This report is for Wednesday, February 22, 2023, Day five of the mission and Day two of the clinic. The word for today is LOVE. How could we go on a mission trip and not embrace love? I Corinthians 13:13 tells us that, “These three things remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” We are told by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-40 that the entire “law and prophets” (the Old Testament) is summarized by loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. The thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians also clearly says that all the works we do are worthless unless they are done with love as the motivation. We, therefore, have to continuously check ourselves and make sure we are not just going through the motions but are motived by love, even when love is not easy. Personally, I find the folks we minister to at the clinic here in the Tierra Blanca neighborhood easy to love. In the past, however, we have ministered to gang leaders and others who were not so easy to love, but we attempted to demonstrate God’s love and message to them as equally as those who are easy to love. Today has been very busy with almost 200 medical patients registered by early afternoon and the pharmacy was overwhelmed. Dental and optical were as busy as they could be. An excellent lunch of beef stew and rice was prepared for the team by the kitchen staff (see pics). The children continue to be beautiful and amazing; I feel I can’t get enough photos of them. The old folks are also remarkable for the endurance and determination that is required to live in such difficult circumstances; the lines on their faces tell the stories of their lives. Patients are required to go through patient education before receiving their prescriptions, so they learn basic nutrition, sanitation, the importance of clean water, physical hygiene, and dental hygiene. In today’s pictures, you will notice Dr. Patricia talking to a young man about his leg injury; he has had two fractures from two different injuries. We obtained crutches for him, and he will return tomorrow with his records so that he can be referred to the hospital for orthopedic care as he continues to have severe pain with weight bearing. Additional images will show Karla’s mom, a delightful lady who is also the grandmother of Alexandra; she is seen with them, by herself and in a dental chair. We were delighted today by a visit from Denis, the lay pastor at the Catholic Church from the Fuerzas Unidas neighborhood where we previously worked and were we support a clinic. We hope to visit that clinic at Fuerzas Unidas tomorrow. The tank on top of the church ran out of water as we only bought enough on Monday to get by until the public water was due to be turned on. In fact, it was turned on, but it began bubbling up in the street where a pipe was broken instead of filling the tank so another load from the water truck was ordered. Never short of surprises, we were blessed today by a visit from the Honduras College of Dentistry who came to film a documentary about how to do a dental mission to show to other teams coming to Honduras. Fernando, who did the video documentary which is linked in the Pre-Mission Announcement for this mission, came today to do a video documentary of this week’s clinic which I will post in the future. There were 190 medical patients seen today, 57 dental patients seen, 97optical patients seen and 757 prescriptions filled. Amazingly, the clinic is half over for the week; we anticipate two more productive days to complete the week. Today is Ash Wednesday so the team here wishes you a blessed beginning to Lent. Roger
Click here for a link to today’s images: FRANKFORT HONDURAS MISSION PHOTOS 2023 DAY 5 | Flickr