Seriously, have you ever read anything more boring than this????

In total, the team saw 573 people. This is with only ONE doctor. I think that is pretty good in anyone's book. Three of the clinics required us to travel 2 and one half hours away each day (one way). Since we do not travel in the dark, we took advantage of ALL the daylight hours. We were on the road early and got back just in time for the sunset. The last day, one team member started throwing up. Lucky for her, she was not flying home right away. She and three others had decided to stay another 4 days and travel to Copan. So two of the team members went ahead and toured San Pedro Sula while she and her mom stayed back at the campground and rested. By the time the others had returned from their sight seeing, she was good enough to travel to Copan. The team members flew out at three different times so that meant three trips to the airport. Not a big deal since the airport isn't that far from the campground.

The team did get to see the burning of sugar cane fields at night. The fields are always burned at night and then the workers come in first thing in the morning and cut them all down by hand. It was truly a spectacular sight to see. The pitch black sky and the glow of the fire was amazing. We could hear the crackling of the fire burning from our campground. These are HUGE fields so you can imagine how intense the fire was against the night sky.

We are back in Teguc right now getting ready for the next team from Ohio to arrive. we are excited as our son, Jeff, will be coming as well. It is his first trip out of the country so I am sure he will have some stories to tell.

Nothing out of the ordinary to tell. I know, pretty boring isn't it????

love to all

Seriously...You can provide medical assistance with only one doctor

The team started on day one and held a clinic at Efrain's church and it went well. I must admit, I seriously had my doubts that we could do a decent clinic with only one provider. BUT it worked and it worked well. These people did not all know each other prior to this trip but you couldn't tell by the way they worked together. Everyone fell into place quickly. One nurse with translator truly triaged the patients. She asked pertinent questions and wrote down her thoughts, which cut the time the doctor spent with each patient drastically. Another nurse did all vitals and then they waited to see the doctor. Two other team members kept the children busy at QUIET tables with planned activities and it went well. The pharmacy also had a translator and it went smoothly. Granted, we did pick places in small communities so as to not turn away large crowds of people, but this was a blessing as well, because a few of them had never had a medical brigade before and they were so appreciative.

First "note to self" for me occurred on Friday night. Since we had gone a month without any caffeine, I had a pizza for dinner and had my first pepsi light of the trip back. At 3:00 IN THE MORNING, I was still awake. No more caffeine after 6:00 pm. Man, am I getting old. The second "note to self" occurred last night (Tuesday). We took the team to get baleadas, since most of them did not know what they were. I forgot my "first note to self" because I didn't write it down (hmmmm, lists; they are so important to older people)and ended up getting a pepsi light with dinner since I didn't see any water bottles. Again, up till 4:00 IN THE MORNING. Then, up at 4:45 to get ready for the day because the first clinic was 1 1/2 hours away.sigh........ It is now 8:00 pm and I am ready to crash.

I have been putting my pictures of the children on Facebook, so if you enjoy seeing pictures of kiddos, take a look. If not, don't.

WE NEED your HELP! SERIOUSLY!!!!!

We have had two tragedies here in Honduras less than a week apart. The first, of course, was the prison fire, which killed 359 people. At this point only 12 bodies have been released to the family for burial. The others have been so badly burned (and in big piles), that identifying correct bodies (and parts) is difficult. The second, is the massive fire which hit the central market area of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Over 20,000 people lost EVERYTHING in this fire. These are people who already live at below poverty levels and now they have lost their livelihood due to arson. I have my ideas as to why these fires were started, but it is only conjecture on my part. At any rate, there were SEVERAL Nazarene church members who also lost everything. The reason for this email is this:

Any of you that have given funding to the dump project, we are asking your permission to divert these funds to be used as small "micro business" loans to the Nazarene members who lost their livelihood. This would be small loans to get them back on their feet. The dump project is the only place we have money ready to be used. We do not feel it is appropriate for us to just take the designated funds and divert them to another cause without your permission. If anyone objects, PLEASE let me know ASAP. Otherwise, we will assume we have your permission to do so.

