In the arms of Hope- GSCH Children's Home

All of the children at the Good Shepherd Children's Home that we visited in Zamorano, Honduras have a story, even the tiniest babies. This is baby Astrid, in the arms of Hope. Not ironically at all, considering her provenance. She was found lying on the street, with her mother unconscious beside her in a drug overdose coma. She's an adorable, chubby 8 months old who gets showered with loads of love and attention.

 Sleeping baby snuggles are the best.

 

 

 

 These precious little ones I couldn't get over. The two year old in my lap had the loveliest blue-green eyes, and her five-year old sister Emily was next to her. The tiniest one is still in the baby's casita, or little house, but her sister was hanging by the rails and she let me know that her favorite place to play is watching over her little sister. The girl standing behind me, Alisa, loves to read and is halfway through the Chronicles of Narnia. We had a rousing discussion about The Horse and his Boy, one of my favorites, and she'd just finished reading Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers (all in Spanish though). They have a library of 500 books at the orphanage now! She's the oldest of 5 children at the home. When I asked her, she said that her parents come and visit her once a month. The directors of the Home told us that Honduras has shut down all international adoptions. Motive for prayer!

Danielle and little Cinthia

 Baby Astrid needs a sponsor!! Please see the bottom of the page for a link to the Home's website.

Desiree Feix and Astrid

Sonja snuggles baby Angie

Jensyn snuggles a sleeping babe.

"And they're off!" Kept from flying off by Sonja Walker.

 "Mira, mi cuna!" Look, my crib!  

"I am a crib." Jeremiah rocks the 4 month old off to sleep.

 

Chris Parson's feet after playing soccer with the children. Beautiful.

To visit the website of the home please go to www.gsch.bmdmi.org
 

Preop & Laundry, Honduras style

Megan starts a little one's IV in the hospital's preop area. Yes, it's a garage. They haven't quite continued the construction through to that part of the hospital yet, so it doubles as a preop area, hospital sterilizing (where an old, yet effective-once-working autoclave is parked), and general storage area for mountains of equipment brought by the visiting teams.

 

Did I mention that they could use some industrial-sized washing machines? This is the hospital laundry where a brave woman clad in arm-length work gloves attacked the mountain. See the sink next to the mountain of laundry. The one or two machines they had going where simply no match to the amount of patients that we saw.

Snokkered baby

Pictures of babies are always fun, specially sleeping ones. DON'T WAKE THE SLEEPING BABY! I should have hung a sign over this child's bed because when they wake up from surgery, they bawl for the first hour and there's no stopping it. Yes, this peaceful 22 month-old boy rattled the walls when he awoke but was so cute I whipped out my camera while he was snokkered. And stationed a college student at the food of his bed so he wouldn't actually topple off.



Nobody said you couldn't mess with them though... pic by Desiree Feix

Some pics of our trip

Proof!!

A Honduran electrical nightmare, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Brave, brave people who string this up.

Our digs at the BMDMI Hospital in Guaimaca

Where the food yummies happened.



Mango trees!

Pretty flowers on the property



Let's play a game. I post a picture of random fruit, you identify it for me.



COFFEE!!!! This is what it looks like on a bush!

 So, what do you do if you have large teams of medical missionaries, as well as a hospital, and no city plumbing? Glad you asked. You dig a deep hole and cover it with water lilies. They make the doodoo go away.

 Chillout time with Apples to Apples after our shifts are done.

 The mother of all moths

 These ladies can cook! We all tried to get one of them to come to the States to just cook for us. Didn't work, but oh my goodness did we have good food!

Day 2, Guaimaca, Honduras

It's our first day of surgeries at the Hospital Bautista de Guaimaca in Honduras. We were able to open the ORs after church (which is on the property) and did 7 big surgeries, 4 minors (like circumcisions and the like.)

Yesterday was rather fun as we have about 6 1st year med students and about as many college students who are deciding if they want to have a future in medicine or not. I got to teach 13 of them how to start IV's, (even those headed for Seminary) and was very proud of them as they shrieked and laughed, starting them on. The college students started and the word spread, next thing I was coaching them with all the Med students watching their first IV starts. No pressure there! I told them they were all going to show me up when the real patients showed up tomorrow but thankfully I got all my IV's as well :-) Whew!

Eli stabs Hope

 

I also had the fun of running both the preop areas (which looks very much like a garage) and the post ops. All of them. Males in one room, females in another, 6 beds to a ward. That was 12 patients today, for any of you girls from work who feel like I've skipped out on working this weekend. It was so much fun though. It's been awhile (since the ship) that I've taken care of kiddies and these Honduran kiddos are so stinking cute! All smiles and giggles and quite easily made to laugh, even postoperatively.

Tomorrow we've got 12 cases scheduled, including a prostatectomy, a thyroidectomy, an open cholecystectomy, several lap ones, hernia repairs, and circumcisions (on the littlest ones. Apparently they only do that once the kiddos can't weewee. Poor little things. I'm glad we're here.)

The great thing has been being able to pray with the patients before surgeries, being able to speak to them in their language, calm their fears, making them laugh before surgeries and at least giving them a familiar face to look at when they awake. The little ones can't help but just cry for awhile but once they're feeling better, they're good to go! I had a 22 month old who closed out his day by wee weeing all over 3 beds, gave me a high five and got to go home...and I got to mop. Fun times!!

Guaimaca hospital, Honduras

I admit that I had to look up the exact location of Honduras on a map when I got invited to go on medical missions trip with some of the surgical team from work. Not in the least chagrinned, as I've only one Honduran friend in my acquaintance, and thoroughly thrilled at getting to visit a new country and get a new stamp in my passport, we're off on Friday, the 19th.

After a very short flight, like 4 hrs, our team of 36 will be arriving in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, and get loaded onto a bus to be driven a couple of hours north to the town of Guaimaca. The Baptist Medical and Dental Mission has a hospital there that is staffed with several teams of medical professionals during the course of the year, and I'm very glad to be getting to go. Lionel was there last year while I was in Togo and had a blast, getting to do surgeries on quite a large amount of people and do some hiking.

At this point I'm not even sure what surgeries exactly we're going to be performing. (The royal "we". "we"-nothing. I'm a ward nurse. I'll be on the wards :-). I've also got this creeping sense of minor alarm when I realize I'm one of only 3 nurses on the trip. Oi vey. I'm also sitting here wracking my brains for my Spanish surgical terms. I'm really glad to help but getting nervous-er by the minute as I've never really done surgical translation before. Loads of medical translation, but trying to remember what's a gallbladder in Spanish. Oh! Vesicula biliar. It's a whole different world then I giggle and remember how it was done on the Africa Mercy; the surgeon would explain in depth the impending procedure and the translator would then turn to the patient, state "De doctor, he fix everyting, it be fine." Don't think I'm gonna get away with that.



I've not known a lot about Honduras but apparently it's quite a poor country and the hospital teams treat a large amount of patients, so I'm really excited about this next week and seeing what the Lord is going to do in the lives of these people. Please pray for us all while we're down there, for safety, health and more importantly, to be used by God.

CBS 60 minutes

CBS's 60 Minutes did an awesome piece on the Africa Mercy while I was serving in Togo. It aired on Sunday night and I'm including one of the 5 links that they have posted on the website on the ship life and ministry.

I feature in this one! My 2 seconds of fame...  This segment was on the Parker family who live on the ship.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57569774-10391709/raising-kids-at-sea-meet-the-parkers/


Aaaand here's the proof:

 Bouncing a little one.

 

(yeah, that's me, way in the background :-)