Serving As a Family, Eating, and Visiting our First School

One last photo from yesterday. Lillian found a little corner in the waiting area to eat her cake-- right in front of the doorways for the pharmacy and the xray area.

This is the reason for our passion to serve overseas as a family. The people to love in Jesus' name.

It's great to have a chance to be here together, serving. Jay's job here is, of course, operating. Here he is operating with Bill DeMuth on a child with arthrogryposis.

My job for this trip is to foster a positive experience for our children as we expose them to overseas medical missions for the first time. We want them to feel that they have a vital role in our mission so that we can really serve as a family. I want them to develop a connection with the children here-- and to serve them.

Here is Abigail serving pieces of her birthday cake yesterday with one of the children in the waiting area.

Yesterday she wanted to walk around the inpatient ward and personally blow up balloons for each of the children.

Going on post-op round with Daddy in the afternoon, handing out pencils and stickers as we go.

Even Lillian is excited to be able to peel off little stickers to give to the children in the waiting room.

And one last visit with Myrah before she was discharged home. After dinnerlast night, Abigail asked to bring our laptop into the ward to show a video to Myrah-- but we ended up showing it to all five kids and their parents due to popular demand. It was great to see Abigail and Myrah whispering to each other all through Scooby Doo even though neither really understood each other. Abigail even told me she would like to live here because she now had a friend in Honduras. And she cried herself to sleep tonight because she missed Myrah.

The hospital cook feeds us breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the screened in cafeteria where the entire hospital staff eats the big mid-day meal-- not all at the same time. You can see water cooler in the foreground. Water coolers are located all over the hospital compound.

Thankfully there is a handwashing station in the cafeteria. It's probably saving Lillian's life because she is just filthy most of the time, insisting on going barefoot and spending a fair amount of time on the ground, indoors and out.

Gina fthe cook feeds us VERY WELL! Abigail and Lillian LOVE the food. For her birthday there was a special meal of rice with shredded chicken, spiced baked chicken breast, cheesy potatoes, and salad. The meal shown was homemade tortillas, salad of tomatoes-cucmbers-beets-radish-lettuce, bean, a tasty rice, a chopped beef dish with lime juice, and a beef broth with veggies made from cooking the beef.

Two of the more interesting fruits we have eaten. The spiky red fruit is a type of lychee brought by Asians to the country. The solid fruit is called a mangosteen-- inside it resembles a sugar apple or cacao pods.

Each day begins with the patients, families, and hospital staff having a devotional chapel service. A few songs are sung, a short evangelistic message given, and then our team (including the girls) are introduced.

After devotions, we go on rounds with the whole team on the inpatient ward-- discharging patients who stayed overnight and then checking on the patients scheduled for surgery that day. There are twelve regular beds and a few "ICU" beds. One parents stays with each child on a mattress on the floor next to their child.

Dr. Vasquez is the Honduran pediatric orthopedic surgeon on staff with CURE Honduras; he's standing in the middle.

One of the surgeries that Jay did today was on a child with seven functional toes. He removed the second and third toes and the associated extra bones in the foot.

A post-operative photo.

After lunch, Ruth took the girls and me on our first school visit. The Integrar School is a private school specifically for people with Down Syndrome from birth to whenever (the oldest student is 37). This was the reading and mathematics room where three students who were more severely affected by DS worked independently with close supervision from the teacher. At the time of our visit, the older children were in school session.

The school strives to teach the students to become independent. To that end, they have a carpentry shop where the teacher uses carpentry to teach concepts like colors and numbers as the students work on projects like wooden puzzles, wooden blocks, and marble runs.

They have a little computer lab where the students work on interactive programs that teach concepts like reading and math.

The children aged 3-6 attend the school Monday-Wednesday from 10am-noon. We visited in the afternoon, so we didn't get to see the little ones. But, this is the gross motor room where they do physical education.

The school is funded by a non-profit foundation begun by parents of children with DS. Although they are in small house at this time, they have plans to build their own complex with 10,000 square meters! It was really an amazing place considering where it is.