Friday, May 24th

May 24th

Well it was our last day of working at Selian.  Mark, Halie and I had a very busy day, but we really accomplished a lot.  We started the day by visiting all of our postop patients on the wards.  I got to visit the 71 year old man who had infection of the bone in the foot on the ward, and he was so grateful for Hope Ministries paying for his surgery and his surgery was a success.

Then there was a young 11 year old boy who was badly burned that was in the hospital and was going to have to go home because they had not money to do more skin grafting for his bad burns.  I did dressing changes on this young boy when I was here in January, and he has been in the hospital this entire time.  The staff came to me because the mom and boy were crying because they were going to have to go home and the boy still had a lot of open wounds and needed more skiing grafting.  I paid for his surgery and then went to visit them before I left.  They were so grateful for our help.

Mark and Halie did two bilateral osteotomies on a 3-year old and an 8-year old that had very bowed and cracked legs because of Fluorosis.  Halie was so excited because she was able to do more suturing.  The surgeries went very well and the little children now have straight legs and will be able to walk normally.

I then received a phone call from the mom we saw in outreach clinic that her baby had a large facial tumor.  We assisted her financially and she was referred to a specialist in Dar that has dealt with these kinds of tumors.  She called to thank me for helping her and her little girl is going to have surgery and the doctor was very optimistic on the outcome.  I am just so happy for this little child of God.

We finished the day at Selian with an evaluation meeting with the head of orthopedics, head of OR and the head of the hospital.  I complimented the staff on what a great job they were doing and thanked them for being so nice to my team.  They are a great group to work with and they really appreciated all the donated equipment and want we did to help them.  They said that we came with caring and loving hearts to serve their people.  We discussed about some equipment needs and how these things could help them expand their services.  Please pray that we can go forward with being able to get this badly needed equipment.  I then headed to the cashier to pay for all the surgeries of the people who had no money to get the surgical help they needed.  Finally we said our good-byes and received many hugs.  It has been a great week at Selian with a lot accomplished.  God bless my team for everything they did.

Talked to Julius and the team had another great day on safari as they went to Ngorongoro National Park, one of my favorite.  They are getting up early to go hunting with the bushman and visit some other tribes, and then will be heading back to Arusha.  We will then prepare to leave on Sunday morning to fly to Mwanza to work at Bugando Hospital for the week.

Please continue the prayers for the team.  Love and miss you all!