Back in the USA

I'm really trying to do some justice to our Missions/Medical/Dental/Construction trip to the Dominican Republic. Poppy and I went with a Doctor, a Dentist, 7 nurses, 2 childcare workers, and 4 other construction guys. Processing this trip will take a while, but I know you've been patiently waiting for the pix.


Many of you know how I felt before we went. I don't think I've ever felt more unprepared and unqualified for anything in my life. About 2 weeks before the trip, I had a dream that I was supposed to sing with a major female singing group (along the lines of Destiny's Child) that night, and no one was giving me any music to prepare with. That really sums up how I felt. I wasn't worried so much about the travel or our safety or health, but I didn't know what exactly I'd be doing or how well I'd be doing it. I also didn't speak Spanish. My friends and DR teammates did their best to make me feel better, but nothing was working. Cissy bought me a book about a month before the trip -- Spanish for Dummies (no reflection on me, of course) and that really helped. Speaking of Cissy, she and Rosebud saw us off on Saturday the 31st. What a wonderful surprise that was!! I cried of course. They had been to the library and copied Spanish for First Responders and 1 page was all really bad words!! LOL!!

The trip there went well, all the flights were on time and we all got our luggage! We landed in Santo Domingo at 6 something pm and took the bus to Hato Mayor, about 1 1/2 hours or so away. We had dinner & discussed a few things (don't ask me what, it's all kind of a blur).

Monday morning we had devotionals at 7:30 am. My first missions miracle was that I slept all night!! I was so worried, we were in bunk beds (don't really know how Poppy and the Doc were able to manage that, at 6'5" & 6'7") and I don't do well away from home. The accomodations were luxurious from a Dom Rep standpoint, clean and well taken care of. It was designed as an orphange, however, so everything was small. I didn't have room in the bathroom stalls, and again, Poppy had an impossible time going to the bathroom with the stall door closed. We were fed 3 wonderful meals a day, almost always including fresh pineapple and fried green bananas (tasting kind of like french fries) and friend ripe bananas -- yummy ba-gummy! Poppy's a little tired of rice & beans but I liked them a lot. They even made pancakes for breakfast twice. I think the second time was because I went so crazy about them the first time. The pastor's wife was one of our kitchen angels -- they were all wonderful.

Okay, I know you want to know about what we did --

Tis is the first place we went to. It was on the outskirts of Hato Mayor (big hill).

These are some of the people living in the 1st house that was replaced by our crew. There were 7 children and 3 adults living in a house smaller than our bedroom.

When we arrived at our first site, the new house was already framed up.


We set up a clinic in a small church on the outskirts of town -- I think. The people were lining up to see us before we got there. It was the start of the hardest day I think I've ever had.



This is the corner of the church where our dentist was set up. You can just see his gloved hand over the mouth of his young patient.

My job was to give the people a piece of paper with their name, number, age, and complaint so they could go to a triage nurse and then the doctor or dentist. They were so desperate! They quickly figured out that they needed the paper ("papel") to get help. It was just overwhelming.

Cissy's Spanish book came in very handy -- although I had a translator, I was able to do some communicating. I stepped away from my post when I heard a small boy screaming. He had stepped (barefoot) on a broken glass bottle and the doc was stitching him up. I held his knee so he would stop thrashing it around. After this photo was taken, I turned around to keep him from being able to see his foot. Poor doc had my butt in his face but I don't think he knew it. Ramone (from Minneapolis who coordinates these trips -- a fantastic guy) held one hand & we both said "no mira!! mirame!" -- don't look! look at me!!. He was really brave & did okay. His mom was very stoic.


Here's another angel. She's 18, the PK, just graduated high school and was the mission trip veteran of our group. She and a 14 year old girl played with the kids during the day. What a great ministry that was. I got to play with them too, when I was done taking numbers.

Here's Poppy (the one with pants on LOL). He was working on a house across the street (such as it was) from the church.

This is Cory, who lead the trip along with his wife Joyce. They did a great job.

Here's Cory again, on the ladder NOT purchased from Home Depot or Lowe's! Marbin, one of our translators, is to his right. He was fantastic and was really a part of the missions team.




