Going to Jerusalem

Today the medical team traveled to a town called Jerusalem in Canaan, which is north of Port-au-Prince.  The roads were so rocky that we could only drive at 5mph, so even though the distance wasn’t far, it took awhile to reach our destination. When we finally reached the church, we immediately greeted the people of Jerusalem, who were awaiting our arrival in the church.

Dr. Morquette introducing our team of nurses, doctors, and pharmacist

The nurses from King’s Hospital took vital signs of each patient, and then sent them to see the doctors, Danielle and Grace.  Working through language barriers and diagnoses uncommon in the States, we saw over 100 patients throughout the day (double the amount from Tuesday’s clinic!)

In the pharmacy, I was incredibly grateful to have the superintendent of the local school volunteer to serve as my translator. My Creole could only go so far as “Hello, take 1 tablet 2 times a day. Thank you, Good Bye.” So thankfully, he helped me communicate to each patient regarding the best ways to take the medicine and any possible side effects.

We have been truly blessed to have a team that works so well together.  Danielle or Grace would tell me their diagnosis, and then trust me to determine the best treatment using our extremely limited formulary.  This experience has definitely forced us all to be creative with whatever resources we have available. I never expected to be dispensing Children’s Tylenol in an empty water bottle! At times, it was difficult to be so limited, but often the best we could offer was advice, prayer, and health education.

“Stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious Name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise.”
Nehemiah 9:5 (verse printed in church)

Sarah

Today was a bittersweet day for the VBS team.  Another team was visiting King’s Garden this week; this was a first for our Park Street team.  Not prepared for the change in schedule, our teams seemed to have a hard time explaining our goals for the week.  But with the other team having left today, it was our first day to be with the kids and do our VBS as planned. It was a really fun day. We had a great time cramming in all of the fun stuff we had been hoping to do.  One of the really fun things we were able to do with all the kids was make T shirts. We had shirts made that said “li jwenn libete’l." Translated to She (or he) has her (or his) freedom. With the older girls this week we have been learning about freedom and what it means to be free in Christ. The shirts were blocked out and the kids were able to color them in with sharpies. After practicing how to make the shirts I learned that they could look great when done very messy. I had to let go of this since all the kids seem to be perfectionist when it comes to coloring.

At first I thought the older boys seemed uninterested, but then, by the afternoon they were at the picnic tables meticulously coloring in ever triangle. The kids were having so much fun I had them make shirts for their house moms and the Mourquette’s daughter Valerie. It was great to see all the teamwork.

After the shirts were colored in the kids desperately wanted them but we still had to do a few more steps to make them complete.  Alicia and I worked to spray the shirts with rubbing alcohol to make the colors in the shirts bleed to look like tie-dye. The shirts are beautiful and I cannot wait to hand them out tomorrow!

When we were done we pulled out a corn hole game that we had made yesterday out of some old doors and scrap wood. The kids painted them and they really looked awesome. We were planning on teaching them how to play, but they quickly made up their own rules to create some very fun corn hole variations.

Kate

Mark painting the cornhole game board