Dia Clinica -Guerra

We began our day with devotions and praise and worship. It mattered not a whit that only 4 people in the group had good singing voices and the rest of us couldn’t carry a tune -- we were loud and joyous. I think God was pleased.

Then we received a pleasant surprise, a co-worker and friend who I have not seen in years, came with us on our first day of clinic. He had mentioned prior to our arrival in the Dominican that he was joining us as business had him in the DR the same week we were to be here. However, I had not heard from him in the days leading up to our trip so did not think he was coming.

This surprise turned out to be blessing as we were a man down, his joining the team meant that we could utilize one of our team members in another area --God’s perfect timing!

We traveled over an hour and a half to a small one -room school house in a village that was in the middle of fields, in the region of Guerra. The one room meant that the care giver stations, eye clinic and pharmacy were in very tight quarters. Fortunately, triage could be set up outside under a small grove of shade trees. In spite of the small space, the flow from triage to pharmacy went amazingly well. The Dominican people we treated, the children we hugged and loved on, and the medicines given were as much a blessing for us as it was for them. To watch the joy on a young girl‘s face when she was fitted with glasses and could read from Dr. Rob‘s chart for the first time or to see Earl with five kids hanging from his every limb, laughing as though they were on a ride at Disney, and the quiet dignity of the old man who humbly told the doctor he was just a little dizzy (a blood pressure of 220/140) --all these vignettes of God‘s goodness were provided throughout the day. However the best part of the day was seeing how God took a group of mostly strangers and knit them in a cord of not fifteen individual strands but one cord bound together for one purpose in Christ Jesus.