This is the next day. It rained every day, but that day was the worst. We were warned that we might have to walk part of the way, carrying the medical & dental supplies, but somehow the truck made it through.

Just a fun shack picture.
This is the truck we rode in. Yeeha! We thought we were cramped until we saw about 60 people being brought to Tuesday night church services in it!

Okay, to talk a little about our first day -- it reminded me of M*A*S*H. We treated 150 patients in one day and gave out 2 or 3 times that many prescriptions. We were very worn out and very --I can't come up with words. We felt that we were not doing a good job, everything was just so overwhelming. The people were so desperate. They hadn't had a clinic there in at least a year and of course they didn't know if there would ever be one again. We knew we were being taken advantage of in that many of them were just making symptoms up to get free drugs - to hoard or to sell, maybe. We hadn't figured out how to pray with them. I felt that they were so desperate, that if I tried to pray with them, they would not be able to accept it -- they wanted only to see the doctor and they would not accept anything else. I hope I'm being coherent here. We did come up with a much better plan for the next day, where I do the "intake" outside with them so that the church wasn't so crowded. They were prayed for as they waited at the "pharmacy" when they were much more calm and happy. We also did some educating after that 1st day on preventing parasites (very common) and on boiling water before using it.

This was the next place we went to, after 2 days at our 1st location. The construction crew stayed behind to start another house and we went to a village called Guayabal (pronounced gwah-jha-val). The people here had been ministered to quite a bit by the church where we stayed. We still saw about 130 people, I think. I got to play with the kids a little again, and one of them remembered my name when we returned from lunch. Her name is Maria and she's 10 years old. When we returned on Sunday, she was there and I got this picture with her and some other kids.

This, I think, was one of our proudest moments. The church had not let them know we were coming the next day, because we were running out of meds. Ramone went and bought some more so we were okay. However, it was much more remote and we were going to go there in the morning and "drum up some business," as they put it. It meant going shack to shack to tell people that we were there from our church to have a clinic for them. I was majorly freaked out. I had seen enough machetes and I realized that we had the drugs that they wanted. And they were desperate. So, we drove up there (10 miles through really fun -- by fun I mean I thought we were going to die-- roads) and we saw this "shelter" where we were going to have a clinic. It was full of dung. And it's not a building. And there are no chairs. And we have drugs.

Well, since we were coming back for the clinic, we could get chairs. Pastor Carlos & Ramone got on the bullhorn & told them that we were here as servants of Jesus Christ to give them medical and dental care. Within 10 or 15 minutes we were accepting our patients! Someone brought some plastic chairs, one of our translators, Manolo, was sweeping the poop into the 6 foot deep trough that ran through the middle, the milk crates (I think they're for mangoes) were set up for dental equipment and the pharmacy, and I got my clipboard & started taking names. What an incredible team we had. Everyone was just as freaked out as I was, and yet, they got to work and did what they had to do. We saw 70 patients in the morning, went back & had lunch, brought the construction crew with us (they had just poured the cement in one of the new houses), and saw another 50 patients in the afternoon. There were several Haitian refugees and I was able to speak some French and some Haitian Kreyole. We were happy to have the construction crew there, as some of the men from the village were hanging around the drugs.

My next blog will talk more about the construction crew and the last places we went to, but here's a sneak peak at the finished product.

This is house #1. You've already seen the kids in the shack it replaced. Here they are enjoying lunch (rice & beans) the day after they moved in.

This is one of our nurses, and the Doc's wife, posing with me and the very proud recipient of house #2. Her name is Ursula. More about these houses later.

On a very personal note, we just received an email from Ramone that the Pastor's daughter, Natasha, pictured below on the left, is sick. They're concerned that it may be Dengue Fever, something like Malaria. Please pray for her. She is just precious, 10 years old. She drew me a picture while I was there and it was already on my fridge yesterday. The Pastor's wife, Teresa, is 4th from the left.

Okay, I'm really tired and probably getting less & less coherent. I know I'm not typing very well. I will post more tomorrow.