Uganda - Clinic Day #1

What an amazing day that the Lord made!  

After a fitful night of sleep (noisy African neighbors, less than comfortable cot, baby bladder) I was concerned that I was going to have a difficult day.  But God had a most definite plan for our mission team.  We started the day with breakfast followed by our devotional time with the Africans.  We all gathered in one of the school rooms - all 50ish of us - to sing praise songs and to hear a message from one of the African pastors.  The most amazing part to me was when the leader of the African group, Fredrick, led the group in prayer.  He prayed for a while and then he gave the group specific things to pray for.  He first asked for prayers for the people we serve and then the most amazing thing happened - spontaneous prayers aloud  were being raised all at once.

 Totally uninhibited in spiritual expression

"Christ chatter" praying

This "Christ chatter" was so moving and Spirit-filled.  Fredrick then asked for prayers for our mission team followed by prayers for our families back home, and finally for the leader of MedReach, Steve Hudson.  Just when it seemed that it couldn't get any more moving the group sang a song in their language that was just beautiful.  It is very inspiring to watch such uninhibited spiritual expression.  Then the pastor got up and spoke a short message about healing and deliverance. 

  Fredrick had Mark introduced the American team and then he had the African team introduce themselves.  This African team is quite diverse.   There are representatives from several different regions to help with the translations.  As it turns out the camp is in a mixed area - many tribes are represented because of migration due to the rebel actions in their home regions.  He then gave the statistics for the Jesus film showing from the night before.  There were approximately 600 people who showed up to view the film, 250 who prayed the prayer of confession and 160 who stayed after the showing for the first follow-up where they receive further clarification and are introduced to the local pastor.  Wow - very cool.  The devotional time was ended with a rousing African rendition of Father Abraham - led by a man named Abraham, who coincidentally has many sons. 

Mary and I met with Dr. Mike Boniface in the medical room before starting clinic to go over some details about some of the medications and diagnosis that we would likely be seeing in clinic and getting more medications added to the pharmacy stock.  We were able to get the clinic started at about 10:15am and were a little slow to start.  Mary worked with me for a couple of patients until she was comfortable enough to jump in and see patients solo.  To her credit she jumped right in and did an outstanding job. 

just like a duck to water!

Mary's team was rounded out with Harrison, doc-in-training 

and Santo, translator and wonderful Christian witness

 Our second doctor, Dr. Jeff Jones, arrived at camp shortly after we started seeing patients.  

Dr. Jeff arrived, quick introductions all around, and then started right in seeing patients

Unfortunately, Penny Pickering, our pharmacist that came with him arrived at camp sick.  She spent the day in a Zophran-induced sleep trying to get over her illness.  I am happy to report that this evening she said she was feeling much better.  Maybe tomorrow she will feel well enough to help.  We saw a wide assortment of patients today - 278 in all - with diagnoses ranging from common colds to Elephantitis!  Crazy, right? 

folks started lining up early

We saw many, many women with babies strapped to their backs.

 We were all finished with clinic by around 6pm and thankfully our dinner was ready and waiting for us when we made it into the kitchen.  Grilled Velveeta sandwiches never tasted so good!  (I know several of you are thinking "Velveeta - yuck!"  Keep in mind that with no electricity there is no refrigeration.  All of our food for this week has to be non-perishable.  

Mary and I noticed that there was a large group of men playing soccer in the field just down from the school yard so we decided to take a walk down there and chat about all of the wonderful things that we experienced that day.  While we were standing on the edge of the field we were approached by two men.  The one who spoke knelt down to us and told us that he and his friend were not going to be able to attend the clinic because of their work being too far away.  They didn't need to be seen but heard that we were handing out bibles.  They wanted to know if we would give them bibles.  Of course we wanted to help so we walked back to the kitchen where the bibles were being stored and got the bibles they wanted.  You have never seen two more grateful men.  We were humbled by their desire for the gospel and were glad to oblige.  

Give some guys a ball...

and a fútbol game will break out. 

Once it got really nice and dark Heidi, Patricia, Mark, Mary and I walked out into the middle of the schoolyard, a field really, and gazed upon the most magnificent starry sky.  I have never had the opportunity to see so many stars!  When the sun goes down here there are no light pollution to distract us from seeing the stars.  The moon was just a sliver so there wasn't moonlight to compete with the star show.  With not a cloud in the skies it was truly a wonderful sight.  I brought along my Ipad so that we could use the Star Walker app to be able to identify the constellations.  That was really nice, but after a few minutes we turned it off and just stared at the sky.  No app can compete with the real thing!  We ended the night with a shooting star!

I had better get to sleep.  We are going to have a long day tomorrow - expecting a larger crowd for clinic.  Camp is much quieter tonight as the Jesus film is showing in another village.  All I can hear are the tree frogs and crickets and the Africans laughing and talking in the background.  An altogether lovely sound.