This report is for Thursday, February 23, 2023, Day six of the mission and day 3 of the clinic. The word for today is FRUIT. That is appropriate, given the excellent fresh fruit we enjoy here, but the kind of fruit I am referring to is spiritual fruit which is a direct manifestation of living “in the spirit.” The related scripture (of course), comes from Galatians 3:22-23 which says, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The third day of the clinic is always “hump day” (even though this is a four-day clinic week), and the team is always noticeably more tired and grumpy (yes, we too get that way). That is when we come to rely on our spiritual fruit to guide us through the times when we might say or do something we would regret later just because we are tired. We trust the spirit to guide us so that we treat each of the patients coming to the clinic and each of the other staff as we would want to be treated, even when we do not feel like it. The mood today, as I write this, is more subdued but the clinic is running like a well-oiled machine. We received an infusion of additional medications today to stock up for the rest of the clinic. The sun is shining, she sky is blue, the clouds sparse, and the neighborhood roosters crowing. I feel more serene and at peace here than I do almost anywhere else. Today, we realized we had a volunteer in optical, Sierra, a beautiful young lady of 17 with Mayan heritage, who has a congenital cataract in her left eye; it is obviously opaque to a penlight. We are going to try to find her an affordable way to get the cataract removed. I was also told by Karla a story from the optical clinic last year in which a man, nearly blind, came and got a pair of glasses which corrected his vision amazingly well. He thanked the team members as tears ran down his cheeks. Stories like these abound and there are too many to tell in detail for the week; in fact, I sure I have not heard them all. I was privileged yesterday to be able to return to the Fuerzas Unidas neighborhood on a hillside near Tegucigalpa where this mission began, the Fuerzas Unidas neighborhood. I met with the new pastor, a delightful young woman named Leidy (with a toddler), and the clinic nurse there, Reina, who I have met before. It was a marvelous experience to hear their stories of success with the patients of the clinic (FUMC Frankfort church supports), to feel the mountain breeze on my face, the gushing of many past mission memories, and to see the place where the mission all began. There are now planters in front of the church and an image of a single rose I took there is included in the images for today. One of the dentists had a difficult extraction as the patient had a retained tooth fragment. A much more complicated referral to an oral surgeon at the university was anticipated but finally the tooth fragment was extracted, much to the relief of the patient, her son, and the dentist. Please enjoy the new photos which demonstrate the clinic functioning, the people we work with and the environment we work in. Have a blessed day. Tomorrow is Friday, the last day of our clinic and we will be stopping early to break down and store the equipment. It will be a hectic day and we will be leaving the hotel Saturday morning about 9 AM to begin the trip home which will not end until 9:30 Saturday evening, (2/25) in Louisville. The day’s statistics are: Dental patients: 63; Medical Patients: 197; Prescriptions: 718 and Optical patients: 91. Roger
Click here for a link to today’s images: FRANKFORT HONDURAS MISSION PHOTOS 2023 DAY 6 | Flickr