Escuapa Set Up Day

Today was a busy work day!  Today was also a hot day!!  Escuapa is a good deal warmer than Tegucigalpa and the church is kind of like an over for the heat with a tin roof!  It's okay though - we persevere or perspire- probably both : ).  

 We begin our day with participating in the Honduran worship service.  It's always a blessing to participate and to feel the love these people have.  My time was a little distracted though as the little face in the picture below, just kept smiling at me, and I could help but scoop her up and spent the service hugging her.  All she did was smile and giggle - another universal language.  Made my day, and reinforced the reason for doing what we do.  These little children are such a blessing to be around and are such a gift.   We spent several hours in the afternoon setting up Optical, Pharmacy and Medical for the week.  We expect to see around 100 patients a day in medical and approximately 60 patients a day or so in Optical - but those numbers are so loose and we could see a lot more or a lot less.  It will be a busy week.   We begin our day heading up the dirt road tomorrow at 7:30 and hope to be there for around 9am.  The roads are very difficult to drive and steep at some points.  We will see patients from 9am until about 3:30pm.  This is always the more challenging of the weeks in my opinion, for a variety of reasons.  First of all, our days are a little longer because of the travel time, so people are a little more tired.  But most of all, the patient/Optical convictions tend to be tougher due to the significant lack of medical and optical care.  Escuapa is truly a poor community.  The houses we visited last week in Tegucigalpa are what the entire town consists of here in Escuapa.  It's heartbreaking to see what people have to endure.  We see a lot more patients who have cataracts, and there is very little we can do for them.   The full team is finally together as our Doctors from New York finally made it after an over night delay.  So, tomorrow, we head up the mountain with 23 missioners, 10 translators and 2 Honduran Doctors.  3 packed vans and a long road ahead!  Keep us in your prayers! That's all for tonight 

Blessings Shelley

Beginning of the very bumpy road