First mission day accomplished

I cannot believe I left on Monday and it's now Thursday, and this is the first time I've had time, energy and internet to write a post.

Our 4:30 flight from Dallas left at 8:30, so we arrived in London around 11:00 am. We hooked up with Dr. Grace Stewart, from Phoenix, hired a cab, and went to the Tower of London for a tour. My niece, Haley, had this on her London “bucket list” and since she got her passport so she could make this journey, we deferred to her.

Even though I had seen them before, I was mesmerized by the Crown Jewels again.

We hooked up with Mel(issa) Beathard, RN, on our flight and our team was complete. Overnight to Nairobi, then a couple hour flight to Lilongwe got us here about 9 am Wednesday. But, we had to go into town to pick up supplies, we ate pizza of all things for lunch, then stopped to tour a potential clinic site for a bit. We were so tired by the time we arrived at the mission, we showered, ate dinner, drank one beer and were asleep by 8:30 pm.

I am so happy that I have learned to make this crazy long journey without decompensating. Even though I was tired, I was ready to work today. The trip to the village was pretty rough. The road was very dusty and very uneven. There was also heavy bicycle and foot traffic. Big E (Father Emmanuel) said the road made even people who usually don't, dance.

It has been great to see Big E and Little E.

We saw about 150 patients today in the village of Mayira (mah-yee-rah). We used a classroom for our clinic, and the school children were so excited to see us there. I met one of the teachers. Her name is Princess and her English is very good. When I asked her about the school she said there were about 500 students and in her class, there were “104 students against one teacher”.

Well, I did forget the correct cable to load my pics on this laptop, so will start using my iPhone in order to share.  Less fun without them. Sorry.