Monday

Today was our first day with patients! Ms. Estel (our cook) made us an amazing breakfast and sent us off with full stomachs and a Buen día to start our day! Our short devotion this morning was over being flexible both in our relationship with God and in our lives. We have to be flexible so no matter what God asks we are ready to do as he wills. We also have to be flexible with our patients, we see so many different diagnoses we have to be able to adapt to whatever situation we are presented with. Today we saw all kinds of patients, from small children to a sweet old lady named Maria who could barely walk until we gave her a walker and she was off to the races! The very next patient was a woman named Marína who had lots of issues she was concerned with. Her past medical history amazed me! You can definitely tell the difference between our healthcare system and Peru's. She had surgery after her daughter was born and when the doctors had sewn her up they realized they had left some of their tools inside her abdomen! I couldn't believe it, they had caused her unnecessary pain that could have easily been avoided. She went on to tell us that when she had surgery on her cervical spine they left her in a neck brace for 8 months! She was so stiff she couldn't flex or extend her neck! Our last patient, Freddy, was a stroke patient. He was a fun patient, you could hear him entertaining everyone in the waiting room by leading them in songs. He had recently gone through a really bad time but you could tell he had a heart of gold. He immediately felt better after we were done giving him therapy. We all agreed that God had sent him there that day especially after our main therapist, Jerry, told us he learned a technique within the last two weeks that he used on Freddy. All our patients were very motivated and eager to do therapy with us today! It felt great to finally apply what we have been learning on real patients. We did everything from documentation to fixing wheelchairs. There are very limited resources in the clinic we are working in and at one point today my only job was holding a germ-x bottle for the exercises we were performing. God is opening up all kinds of doors for us here in Peru and we hope you continue to pray for us and our patients! Muchos Gracias! 

Prayer requests

-a translator on the team is trying to get out of the country and God has finally opened the door for him moneywise and so please pray for guidance in the path God has given him

-For Sam, one of our team members, that he would have a pure heart and the endurance to do Gods work

-kailyn- she felt sick this morning but now she feels better just pray that she continues to feel good

-pray that the clinic continues to go well and communication between us and the patients is clear and we are able to tell them about Jesus

-pray for the other clinicians and everyone working

-pray for the 2 clinics we have yet to go to (pachuacutec and callao)

-pray for Ada, she has Hoffman's disease and its a degenerative disease that is terminal