January 1st, 2018
A new day, and a new year!
Today kept us busy, but I think it’s only a warm up to what the rest of the week is going to look like. We saw about 300 patients today between the doctors, physical therapists, and optometrist (and gynecologist from the church we’re partnered with here who volunteered with us!), but come Friday we’re expecting to see around 700.
Us PT students tag teamed triage and the PT treatment area. Half of our time was taking vitals and seeing why they were here so we could send them to see the right people. The other half of the time we evaluated patients in PT and put our hands on them to get them moving and ease their pain. It’s hard because we know what we’ve done is only temporary, but we hope with the education that they can continue to improve, and really, that having someone that is willing to put their hands on them and who wants to help with their pain, gives them hope to endure.
Probably the sweetest moment today was teaching a woman with an amputation how to use stairs with her crutches. Building confidence in herself was huge. She did so well – she just needed someone to push her to her potential and remind her what her body can overcome.
I don’t know that we all understood the significance of the dates of our trip to El Salvador before coming here. Our first clinic day, today, being the very first day of a brand new year.
New Years in El Salvador is sort of similar to how we celebrate Christmas in the States. People get together with their families to celebrate the blessings that are to come in the new year. Then there are fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks.
Jimmy can’t tell us enough how much it means to them that we leave our country and our families during this time in order to come serve them. Imagine not being with your family on Christmas – that’s how it is for them being away from family when the new year starts.
I know it doesn’t quite translate to our culture, but I still found myself thinking that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I hope I can always make myself available to be in a place to serve my purpose, no matter if that’s in the States or elsewhere. I hope that nothing else matters to me more than being where the Lord has told me to serve Him. I think all of my love for my family and friends stems from that anyway.
We saw a lot of broken and messy lives here today. Houses made from sheet metal and makeshift pillars, with sheets hanging for doors. In one of those houses was a woman and her 4 year old daughter who were on their own after the husband had left a year ago. Jimmy’s church is working to rebuild these people’s houses because this promise still hasn’t been fulfilled by the government here.
There’s a lot of political unrest here and destruction from the civil war 30 years ago. Restoration is a slow process, and definitely not a perfect process. I pray that we can all see the promise of restoration of all of our brokenness through Jesus’ sacrifice. I’ll keep sacrificing myself for His work until we do.
Keep praying. Our PT equipment should be available tomorrow, and Jimmy is going to customs in the morning to fight for our medications.
-Nicole
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