by Dr. Seth Berl ’78

Day 10 honduras…. today, monday, was the first clinic day for team 2. Sunday we sort medication and divide it into 4 days so we have medication for each clinic we visit. because we have so much medication and only 12 team members, this took about 4 hours. there is something about a mission trip in that no one complains about long hours, hard work or getting up early…. i might be the exception to the getting up early thing but that is another story. after the medication was sorted, many of us rested and others explored the town. today we went to a town called cacao. it is about 50 minutes outside of la esperanza. the bus ride was slow and the roads were terrible… so what’s new. the scenery was breathtaking according to linda. we were riding in the truck and i was much more worried about keeping us on the road and out of the ditch than looking at the scenery but to keep the peace, i agreed with every word she said. when we arrive in cacao, only 4 patients were there. normally there is a line of a hundred or more patients. not to worry as by the end of the day, dr david adcock and i had seen about 300 patients. the dental clinic was rocking with about 40 patients seen by dr michael dent of sylvester and dr bob wright an oral surgeon living in sarasota, fl. last week we had 4 doctors but this week only 2. also we had 3 dentists last week and this week only 2. too bad we do not have less patients. anne wright, bob’s wife, ran the sterilization for the dentists and bob’s granddaughter, devon wright, helped translate and pull teeth. devon is a pre-med student at emmanuel college in Boston, mass. elaine baker from dublin, ga is running triage this week along with some of the honduran workers. the pharmacy was never behind today as my wife linda and our missionary host rhonda sweeney pulled medication and jennie roberts from dublin and another group of honduran workers wrote out the medication instructions. we have 2 new team members from the university of illinois. my fraternity, alpha tau omega from university of illinois, sponsored 2 students to come on the trip. Paul jaroslawski is a psychology major who is in his senior year. he just wanted to come and help people. Joseph pearson is an economics major and also a senior. this is not there spring break and are missing class to come help. paul is 6 feet 7 inches tall. talk about standing out here in honduras. they were great today as they got use to working in the pharmacy, dental clinic and playing with the children. basically we had a great first day and are looking forward to clinic is buenos aries tomorrow. thank you for all your prayers and support. we could not pull this off without our church family at heritage. seth i would post pics but i am technology challenged.

by Dr. Seth Berl ’78

Honduras day 6: This was a special day. We went to a new village “up in the mountains.” aren’t they all!! We had never been to this village. It was one of the most beautiful mountain drives you can imagine. Reminded us of the mountains of Colorado. We stopped many times to take pics but you can never capture the beauty in a picture. We had a great clinic. Everyone is so comfortable with there positions and work so well together. Just a few stories. we saw almost 400 patients yesterday and almost 300 today in medical clinic. we actually saw some very unusual cases. the pre-med students from UF, devon, casey and alex, have gotten a great experience. they were fortunate to be sitting with one of the great teachers in DW Adcock. believe me, they will not get this good of instruction in medical school, PA school or residency. they observed many procedures and saw things that are uncommon such as a person with 2 thumbs and a 6 year old with a severe heart problem who would have already had surgery if in the US. Mia Armstrong, a pediatrician from Albany, GA, also patiently explained childhood illnesses. She is great with the students and kids. The dental clinic was rolling today. they pulled 170 teeth today. that is a years worth for some dentists. hannah pulled many teeth this week and is excited about getting to dental school. When i say we allow those helping us to be hands on i mean it. even one of our translators pulled teeth today. the ladies in pharmacy worked hard but got a few breaks to play with the children. One of our highlights was Alex reading bible stories to the kids. even Alex will agree that her spanish needs improvement but you would of never of known it by the way the kids were around her. also kim tomlinson spent a good amount of time with the kids the last 2 days. when kim gets excited her voice tends to go from high pitched to higher and squeaky. kim would count the jump ropes the kids were doing and her voice would go higher and higher until they missed and she would scream “awesome.” by the end, whenever a child would miss the jump rope the honduran children would all yell “awesome.”
the last night is full of fun stories, thank you’s and tears. God is still in the business of changing hearts. there might of been more laughs and more tears this time than ever before. those of you who have been on this this trip understand what i am talking about. just look as the picture of DW Adcock below. we expect this to go viral. there are 2 things about honduras that DW has never been able to understand or accomplish. first he has never made it a week without having to go “fishing” in the toilet. for those of you that do not know, the honduras septic system can not tolerate toilet paper. this means that no matter what, you can not flush your toilet paper down the toilet. if you do, your toilet will back up and overflow. not a pretty sight. that means if you forget and drop the paper in the toilet, you have to “fish” it out. DW has always had to go fishing. this time, so far, he is perfect. Not one fishing trip. which brings us to his other problem. there are roosters everywhere. they start crowing at dark; they really get going at about 1 am; and they go from door to door serenading around 3 am. they drive DW crazy. DW has a little hearing problem and can not hear normal conversation on most days but he is acutely aware of the roosters. I thought he should “join em rather than fight em.” please refer to the pic below to understand the present I gave DW.
well week 1 is over. we did a lot of good but another week to go. I pray God will continue to bless this mission. seth

by Dr. Seth Berl ’78

Honduras mission day 1…. travel day. i know the term “God showed up” is used casually for about anything but today “God showed up.” Travel day is bad. no other way to describe it. but i am getting ahead of myself. last night 10 of our team members going to honduras were spending the night in an atlanta airport hotel. we had 21 duffle bags for 10 people. everyone was suppose to take 2 duffle bags on the plane the following day and i would take 3. i had brought a bunch of empty duffle bags in case we had some extra stuff to take. i knew the first duffle would cost each person $40 and the second would cost each person $125. we were looking at spending about $1700 just to get the duffle bags full of medicine to honduras. once we started packing i quickly recognized that i had underestimated how many bags we would need. when we got done, we had 9 more duffles filled with at least 50 pounds of meds so another $1000. in addition, some of the team was flying out of orlando and would have to pay for their bags. there goes about another $300. i drove the team luggage to the airport early this morning with 3 of the guys and the rest of the team took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport. i drove the truck and trailer back to the hotel and caught the next shuttle. when i arrived, all the luggage was gone. linda was waiting for me with a big smile on her face. i knew something good happened. she explained that our group was taken by the supervisor over to a place to check in. they quickly checked everyone in including me and i was not even there. then they charged everyone $40 for their first duffle. then the team started loading the extra duffles on to the scales and almost all of them were overweight. max weight is 50 pounds and many of ours were 55. that would mean another $125 per bag. the supervisor asked what was in all the duffles and the team explained it was medication for a mission trip. the supervisor stopped everything and let all the duffles, about 26 which should of cost us $125 each, on for free. she did not charge anything for the bags being overweight or the extra duffle bags. then i found out that exactly the same thing happened in orlando to the luggage there and, in fact, they were not charged anything. WOW!!!! what a way to start a trip. Linda then told me that a group in moultrie had gotten up this morning to pray for our travels including our luggage. WOW!!! let the fun begin… there is someone much much more powerful that me leading the team and that is so comforting. seth