El Salvador, Sunday, March 9th
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:09:12 -0400
Dear Family,
Here it is, day one on the campaign. Everyone went to bed early, at least at the hotel where I was staying (Olinda). It was kind of quiet when I came down about 9:30 to see if anyone was in need of anything. I only saw one person, and I asked where everyone was. I was told that they had all gone to bed. So I did the same. They were sure tired, since a lot of them were up since 3:00 am or earlier. Actually, some of them said they didn't get to sleep the night before.
Our leave time from the hotel is 6:30 am, so that means that if you don't get up at 5:00, you won't be able to get a shower, dress, and have breakfast in time to make the bus (that's taking into account there are at least one or more roommates to try and accommodate with one bathroom).
I set my alarm for 4:45 am. I don't know what caused it, but I woke up at 3:15 am. I went back to sleep trying to get a little more before the alarm went off. Jonathan, my roommate had his alarm set to go off somewhere about 5:15. What he didn't take into account is that his cell phone alarm practiced the "spring forward" to daylight savings time. So, it went off at 4:15 since El Salvador doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. Again, I decided to try and get a little more sleep until my alarm went off. I nodded off some, and woke up again, this time about 4:40. I decided to go ahead and get up. I took my cell phone with me so I could cancel it when it went off. While I shaving, I waited for my alarm to go off. It never did. It turned out that I had place my alarm settings so that it did not ring on "weekends". It's a good thing that I didn't roll over one more time to wait for the alarm to go off. I might have been late. So between my alarm and Jonathan's we both had problems.
We had a lot of team luggage and medicine to haul out to the clinic area. After filling up the pick-up, we decided to put as many as possible on the one van we have and use the seats in the back of the bus to put the 47 pieces of the team luggage we have.
I left early with the cooks around 6:00. It took us a solid 45 minutes to get to the job site. When we arrived, the security was not sure what was happening. Our clinic area, (which is a sports complex with 2 swimming pools (uh, baptismal pools) 2 soccer fields, 1 basketball court, and lots of playground.
It took a little while to get things open, but when we did, the "Sunday" soccer people started showing up. I had to communicate with the Mayor who had assured us that we would have the facility exclusively this week. That got honored.
After our morning devo, it was "to the work." We had to get the clinic up and running, and that took several hours. We got 5 docs from the health department along with some auxiliary personnel. We also managed to get 3 or 4 translators from the community. Two were the daughter and nephew of the mayor.
Lunch got to us ok and on time. By that time we had things fairly well in order. We did have to swap our eyeglasses area with a doctor's room. Other than that, things went fairly smoothly.
The Mayor has been everywhere. He came early enough to be of great help. We had to have some registration forms, plus get the "community room" ready for the evening services.
The rest of the day went uneventful. We didn't see the numbers I would like to see, but it was a starting point.
We closed the clinic early so we could have some time to get the evening services ready.
I learned during services that we have three sick people. One is our head cook, another is a translator. We need to get them all well.
Well, our late arriver made it in. Buck and I both went to get him this evening. He was glad to be here.
Well that's about I can say and keep my eyes open. Therefore I'll just send this blog and hope it helps to get to know our labor for the Lord.
Keep us in your prayers.
God bless.