And boom goes the dynamite (part 1)

Well the last update was June 23rd right after I finished in the mountains and right before the medical mission in Ambaguio.  A ton has happened since then so I’m going to break it down into three blog updates so it doesn’t seem so incredibly long and tedious.  I’m going to try to cut down on the length but I want to give details and stories so bear with me if it gets a little long.  I’ll try to keep it interesting.  Also, I hope those of you fellow Arrested Development lovers out there get the reference in the titles of these updates.  By the way, anything in italics is just random stuff from me, its not really important information or details so if you are skimming feel free to skip those sections, although they are pretty funny stuff.

Well following the hotel room on Thursday night, we drove a short hour up the mountain in a van to Ambaguio where the medical mission would take place the following day.  The rest of the day we rested and hung out as the team assembled in Ambaguio.  I like saying “the team assembled”, it sounds more exciting than it actually was.  Darwin arrived in the late afternoon with some secretaries to help with the registering and paperwork and also a dentist.  Darwin informed me that my professor that helped set this internship up for me, RuthAnn Price, will actually be in Baguio around the 12th-16th of July so the itinerary is changing so I can see her.  Then Brother JR arrived with his wife and a surgeon and his wife from Manilla.  All in all there were about 20 people.  As far as medical professionals, there was a surgeon, an OB/GYN, a dentist, and a couple nurses.  Other than that we were all just along for the ride and helped out in any way possible.  Friday and Saturday night we slept on a concrete floor with nothing but a bamboo mat beneath us.  I will never take a mattress for granted anymore.  After the two nights my back was killing me and needed something soft to sleep on.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but it’s next to impossible to sleep for more than two hours straight on such a hard surface because body parts are constantly cramping or falling asleep.  It wasn’t very much fun but it was the accommodations we were put in in this tiny town, so I was by no means complaining.

We got up on Saturday incredibly early, 5:00 am.  We had a group devotional at 5:30 and ate breakfast at 6.  Then the preparations began.  I ended up at the table with the pharmacy women, it was an easy enough job that didn’t require much interaction with the people, so language skills weren’t necessary.  The vast majority of the people that showed up were from the remote mountains so they knew even less English than the average Filipino.  The people started at registration where they filled out a sheet stating either medical, dental, surgical, or eye help and they were also offered counseling at that point, which took the form of evangelism as well.  The people then were filtered to their respective lines to receive the treatment they needed.  The people who needed medical care went to see a doctor and he prescribed medicine to them and then they came to us and handed us the sheet of paper and we filled the prescription.  I now understand fully the frustrations of a doctors handwriting.  I’ve had to deal with my dad’s my whole life, but it was for letters and things that I had time to figure out.  This was different, there were tons of people coming at us at once and we had to fill prescriptions fast and make sure you got it right.  I kid you not it was just completely unintelligible sometimes.  There were medications for adults, children, and infants.

There were tons of medicines I had never heard of and the whole time I could not help but thinking of the Arrested Development thing about teamocil.    Also, I didn’t know ibeprofun was a prescription drug here.  Its weird because I have about a hundred pills in my bag right now.

I think the whole thing was orchestrated by Brother JR and his wife, I’m not sure her name.  It’s hard to catch names here because a lot of people are introduced as “Brother JR’s wife”, so names sometimes aren’t even mentioned.  She helped us in the pharmacy while he roamed.  They were extremely nice and both spoke very good English.  It was great to have someone to share with and have a conversation where I didn’t feel like I had to speak slowly and in very basic English.  They said they have family in the States and visit there for a whole month sometimes.  Darwin mentioned something about going to visit them now that our plans and itinerary have changed since RuthAnn is coming.

On the sheet the people had filled out to have their prescription filled there was a box to check yes or no if they prayed to have Christ come into their heart.  I thought maybe thats how we judged giving out real medicine to people.  If the box was checked yes then we give the real deal, if its checked no then we just give them sugar pills.  They are just simple mountain people, they will never know the difference.  That way, in two weeks when they aren’t healed, we ask if they accepted Christ.  When they say no we say, huh, maybe theres a connection there.  If you want to be healed maybe you need to ask Christ into your heart.  Then we give them the real medicine.  I think thats how it should have been done.  I don’t care how people are saved, just as long as they get saved.

The minor surgeries that were performed were incredible.  They were cyst and mole removals mostly.  They said they do circumcisions normally too but there were none today.  There was a 5 year old boy that had a cyst right next to his adam’s apple on his neck that he had to have removed.  He didn’t even flinch.  They had men standing by to hold him down and they weren’t even necessary.  It was amazing.  The kid was so brave, admittedly braver than I would be in that situation.  He had a knife going into his neck and he didn’t move a muscle.  Wow.

The dentist worked extremely hard.  She saw over 100 patients during the day.  She worked from 7 am till at least 6 pm straight with only a break for lunch.  She was exhausted at the end of the day, normally they have two or three dentists that handle 100 between them.  Instead she just took them all, it was incredible.

I thought the way they did the eye exams was neat too.  Darwin had them read a passage from the Bible to test their sight.  He said that this was incredibly important because it literally may be their only encounter with the Bible their entire life.

The total people served with various medical attention ended up being 993.  Incredible.  Which means there were easily over 1,000 people there.  There were over 40 surgeries and like I said over 100 dental patients.

When I asked to be busy my wish was fulfilled.  I was on my feet the whole day constantly filling prescriptions.  It was really good and the time flew by as a result.  I was exhausted at the end of the day…then I had to go to sleep on the concrete again, it was pretty miserable, but satisfying to have served so many people.

Sorry there are no pictures for the medical mission.  Darwin had Jerry go around all day and take pictures and record video, that was his job, so I didn’t even bring my camera out of my room.  I’ll get the pictures later though once I get back to Baguio and hopefully put some up.

Sunday we woke up and had breakfast and then sort of a group debriefing and devotional time.  We sat around and shared some neat stories with the team that happened the day before.  I was asked to share a devotional so I did so and then we were on our way.  We stopped at the bottom of the mountain at the hotel from Thursday night and had rested and ordered lunch there.  There was kind of a festive air about the place, it was a lot of fun.

After lunch I began the next leg of my journey to Sn. Fabian and the Bible school there.  It was only about an hour and a half drive from the hotel so we arrived there in the early afternoon.  I’ll leave off here and begin again in part 2.  I’m gonna put a couple pictures of the spider that was on my wall way back before in Baguio though so you can see how mammoth it was.

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~ by Wasilly on July 10, 2010.