Well, I had a little apprehension yesterday, but today our police escort seems a big to-do over nothing. In the meantime, we are thoroughly enjoying our new heavily armed friends! Yesterday we were downgraded to only three policemen and that pattern carried through to today. I asked Larry and Herb if the policemen would be coming to the Orphanage tomorrow but they said they have no idea. We (all of us) really are not informed much...we just follow directions and wait and see!
The church we were at today, Mejicanos, is one of the most highly structured, well organized churches I have ever seen. The workers from that church arrived at 5:30 this morning to begin preparations for Clinic....the workers were 157 strong! (That number does not even include our translators and the helpers from Brother Jimmie's Church (Gethsamani Baptist) and from Strong Tower Baptist, and from an Assemblies of God Church that have come to every Clinic with us. The workers from Mejicanos almost all wear uniforms identifying them as workers...different uniforms for specific positions. I tell you, the Clinic we had today had the most people that have ever gone through Clinic in a single day (well, this year and the last trip two years ago!...guess I can't vouch for the ones before that). We treated 542 people from the community and 45-50 church workers today....for a total of 587-593 people in a single day...and we were finished by 4:30! Many hands make light work! Having 157 extra helpers who KNEW their jobs well, made today stress free and run like clock work! The workers at Mejicanos are superior at managing the flow of traffic and crowd control. There was far less waiting today for those being seen than on days when we saw less people, just because we had such excellent assistance.
More than 76 people made a decision for Christ today. 76 is the number that prayed to receive Christ during the group meetings, but, then, the industrious workers of the church meandered through the halls, pausing to speak with folks one on one as they waited in line to see the physical therapist or the doctor or to be fitted with glasses. They do not yet have the final count on how many additional people accepted Christ as their Savior during these more personal one on one conversations.
Jimmie told me today that we saw a total of 556 people on Monday (final count) at ..... and that 75 people made a profession of faith that day. On Tuesday, he says our final count was that we saw 446 people and 66 of them made a profession of faith.
One of the stories I head from one the physical therapists was about an elderly man who had had a stroke several years ago and had been unable to walk since that time. Everywhere he has needed to go, his family members have carried him. They carried him to Clinic. She examined him and found that he actually had pretty good muscle tone and she suspected that, given the proper equipment, the man would be able to walk. She fitted him with a walker and for the first time in two years, he WALKED across the room. After he sat back down, his wife kept quietly glancing over at the walker and then back to her husband. They did not comprehend that we would GIVE them the walker. But the therapist could read the longing in the wife's eyes and realized she did not understand and was too polite to presume to ASK that such a valuable gift be given to them. The therapist hurried to explain through the translator that the walker was theirs to take home and keep. Upon hearing this, the wife broke down into tears. Their lives had been changed significantly by something that we take for granted here in the United States...access to a walker.
One of our physician extenders (a nurse practitioner named Claudine) told about a woman about her own age who came through Clinic and did not really have any physical problem, but was unable to work past the grief at having lost her mother. God sent that woman to just the right person, because Claudine had been devastated by the loss of her own mother and could weep along with that woman and then tell her how Christ had helped her in that very same situation. She was able to listen with a tender heart and give the woman the opportunity to grieve with someone who's heart was so very tender to her.
Tomorrow we go to the Orphanage.
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