Mexico - Post 2

I think I left off on Day Three in the last post, so let's move on to day four. This is where things began to get interesting. The dentist showed up on this day. He was a young guy from Mexico City. He came in the sanctuary where all of the doctors were set up and began rearranging things on the platform. I thought to myself, "no way is he going to be pulling teeth right here in the sanctuary where I can hear everything and see everything." Guess what? He set up right in the sanctuary where I could see and hear everything. This is one of those cases where you know you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself! You know those chairs on every platform in every church that are the designated pastor's chairs? That is what he used for his dentist chair. Talk about primitive. As if that was not bad enough the people who were waiting to be seen sat on a bench just to one side of the stage where they could watch every person having their teeth pulled. Can I tell ya'll that I would have been laid out in the floor if I had to watch all of that knowing I was next. Ugh, it gives me the heebeegeebees just thinking about it! I watched him put one lady in a headlock trying to get her tooth out. I'm not kidding - her head was in his armpit - here are some pictures to prove it --- Our saddest patient today was a little two year girl that came in just before the day ended. I missed the first couple of minutes of the exam and when I came back Dr. T asked me to take this little girl over to one of the benches and remove the bottom half of her clothes so he could examine her. As soon as I picked her up she started screaming and kicking and fighting with me. Once we got her undressed I understood why. She had the worst diaper rash I have ever seen. It was horrid - probably the worst thing that I saw all week. It was so deep into her skin that there were no topical creams that were going to help; Dr. T gave her an oral antibiotic to fight the infection. The funny thing about all this is that first thing that morning somebody had come over and brought us several packets of diaper rash cream. I don't remember who it was or where they found them, but I am convinced that God provided those that day just for that little girl.
The highlight of this day was after dinner me and Dr. S won at Spades, and yes, on Friday morning we WERE crowned King and Queen of Spades. I guess when you got it, you got it!:)
Day Five-- Today was our busiest day yet. We saw between 30-35 children; most of them were so poor looking and the stenches from some of them were overwhelming. We had some children come in with complaints of foot fungus, but when you try to look at their feet you can't tell fungus from dirt. This was the day when you could really begin to see the appreciativeness of the people though. Dr. T examined one little girl and then gave her a piece of candy. She hugged and kissed him and then came over to me to hug and kiss me. We had several kids do this today and it will truly melt your heart - they just want to be loved on! There were so many kids today that it just seemed like we couldn't give them the help that they needed. That broke my heart. We had one little boy who was 4 years old that couldn't hear. His mother said that he needed hearing aids but they couldn't afford them. I wanted to give her all the money that I had and tell her to go and get the hearing aids so that her son could hear. By the time we got back to the hotel I was exhausted and could hardly hold my head up through dinner. I went back to the room to just kind of check out for a few minutes before our next Spades challenge. On my way back out to play Spades I passed the room where we have our devotions. I'm not sure if I can explain this well, but here goes nothing - The hotel that we stayed at has several courtyard areas. The room that we had devotions in every morning had two windows in it that opened up into one of these courtyard areas. There are rooms all around the courtyard. Well, every morning we started off by singing a couple of songs and the windows were always open. On my way back out to play Spades I passed by this room and our "praise team" and some others were practicing for the end of the week service that would take place at the church on Thursday night. The sounds of their praise literally filled the halls of that hotel and I wondered how many people had woke up that week to our singing. I tried to upload a video of our devotions, but it is not working so we will have to make do with a few pictures. The window by the bird cage is the room where we met every morning and the court yard picture is the area that the window opened up to.

Journal Entry from today: "...one thing I cannot forget today is the smells. The smells of poverty. It is very distinct and unable to be put into words. These are things that I rarely, if ever, smell at home..."

The last day of clinic and the final church service definitely deserve a post all their own, so there is more to come...