The Work

I got to spend the first week observing at all the different projects
going on here. There is a medical clinic three times weekly in
different locations; a feeding center for the homeless one day a week;
two different English classes (one for women, and one for all ages and
genders); opportunities to teach in a local Catholic school; and soon
we will be starting some classes at a community center. I will
probably be helping out there with aerobics and crafts.

Most of the team members work on a variety of different projects.
There are two nurses (Heidi being one of them), who obviously help in
the clinics. Damon does sports programming, especially soccer, as well
as controlling patient flow in the clinics and generally helping to
lead the team. Some of the girls teach conversational English at a
mosque.

I’ll try to do a post about each project, so you can see some of the
work going on here. Everyone is trying to build relationships with the
S-people group—they visit many of these friends in their homes outside
of the project sites & times. Pray for the continued success of the
projects and for many relationships to be built with the ultimate hope
of being able to share the news and see many choose faith.

The clinics are rewarding because the physical good they are doing for
people is obvious. However, there is also much chaos, and much
heartache. Although the patients are mostly middle-aged to elderly,
with the common complaints of old age, there are also some little
ones, who usually have heart-breaking cases. A little girl with
unexplained kidney failure, an infant with severe hydrocephalus, a 5
month old baby weighing less than 7 pounds due to malnourishment and
constant sickness. Particularly because of my lack of medical
knowledge, I don’t think the clinics will be a big part of where I
spend my time here… relationship building is difficult when you are
struggling to see 70-80 patients in 4 or 5 hours, each of three days
at three different locations. There are a few days they are
short-staffed though, and I work in the pharmacy and check patients
in.

The project I am most excited about is an English class run by one of
Damon’s local friends, Dohdi*. He teaches about 30 students, half of
whom are women, and he is going to let me teach some of these women in
smaller groups, and run conversation groups outside of class time.
Most of the women (some of whom might more accurately be called
“girls” as the students range from middle school age to adult) seem
very excited to have a native English speaking friend with whom to
converse. I am hoping that this will lead to friendships outside of
the school and even some home-visits.