Anyone else who might wish to donate to this cause, you can send your check to : Upper Valley Community Church, 9111 Fry Ct, Piqua, Ohio 45356. Make the check out to Upper Vally Community Church-Honduras and put market fire in the memo section.

Thank you all so much.

Seriously??!! Is THAT a boa contractor????????

Today was a first on many accounts. We are taking a medical team to two areas of Honduras we have never been to before. Being the awesome leaders that we are, we decided it would be best to actually go to these places prior to the team coming so we wouldn't accidentally end up in Guatemala with 11 gringos. We piled into the van with two other volunteer couples, Efrain and his wife, and set off to find these places. We had lots of help so finding these two places was not difficult. The furthest location was 2 1/2 hours away from the campground, and it will be the last clinic of the week (thank Goodness). We will need to leave at 6:00 in the morning in order to get there on time. We stopped and ate lunch at a great place and made it back to the campground in plenty of time before dark. Since we hadn't gone to the grocery store, we went out to dinner(any excuse is a good one, don't you think)? After coming back from dinner, Tom got out of the van to unlock the gate leading to the campground. He walks up to the gate and then walks back to the van. He calmly opens the van door and announces there is a large snake on the gate. We, of course, don't believe him because Tom miente (Tom lies). I get out of the van and so does Larry. Sure enough there is a large snake coiled up right beside the gate. Larry goes over and picks up large, heavy rock and drops it on the snake. Something explodes from the side of the snake and the snake is mad (pissed would be more like it). It started striking at the rock that was dropped on it. Larry throws another rock at it and misses it completely. I had a short stick and Tom yells at me to get back (like I was REALLY going to do anything with that little stick). After opening the gate and driving through, Larry goes and gets a shovel and goes to pick up the snake and the stupid thing is still alive and still trying to strike. I told Larry to wait until I could get my camera and get a picture of it so Larry gets it into the light and I take a couple of pictures. Then Larry takes the shovel and wacks its head off. Larry then uses the shovel to get it off the ground before the dogs try to eat it and the rat falls out... Yep, it was a HUGE rat that the snake had eaten prior to it's untimely demise. Gross just doesn't quite describe the feeling. Larry is now the snake whisperer. We had never seen a snake like this before and quite frankly, hope to never see it again.

Seriously??!! It's 75 degrees and no humidity...

WE made it back to Honduras. My Doctor took off my boot and put me in therapy. Tom whined (begged, pleaded) that he really needed me to come down with him and the doctor agreed that I could go as long as I was careful and wore my brace (ummmhmmm). I did get on the same flight with him and we arrived without incident yesterday (Feb 10th). About 2 weeks ago Tom and I cleaned up our act with what we were eating. We went 12 days without sugar, salt, wheat, oil, coffee, PEPSI; basically anything that tasted good. I must admit that we feel a whole lot better and managed to lose several inches around the waist while we were at it. We have put coffee back in the body (Tom WAY more than me). And I told Tom I would only drink diet pepsi when we ate pizza. Anyway, we get here to Honduras and Bob takes us out to dinner. Those of you who know Bob probably already figured out where we went. We went to Popeyes fried chicken. Yep, after not eating ANYTHING that resembles a fried chicken fast food restaurant we ate fried chicken, biscuits, cold slaw, and chased it down with a diet coke. I'm thinking trying to eat healthier isn't going to go too well down here.

Tom came down sick. He has a bad head cold and I am hoping that it doesn't turn into the flu. We have so much to do to get ready for the next team and Tom isn't going to be doing anything for a couple of days. Oh well, it is what it is. The weather is AWESOME! highs in the upper 70s or low 80s and the sun is shining with a soft breeze. Heard Ohio got snow and it is cold. Wish we could say we feel your pain, but we don't.

We have internet down here by paying for a modem that gets inserted into our computer. We went to get it and paid to have minutes loaded on to it. We get it home and no internet. The computer won't recognize it. Our computer is a MAC and we had to upgrade to a new operating system and I think it does not recognize the modem anymore. So as it stands right now, we don't get internet anymore unless we go somewhere that has wireless internet. This is going to make our travels here difficult, but again, it is what it is. So if you don't get much information from us, that would be the reason why.