Tuesday night, June 3, 2008

Sorry about not being in contact for a couple of days. Sunday morning, after a big breakfast of Nancy's hot pancakes, we were off to church at Monte Sion with Bro. Ricky preaching. Bro Ricky had a very good message and kept it to a quick 15 minutes even with Carlos translating. All went well until after church service ended and we were leaving. Carlos fainted and gave us all a scare. Apparently, (we've decided), he had a little bit of an upper respiratory infection and was a little dehydrated and just passed out after standing and talking for a bit. We got him back to Villa Milagro and went to town and bought an IV (you can do that here) and got some fluids in him. He was feeling better, but not well enough to travel with us Sunday afternoon to our next destination of Chancay, which is a 2 hour drive from here. We really missed him because he was one of our translators. Sunday afternoon we also picked up 2 more team members who joined us from California, Jack and Martha Swartz. It was good timing for them to come because Martha speaks fluent Spanish. This also made us 3 Martha's on the trip--Martha 1, Martha 2, and Martha 3...but I'm not sure which is which.



When we arrived in Chancay Sunday afternoon, we had a grand welcome of several children standing by the road holding signs to welcome us. We stayed at a private home of a friend of Larry Johnson's. This home is a "summer home" for his family to gather for get togethers and it was just right for our group. It was clean and had hot showers, which everyone welcomed after a long dusty ride. We worked in Chancay seeing children all day Monday and saw the adults all day today. We saw a total of 365 children yesterday and 250 adults today. We were very busy! Unfortunately, Martha Robertson got sick yesterday afternoon and today which meant we were even shorter on translators. Uncle Doyne had to give us his job as supervisor and pitch in to tranlate. We recruited Glenna to help see patients and Dr. Beller recruited Cindy and I think even Gretchen got in on pulling a few teeth. It was truly a team effort. Hope Spraggins and Karen Dowdle helped intertain the children, but unfortunately, Hope was not feeling well today and Karen winged it on her on. She did a great job. We've spread our teenage girl's all over the place and they have been a tremendous help. We put Jack Swartz in charge of eyeglassess and I believe he recruited Annie and Sydney to be his optical assistants. Leeanna from Hot Springs has helped in the dental office. Martha Miller and Sarah Cochran have helped keep Vicki sane in the pharmacy. David continues his quest to be the number uno Worminator in South America. We had just a bit of a problem with sleeping on Monday night as there were 2 roosters in the yard of the home we were staying in and apparently they have no sense of timing. They crowed all night long...everyone was just a bit on the cranky side when we got up Tuesday morning and we all had ideas about what to do with those roosters...from bringing in some hens to keep them busy to having chicken noodle soup for lunch to taking the down the street where they have the cock fights...don't know exactly what happened to those 2 birds, but we didn't hear a peep last night.

We saw some really sad problems in Chancay. We saw a young boy with a large growth on the inside of his right thigh that is about the size of a volley ball...Dr. Lambert feels it's probably a sarcoma and will continue growing. He desparately needs surgery. We saw a little 16 month old girl who had no muscle tone...could not hold up her head. Several other things easily taken care of back home in the states. We are all blessed to live where we live.

Have an early day at Matara tomorrow. Will try to post again tomorrow night. Am trying to get some pictures posted to photobucket.com--type in miraclevillage under search and you may have to type miraclevillage in again to find the album. It is the album marked Miracle Village--Medical Trip-May June 2008. I may not get comments posted tonight, but maybe you can enjoy the photos.