Tap Tap City

Verse of the Day: “Be strong and brave, because the Lord your God will go with you.  He will never leave you or forsake you.” Deuteronomy 31:6

Riding in Style

Today was a bit of different day where no clinic visits were scheduled.  We instead had the opportunity to visit some of the local orphanages.  But the day started at the church I talked about on the first day, Pastor Jay’s church that sits on the compound.  Daily there are many that meet for 6am prayer and worship time.  Since we are usually eating breakfast and packing up for clinic at that time we haven’t been able to go yet, but were very blessed to be able to attend this morning.  God has been putting Pastor Jay and his church on my heart.  I went on a walk last night and looking over the houses in the valley below my heart became overwhelmed.  When God does things, Satan attacks.  God is doing amazing things through Pastor Jay and I felt very led to pray against any attacks Satan may have on him or his church.  I ended up prayer walking around the church 3 times and this morning during prayer time this was again all I could think about.  So I just went up to the balcony and prayed—prayed protection and life over the vibrance of it’s people.  I have no idea why this was on my heart and I don’t need to know—but I love knowing God is faithfully working behind the scenes! 

Riding in a Tap Tap

Our first stop was made via a local “tap-tap” which is a pick-up with 2 benches, a covered top, and an open back that at least 12-15 people cram into as their taxi system.  We went to a mission school that 2 of our translators (Wilgins & Prophet) started.  We got to see their classrooms and interrupt their learning for a hot second.  It was awesome to see bot

h of them who grew up in orphanages themselves with such a passion to give back to their community in this way.

We then got to meet up with what may be an amazing connection in the future. Kathy & Mark Fulton are missionaries down here running medical missions. They have started Hopital L’Eglise de Dieu Reforme (Reformed Church of God Hospital) and are in the process of starting smaller mobile clinics with the goal of establishing the ability to host short term teams.  To further confirm that this was another one of the million “God things” this week, they just so happen to be having a reknowned eye surgeon coming to visit who will likely be able to operate on a patient we saw earlier this week with a retinal blastoma (eye cancer) that would otherwise likely not be able to be treated!  In addition they have inherited a full prosthetics lab and clinic developed from leftovers after a lot of aid flooded the area post the 2010 earthquake.  In God’s timing he allowed their paths to cross with our team and both parties benefitted from the encouragement that ensued. 

View at lunch

A quick (ok, an hour) sojourn up to this beautiful mountaintop view to do some shopping and nab some lunch with an open-air view of this lush green valley below the mountain spotted in farmer’s fields.  Then back to HIS Home for Orphans that we visited on Sunday.  We just got to spend the whole afternoon with the kids and doing various projects.  The guys went out and bought some fans and were able to install fans in each of the bedrooms of the kids with special needs as well as in their new PT room.  Lynn and Gimi educated the kids on First Aid.  Then I spent the afternoon with their caregivers reviewing the exercises they have been doing as well as educating on some progressions that each of the kids would benefit from.  This mostly included things like prone positioning, bolster sitting, supported standing in stander they just got, and overall weightbearing positions to assist with feedback and strengthening.  I was blown away by the local caregivers there and their passion for learning how to better help these kids and enjoying seeing the progress these kids can make.  With each new position towards being more upright or weightbearing in some way the transformation was immediate seeing their attention improve, their eyes light up, and smiles form.  We were also able to fit a few of the new wheelchairs that they received.  The most rewards fit was for a small boy into a tilt-in-space chair so that he can spend more of his days upright in hopes of less aspiration that leads to pneumonia.  It required a fair amount of jimmy-rigging and mcgyvering that may or may not have involved cooking oil and coca-cola, plus all 5 guys that were installing the fans, but it is now a fully functioning chair and a happy little boy.  My heart is so incredibly full from this afternoon.

With every ounce of energy we had left we ended the day with a huge soccer match with our translators.  So we didn’t get absolutely creamed, they were kind enough to split the teams evenly and the scores ended fairly close.