Uganda - Clinic Day #2

Hallelujah, I slept last night!  Having the quiet night in camp and having not had a decent night's sleep since two nights before leaving home I was grateful to finally settle down enough to rest well.  Good thing too because we have had quite the day!  

a beautiful sunrise to start the day

My day got a really nice start seeing the Southern Cross constellation this morning when I woke up.  It was really bright and easy to spot.  

Today it was the American camp's time to lead the joint devotion.  Patricia started things off by leading the group in some of our favorite choruses which the Africans jumped right in on and began harmonizing.  Tom Boone from our team then led the message using Psalm 124.  He spoke about the Lord being our help.  Sometimes problems seem too big but God will show Himself if we are faithful to look for Him.  Sometimes it takes suffering in our life to see just how good God is.  He followed that passage with I John 5:5 which states that if we live in Christ we don't just endure the world, we conquer the world.  Powerful.  Then one of my favorite parts came:  Fredrick, the leader of the African group, led us in our prayer time.  He asked for prayer requests and then assigned a different request to different parts of the room.  Then the Christ chatter began.  After the devotional time everyone gave their reports from the previous day.  The Jesus film team reported that they went to a  Nyinga 1 village and showed the film to 250 people.  Of those people 150 prayed the prayer of confession.  Of those 150 people 80 stayed afterward for the first follow up with the team.  The evangelism team reported that during clinic yesterday 144 people made professions of faith, 70 pairs of glasses were given out and approximately 445 people were seen.  These are amazing numbers and we were expecting more people to show up today because yesterday had been the local market day.  

After the meeting was over we got set up in the clinic and began seeing patients.  They had been lining up to be seen since before we got out of our tents.  We had a very steady stream of folks all day long.

My most excellent translator, Stephen with one of our patients for the day.

Stephen speaks 6 languages.  Impressive!

BTW, he also had a voice just like Johnny Depp.

one of my cutie-pies for the day

Dr. Mike hard at work

our pharmacy in action

  In fact when we broke for lunch at 12:30pm we still had probably 500+ people to be seen.  It seemed like a daunting task but we just worked really hard to see everyone and help them the best we could and kept at it until everyone had been seen.  The last patient left our clinic just after 7pm.  What a long, busy day - but what a sense of accomplishment!  Mark totaled up all of the clinic slips at the end of the day.  We managed to see 683 people!  Steve Hudson of MedReach said that this might be a record number.  It felt like a record-breaker to me!  

Mark had to use all of his math skills counting up the slips

We saw 683 people!

After locking up the clinic we all headed over the the kitchen and ate dinner and  just sat around talking about the day.  

Here's an interesting tidbit:  there might not be electrical power, internet, or flushing toilets anywhere close to where we are but I have cell service as do many of my team members.  I have been able to keep in touch with my family back home which has been such a blessing.  Mission trips are very meaningful but they are physically and emotionally draining.  Getting sweet notes and hearing about what everyone's day was like back home has been a true Godsend for me.  Some of the notes have been funny, some just the mundane stuff of life back home, and frequently it has been loving messages of encouragement.  I have the best family.