We have a team from Bring Good News here this week. A much smaller team that the mission normally allows, but it is with good reason. We are trying out a new method/style of using medical teams. Typically in the past we would go into a community building (hopefully a Church if there is one) and see as many patients as we could will trying to give good care, providing some education along the way. (that is the shortened, very much condensed version.) With this team we are doing something different...
We are limiting the number of people that can come to 50, with the Church handing out invitations. Then we start with a brief Church service of about 45 minutes to an hour, and after that another hour and a half of health topic teaching times. This trip we are doing topics like diabetes/hypertension, Zika/Dengue/Chikungunya, respiratory ailments (bronchitis/colds/asthma/allergies), and medicine safety. We all have lunch together (an added expense, but worth it) and then we see all the patients...similarly to past brigades in some ways. In this particular case though are doctors and pharmacy staff are mostly the staff from our clinic in Tegucigalpa (Dr. Darwin, the clinic administrator and his wife Sandra who is a pediatrician volunteered to come as well, plus Indira the pharmacist, and Johana one of the nurses.)
Part of the discussion is about making good lifestyle choices, to prevent and help treat many of the above mentioned ailments as much as possible at home. We had several patients with questions related to what we were talking about, some good interaction, and then during the brigade time found a woman having an episode who turned out to have a blood sugar of over 400. She was moved close to the fan, given water, and some attention. After she finished her water and before the group could get her more we noticed her friend stopped by to help her recover as well...by giving her some Coke. So although the information given out was successful...we still have a ways to go. You can be sure that story will be shared with everyone in the remaining health days!
In other picture posting news related to our visit, the Church in Talanga continues to make progress on some of the physical sides of things, raising some money for some much needed signs, first for the TV station, and also for the sanctuary. Since completing the wall last year, no more break ins have happened, so it is doing its job!
Be praying for the TV station if you would. It was purchased and developed to try to help the Church be self supporting in being able to pay a pastor full time. The spiritual outreach it has is much broader and wider reaching than we originally dreamed, but still so far it is not self supporting or able to help support the pastor/station administrator. It does cover quite a few day to day costs, but still requires mission support to stay running. If we cannot turn that corner soon, we may be forced to sell the station. That would be a hard decision for sure.
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