Saturday - May 31, arrived in Asuncion, late due to a flight change (wouldn't be a mission trip without one of those), went straight to the hospital from the Airport.
Centro Medico Bautista. - Having just come from an overnight flight and another 2 hour flight from Sao Paulo to Asuncion, the adrenaline kicked in I guess and we did fine. This year it was short and sweet, tour of the new areas in the hospital and a short lunch with the usual speeches by various hospital staff. Lunch was good and the tours were also very well done. (I'll give a bit more info on the hospital later)
Sunday - June 1 - Almeida - Left hotel at 5 am, not much fun getting up so early (4 am) after a long two previous days but we survived. Had a 2.5/3 hour dri
ve to the clinic site. A church in the town of Almeida, this is an area that would have been very difficult to get to a few years ago (could have been a 6 - 7 hour drive) until the new "highway" went in. This was probably the least prepared of the places we went, but the people were very nice, the team was still feeling itself out a bit and so after a little bit of a rough start it smoothed out and we had a pretty good day. There is always supposed to be a strong evangelism side to the clinics with support from the local pastor and the chaplain from the Hospital but it was a bit amiss today. The team did really well, saw a good number of patients and had a pretty good day. I worked as a general facilitator - directed traffic - kept crowds moving etc.Monday - June 2 - Emboscada - Very poor area, a true mission church. The night before it had rained cats and dogs and so it was very muddy, so of course we had our first event. Its not a mission trip until the bus gets stuck in the mud, so we got
to check that one off our list, twice. The people were very nice and the local church folks were very involved, sometimes bad sometimes good, in this case very good. We had a really good day, the rain probably kept the crowd down a little bit but it was an area of a lot of need. Very gracious people. Worked in Eye Clinic and a couple of other areas as needed.Tuesday - June 3 - Mora Cue - Maybe one of the more unusual situations. The area was a little tight, the church compound was enclosed by a fence but the crowd seemed larger than usual. We had a very good crowd but it was a little hard to get the feel for the place. I worked in a couple of areas on this one, eye, facilitator and a little as translator etc. Eye clinic was out back under canopy, opthamologist inside, medical inside (the noise was pretty loud) the pharmacy was also inside the church so it was pretty tight at times when the crowds were not kept under control by the local church facilitators. Overall it was good though.
Wed - June 4 - Villa Industrial - Somewhat large church, lots of space for everyone. The crowds here were very mellow, not unusual for Paraguay, we had a g
ood day, no major stresses, other than the amount of people seen in eye clinic kept getting stretched out over the afternoon.I worked in eye clinic as facilitator and filled in a couple of other areas. Well run and organized clinic. It was a good day.
Thursday - June 5 - Yukyry - It took a bit of re-organizing once we got there but it all worked out in the end. This was probably the most stressful day (for me at least) The medical side was pretty basic and they finished pretty. The logistics for the eye clinic were just a bit weird so we couldn't really move people any faster than we were doing, so it dragged on and on and on. After about the umpteenth person from our team asked me how much longer it was going to be (it was still pretty early in the day) I kinda snapped, oh well, alls well that ends.....We saw some interesting cases that were going to need followup at the hospital in Asuncion. The particular case that really touched me was that of the 10 year old boy who couldn't see and his right eye had been removed and he desperately needed a prosthesis, this among others was very sad. Again this was a very poor area but the people were very gracious, as are most of the people of Paraguay. The local pastor kept adding people to the list of those to be seen in the eye clinic so it was a long day, even though we ended before the estimated time of 3:00 they had set for us.
Friday 0 June 6 - Centro Medico Bautista within the Hospital had kind of messed up the - This is the hardest one for me to sum up. We usually have huge (can be up to 600 people) crowds. We were told they would keep it to no more than 300 people so we had mentally prepared for the crowds but they did not materialize. A snafuannouncement there was going to be a clinic that day so we only saw a third of what we were prepared to see. The eye clinic saw its share, about 130, but medical took it pretty easy. The hospital had staffed up, making about 10 of their doctors available, oh well. I wasn't around much, I went to the TAM (Brazilian airline) offices to make sure we had confirmed tickets for the trip home. Not a bad decision but it led to some other stuff that happened back at the hospital that I wish I had been there for.
Friday PM and Saturday - Traveled to Iguazu falls - 5 / 6 hour bus ride but well worth it. Got to interact with 4 of the hospital residents that had been with us all week, it was good trip overall. The falls as usual were amazing, definitely one of Gods wonders.
Sunday - June 8 - Clinic at the Hotel - We always do a clinic for the hotel staff and family. They take very good care of us while we are there so we try and do a clinic day for them, its very short usually and well worth the time. The hotel treats us like kings and after our invasion its the very least we can do. After clinic and lunch, off to see the minimal sights of Asuncion on the way to the airport for our long, long, long flight home. Another flight delay in Sao Paulo - just to kind of finish things out.
This is a long posting but it gives a very brief summary of the trip.
Biggest reason to go - the 500+ decisions made for Christ - not through our efforts or anything we could have done but by and through HIM
Second reason to go - the 1800 patients that were seen
As a bonus we also got
Mission trip Triumvirate -
- Bad weather - 15/20 degrees below average w/ rain - check - - check -
- Bus Stuck in mud - twice - check - check
- Flight Delays - twice - check - check
Bonus point
1 Sick team member - check -
1 Sick team member - check -
All together a really good trip.
