Friday Progress and Saturday Plans

I promise I won't be writing evey day-- just initially when there are a lot of decisions and first impressions to record.

On Friday, Jay's patient's parents did not come-- so the surgery was postponed until Monday when consent could be obtained. A non-parent friend came to take the child home over the weekend. So the hospital is closed now until Monday. A "brigade" is going out this Saturday morning to the Puerto Cortes (the port of Cortes) which is the largest Carribean/Atlantic side port for Honduras. They will have an outreach clinic as well as continuing to establish relationships with local churches and pastors for further work in that region. They will see new patients at the local hospital (ones who have been referred for pediatric orthopedic consultation with CURE) as well as seeing follow-up patients who have already been seen previously by CURE staff. Ruth, Danny, Dr. Gustavo, and others will be going... Jay will be staying back with us to get some necessary work done.

Yesterday, Grace took all five Bridgemans out to see five homes in the north part of the city near the mountains and the schools. We were encouraged to find safe, gated areas-- and clean, new-ish homes. Several would be fine-- but we did not both have immediate peace about any one of them in particular. So we are going out with a realtor by ourselves this morning (our first time looking without a CURE staff accompanying us). We are going to meet her in the parking lot of a grocery store and look at three places. These homes are also in a safe residential gated community near markets and malls. They are bit less of a drive to CURE but a little further from the schools. Then we will go to the Zizima waterpark.

In the evenings, a slightly cool breeze sometimes blows- but it affects the ground level more than the second floor where the apartment is located. So we have been going down to scooter in the parking lot. The two night guards are Bilhilio and Jose. Bilhilio has six children-- the youngest of whom is twenty years old. Jose has one two year old daughter. Jay and I try our best to communicate with our very limited Spanish-- it's amazing how much can be said without words. And I think they look forward to our evening treks down the stairs to their world. There are a lot of mosquitos. Bilhilio tells me I need to put on some pantalones and spray my ankles with insect repellant. We've also noticed fireflies.

Please continue to pray for just the right home soon so we can start to unpack and settle for the start of school and surgery.