Medical clinic in La Escalera

Yesterday we partnered with a local clinic to put on a free medical clinic in the mountain village of La Escalera! It was great! The clinic brought 4 doctors and a team of nurses and pharmasists. We used some left over medicine from a team we had in June and combined it with the medicine that the clinic brought as well. Each patient passed through 4 stations - the nurses station, evangelism/encouragement/prayer station, the consultation with the DR and then to the pharmacy to get the medicine for free. We also had a group of dentists that saw about 25 patients and even did some teeth pulling! yikes :).

I really loved that we had a local pastor that we worked through - as well as the local school. So the pastor and his team worked to invited the people and prepare the school for the team. They even cleaned the schools bathrooms and put a sign on one designating it only for the medical team. And the school had no running water for a while now so they brought in 50 gallon drums and then bucket by bucket brought the water from the neighbors house to fill the drums so that the clinic and the outhouses and the kitchen would have water to use! This all may not sound like a lot - wow - a pastor providing bathrooms, toilet paper, and water - but this was a lot of work for him!

We are hoping that through this clinic that the 250 people that were served experienced the love of God and that they would begin to seek more of His hope and love by attending the church that helped us put this on.

Believe it or not it's pretty cold right now - in the 60's and up at the top of this mountain village it was cold! probably in the high 50's all morning - and these people waited in line for us from early morning on - most the ladies were in dresses or skirts with flip flops holding their babies close.

Sigel initiated playing soccer with the guys that were standing around waiting to be seen so he played soccer most of the morning when he wasn't needed to help. Madelyn wandered around visiting with all the kids in the line. Tristan and I didn't officially have a job (a first!) which was a neat experience - we organized getting it all set up but the church there did a great job at serving and being available for the clinic staff so Tristan and I did stuff like make and serve coffee to the team and wander around offering to lend a hand if needed.