Footprints...in Roatan

The Lord replied, "My son, My precious child,  I love you and I would never leave you.  During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

As you may or may not know, Footprints in the Sand is one of my favorite poems.  Therefore, it seemed like a good analogy for the holidays around here.  Holidays around home are special times for our family as we always gather together and celebrate with our siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.  Unfortunately, being in Honduras makes it a little far to travel for a weekend.  In thinking of the Footprints poem, these times would reference those times when there was suffering and struggling; the times when there was only one set of Footprints.  Just as in the poem when the Lord carried you through these trials, I had family come here to spend the holidays with me.  Christmas my parents came, New Years a few schoolmates came, Easter, my older brother Philip came.  While he went through quite the journey to get down here, he finally made it, and we were able to share a week of vacation together.  Two days we spent getting scuba certified (hmm, I wonder if I can put that on my resume under 'certifications'?!), went out east for a BBQ one day, had a potluck for Easter (complete with a spiral ham and turkey!), and spent a day at the clinic.  What a blessing it has been to be able to "unexpectedly" spend the holidays with family.  Upon coming down here, I knew of no plans for visitors.  It has been amazing how God has blessed me over the last several months with visitors.  While live is wonderful here, seeing familiar faces from time to time has been very nice!

Something that I continually find interesting is hearing the differing opinions of volunteers and visitors as they come to visit.  Everybody has different previous experiences with poverty and mission work and with that they approach things differently.  Poverty can be a hard concept to grasp and until you really start to work with people of poverty, live in their world for a time, and see how their every day lives run, you can't really fully understand all its intricacies.  It's easy to read book after book about it, but it still seems different once you get placed in it and it is something that takes time to really grasp.  Watching volunteer residents and students come from working in the states to working here is also something that is quite the concept.  Working at the clinic I have started to learn what the big time meds are, which ones are more expensive, and which ones are more preferred by doctors in the states that have access to any medication they want.  At the clinic, we only have access to a limited number of medications, usually based on what we get by donation.  Therefore, prescribing conservatively is a little more important.  Here you don't just give a medication to please a patient; here it is much more important to make sure the patient completely understands what they have and how medications help it (or don't).  If they don't need a medication that they are seeking, we explain to them why they don't need it and more often than not, they are okay with that.  Why can't people in the states be okay with that?  Why must we have to do every knit-picky, sometimes unnecessary little thing just to avoid a lawsuit?  It's things like this that will take some time to adjust to when I get back to the states.

Last week was Semana Santa here on the island (well technically everywhere I suppose :P ).  For those of you that don't understand Spanish, that would be Holy Week.  While many people may see it as a time of preparation, prayer, fasting, and remembrance of Jesus' death and resurrection, Semana Santa is more or less a holiday around these parts.  Many tourists overtake the island- whether they come from the mainland (which most do) or from other parts of the world.  West End is blocked off to cars and the beaches and resorts in West Bay are packed and out of control.  From the reports that I have heard, things weren't quite as crazy this year as they have been in the past, but I still managed to avoid most of it.  Can't really complain as I don't really relate Holy Week with party week.  Since it is a 'holiday' around here, the clinic was closed all week so that meant a week of vacation to relax and not do a whole lot.  Boy was that wonderful; just in time for me to gear up for the next 3 weeks while Peggy goes back to the states.  What did Peggy leave me with this time (aside from the clinic)?!  A 40ft container filled with donations for the clinic and the hospital.  Luckily it is all sorted and labeled clinic or hospital so hopefully it shouldn't be all that bad- I'll let you know how it goes.

We're still waiting for the license for the upstairs so that has yet to be opened, but it is possible that we will be have a birth take place up there sometime this week.  As time carries on, I continue to work on a training/orientation guide for the clinic so that whoever ends up following in my footsteps will have something more to go off than what I had.  There is just so much information at the clinic that isn't recorded anywhere; it's only in people's heads.  What happens when they leave?  The information of course goes with them and no longer benefits the clinic.  Therefore, hopefully this manual will help a little bit with that.

Weather is really starting to warm up around here getting into the upper 80's and 90's.  Many people here complain (term used lightly) about how hot it is and how much they work up a sweat.  However, I don't think it's usually really much worse than it is at home.  I think the humidity at home is worse than it is here.  When I tell people that they have a hard time believing me cause "there isn't humidity in South Dakota"; but oh yes, there is!  I don't know where it comes from, but it's there!