Innumerable stars bejeweled the night sky as the moon appeared, it’s deep orange glow slowly shining across the ocean. The gentle sounds of breeze and shore. The days have grown heavy and hot, so tonight’s cool break is a gift.
So lots of highlights and snip-its: This week I’ve been working with two ladies in the clinic and out in the community. The more I learn, as is often the case, the more I feel I know less than nothing! Thankful to the gal who let me stick her with needles yesterday so I could learn to set an IV. The cases that walk through that clinic door: anything is possible. It’s hard when someone comes in and we do not have the right medicines or enough of what we need. Sometimes it’s basic things like bags of saline or lidocaine to numb up a patient for stitches.
Walked the Path to the pond, carefully stepping from slat to rotted slat on a shabby wooden dock a couple hundred feet long over shallow water filled with garbage and refuse. Half of the dock was broken so we took the long way around. Paula wanted to be sure we made some stops in the Pond so that the folks there, the poorest and most cast-off community, would know that we were here for them as well.
Making things beautiful. There is something in the soul that is captured by beauty, and I think that when we work to make something more beautiful, we are imitating the God who made us. This beautiful world is often glorious beyond what is “practical” or “useful”. Walking to the shacks in the Pond today it caught my eye: amid the dilapidated sheds on stilts was a garden. It was really 3-4 recycled buckets/containers, but they were specifically arranged, and in them carefully tended plants were growing and blossoming. They harken to the perfect world that Jesus intended for us, and that He will someday completely restore all things to. In the meantime, my heart smiles at tiny bright pink blossoms in a bucket and the hope that Jesus brings.
Last night Paula, Kathleen and myself took off in the dark to walk down the Path to The Bight, a village to the west of the clinic. A big snake slipped off into the trees as we passed on the path between the dense island bush and the sea. We were off to see a little one with whom I will be doing therapy. It was a precious time. Having obtained a lot of background now about this little one, though due to the level of care there are still big gaps, it was great just to meet with Irma after all these months. She walked us through the neighborhood to her parents home where she introduced us to family and showed off pictures, a huge smile constantly on her face.
Other item for prayer: we have been having big generator grief today. The power has been going in and out all day. The guys have been working on it for close to 9 hours straight at this point. Even now, well after 9pm I hear the generator power on then crash out over and again.
(Little on the geography of my island: Along the scalloped edge of the island, in each inlet there is a community for the most part. Around a good portion of the island is the Path. The Path is about the width of a one-lane road, very much a path though in terms of quality: large pot-holes, roots and ruts all along it. A few bridges of planks in the low spots. We are located on the south side of the island kinda in the middle and up the bank and across the path at an area known as The Point. To the right while facing the sea one would pass the rest of the Point community, The Bight, Bently Bay then Rocky Point. Traveling left from the clinic while passing a little one room elementary school, the Pentecost church and the very smell pigs, you’d pass Seco, the Pond and Mangrove Bight. If you veered off and headed North near the elementary school, you’d go up a large hill and down again, placing you on the Northside and down a ways the Big Rock. The homes are built around the edge of the island with a steep slope up to the “mountain”hill in the middle of the island. At the top of this is an old wooden cross and a cellular tower. And all over, the island is covered in thick, deep, tangled island bush composed of vines, bramble, palms, trees, ferns, flowers, etc. From the Prayer deck on top of my house or from the top of the hill by the cross, you can look out and see neighboring islands, and way off in the distance on a clear day, the silhouette of mainland Honduras.)
I’m really enjoying having this team of 6 folks here for 10 days. But they will leave next week and I will stay. As we laughed with the ladies from the island tonight in the kitchen making baleadas for dinner, the gals from the states were talking about their kitchens back in the States...this is my kitchen. This is home now. It’s been less than two weeks and just feels now like I’m here with this group. Not sure how it will feel when they leave, and I’m still here...
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