2017 Sunday in Progresso and Power Outage at Hospital

Sunday is another mission day for the teams. Progresso is the remote village where the team was sent to serve patients. Patients from the age of tres anos, three year’s old to ninety three. When we arrived we drove to a beautiful lagoon that has both river and sea access. Progresso takes some time to get to, as we have to cross a four vehicle ferry and travel on bumpy dusty roads. We picked up translators in a fourth van and the first two vans just made it onto a ferry load with the next two needing to wait for the ferry to be hand cranked across and then back. There were seven cars waiting to go the other direction. We have not been here for many years. River Hills Church in Cincinnati stopped coming this year after being trained by us in 2008 and coming for all those years. This was our chance to pick up one of their villages and travel the ferry. We chose to do so on Sunday, because there is less bus and business travel.

When we arrived there were 97 people signed up to be served at the clinic. As the day goes on, no doubt more will be added. The first task is to get the pharmacy set up, and the doctor’s stations and the nurses stations along with the intake area. Our support team is tasked with keeping the patients flowing to the nurses and then the doctors so that there are not long lags between patients.

Once we are set up we begin each day with asking the people to pray with us. Our team all walks over and joins in with the prayer. Dr. Moody lead this morning and offered that if everyone would say The Lord’s Prayer in either English or Spanish, we could pray together in that way. English is the “official” language in Belize, but many stop talking English once they leave school.

The Surgery Team is having a great day in deed. It seems that they are right on schedule. They have a planned power outage at 3:40 PM for some reason, so they are making sure that no one is in surgery at that moment. They will resume and hope to be home for dinner at 7 PM. Also, the Village Team are determined to leave on time, as they arrived at 8 PM after working in the dark the last hour and traveling 45 minutes in the dark for a late dinner.

We received encouraging news that Gilbeto Chi, who we helped to reach the United States for cleft palate surgery along with a full evaluation of needs at Children’s Hospital was alive and well. His mother now lives in Libertad. That is a different village from Louisville where he lived in the past. He is going to travel to have surgery in St. Louis Missouri we hear. He has a need to have the bones in his back straightened.

Last night we said hello to a visiting doctor and his wife from Los Angeles California. He plans to bring the first ENT team to Belmopan Belize.

It was encouraging that our work here is multiplying in a whole new area of Belize. Dr. Osborne found us on line. We are calling these new groups and people the Google girls or Google guys. We have several key people on our trip, that without their finding us on Google searches, we would be in a very short position for staffing.

Thanks for reading, we hope to add some more pictures, but the school does not have internet and the cafe’ where we blog at this moment, a small non descript building with 8 booths and a snack shop next door, is very slow to upload photos from our phone shots.This is just another illustration of how hard it is to get a good education in Belize without some help. We are inviting some students to come and speak to us about the scholarship programs on Monday night. Below is the information we are looking at together. Anyone can sponsor a Belize child to stay in high school!