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.