kids. I guess that this is how campaigns at AMOR Projects are suppose to be. We use the medical campaign to get to know the people and that way they feel more comfortable coming to the meetings in the evenings with us. The kids are going to be really fun to do VBS with. We are going to be doing VBS for about 3 weeks with them, I hope that we don’t run out of activities for them! This week will probably be one of my most prayer filled weeks that I’ve ever had. I’m really scared that something will happen while I’m doing an extraction that I can’t fix. Fortunately, Dr. Matthews can pull out pretty much any tooth, so if I get stuck he can help me. I’m tired at the end of the day, but I’m not worn out or super stressed. Praise God that today went well!
After two weeks in the states for Christmas, I arrived back in Pucallpa this morning around 5:15am. It’s now 9:30pm and I haven’t slept since 11am yesterday morning. I’ve had a mini naps in the airport and on the planes, but that’s about it. Coming back is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve really missed family and Jacob a lot, and in a lot of respects going home made it worse. I’m so grateful to have been able to go home, but I don’t think I would advise other SMs to do the same thing; it’s too hard to leave the states again. I’m okay with being back, and will be interested to see how this semester goes. I lost my debit card today! Thankfully, I was able to cancel it before someone was able to withdraw any money from it. It’s going to be a little hard to live on twenty bucks for the next three weeks though. Here goes Peru, round 2!
January 4, 2011
We ate a regional food today, that is absolutely yummy! They call it Guanes (not sure on the spelling, but it’s spelled gwah-nays), and it is best described to be like a tamale except rice is used instead of the corn and it is wrapped in a banana leaf with chicken and a greek olive in the center. It has to be one of my favorites that I have tried so far. First, they cook the rice and then mix it with garlic and other seasonings. After that they wrap the rice, along with an olive and a piece of chicken, in the banana leaf and boil it the rest of the way. Que rico! I spent a good majority of today cleaning up the dental instruments and figuring out what supplies need replenished before the big medical campaign next week. There’s quite a bit missing, and since I lost my debit card as soon as I got back In Peru, I won’t be able to help replenish is. Haha. I left my debit card in an ATM in the Pucallpa airport, and when I went back to retrieve it, it wasn’t to be found. Fortunately, I was able to get it cancelled, but for the next three weeks I’ll be rather poor until my new card gets here. Rachel has been very kind, and will be spotting me for food until I have money again. We will start the campaign next week with eight of the original eleven missionaries. Laura was only planning on being here until January and then the two boys Caleb and Chris have decided it would be best for them to not come back. We’re going to miss them terribly! This next week will be quite the test of endurance. Praying for God’s strength.
January 5, 2011
We came back to Km 38 today on our day off. I found a lot of supplies in the boxes here for the clinic next week. I’m a little worried about next week just because I’m the only one from the original dental team. It won’t be too bad though, because Caleb and Chris taught Jonathan a little bit about dental and Hanna trained with us at the very beginning. I got a message from one of my professors today, and I possibly have a job next semester! That’s good news, I was a little worried about finding a job next year with so many students at Southern competing for jobs. The rest of the day today, Rachel made pumpkin cookies and bread. (yum!) And we just hung out the rest of the day.
January 10, 2011
Today wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be. We started our medical campaign this week at kilometer 6, in a little village called La Gran Via de Manantay or Los Mangos. This campaign is different than other campaigns that we have done in the past. This time we have an evangelistic team that will be going to the houses of the people here talking to them and offering Bible studies. In the evenings we have meetings for the kids and for the adults separately. We didn’t have a great turn out tonight of adults, but there were at least sixty kids. I guess that this is how campaigns at AMOR Projects are suppose to be. We use the medical campaign to get to know the people and that way they feel more comfortable coming to the meetings in the evenings with us. The kids are going to be really fun to do VBS with. We are going to be doing VBS for about 3 weeks with them, I hope that we don’t run out of activities for them! This week will probably be one of my most prayer filled weeks that I’ve ever had. I’m really scared that something will happen while I’m doing an extraction that I can’t fix. Fortunately, Dr. Matthews can pull out pretty much any tooth, so if I get stuck he can help me. I’m tired at the end of the day, but I’m not worn out or super stressed. Praise God that today went well!
Monday, December 6, 2010
December is here! But it´s still ninety degrees...
On Saturday we had church for the second time. It was definitely a much bigger group than last Sabbath! We had about seventeen kids, around ten adults, and five teenagers. It made for a very fun kids Sabbath school. For the activity we taught the kids how to make a simple origami boat to go along with the story of Jesus calming the sea in Mark 4:35. Church went well and then afterwards we went to our friend Gady’s house because she invited us to come over for her church’s 4th year anniversary at Ivan Sikic, which is the church in the area where we did our first big medical campaign at the beginning of October. That afternoon they held a concert with 2 other churches to celebrate, and during the concert they asked if us Americans would like to sing too. Well, we did pretty good to come up with six songs on the spot. Lol. Then Sunday we returned to help them with a benefit that they were planning for their church. They had soccer games, and each church brought a soccer team that put in 10 soles per team and they also sold lunch to help raise money. It was good to see our friends again, they are always a fun group.
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