Medical Outreach

On Saturday, January 3rd, George had an opportunity to be involved with a medical outreach... one of our favorite activities. A few months ago, a missionary in the area approached us about helping him with an outreach. He had a team coming from the US and on their team were four nurses who wanted to put their skills and knowledge to good use. We have worked with the missionary before at the playground ministry and have met with him for other ministry brainstorming meetings as well. We really like him and his wife. He asked if our church would be willing to host the outreach and we said, yes and began planning it with our pastor. The plan was to offer de-worming medicine and education, triage and evaluation for medicine needs such as antibiotics, wound care and malaria testing and medication.

On Friday night, George did a training with the nurses to explain what types of situations they will face. Tropical medicine can be very different than what goes on in the US and procedures differ as well. The next day the event went off great. It was supposed to be a half day event, but so many people came (over 300 were seen) they stayed until the late afternoon to see them all. There was one child who was a year and a half who was severely malnourished and may have been only 13 pounds. The team members gave the mother advice and George is going to try to follow up with the family.

George had a nice time working with the team. We love seeing people from different ministries coming together in the Lord's name to bless the community. Poor George was exhausted as this was the day Julia and I were coming home from the hospital, but the Lord gave him strength to get through the day. We hope to do more outreaches like these in the future.