Day three for The Surgery Team was spent doing 10 hernia repairs on patients who had waited years to find a source to perform their surgery. There are two surgeons and two operating rooms. But our team involves a dozen nurses and surgical support with four anesthesia doctors as well. While we cannot show the patients in surgery we can show the day they waited to see the doctors on Friday outside the hospital. 
Speaking of Friday, we had dinner that night at Corozo Blues Restaurant with 40 students in grades 7 to 10. Since 6 th grade is the last mandatory year in school many family’s cannot afford to send their children farther. We sponsor nearly 100 students at $350 per year to help keep them in school. That kind of money is beyond the reach of many families here. The students were all given bags with a logo and school supplies. They made some presentations to say thank you and we tried to meet them and encourage them during dinner. This has become one of our favorite nights. These particular students came from a remote agricultural school where they learn math and science and the business of making a profit as well.
Our Village Team had a successful day in San Narcisco seeing some 160 patients. Dave Heileman is a team of one. He came four years ago with us for an advance trip of only two days. He is an anesthesia machine repair recognition. Belize has six regions and five regional hospitals. Dave is visiting each hospital with over $20,000 in spare parts for these particular machines Dave is quite familiar with. He is working to help train the staff here that are tasked with maintaining surgery equipment so that all the surgeries are safe with their year round staff and our visiting teams. He traveled on four flights on Mayan Airlines to service the two machines at Southern Regional in Dangriga. Here he found a broken part that allowed a dangerous combination of two gasses at once. He just happened to have brought just the right part.
