Monday, January 8th
On Sunday night the team threw a celebration party for Joseph as he completed his residency. We broke bread, had many laughs, and enjoyed a delicious cake baked from the local bakery. We enjoyed meeting all the staff and doctors that we will be working with this week. Praise God a great celebration. Hope Ministries sponsors doctors who want to go on and specialize in residency program because many of them cannot afford to go. I am proud that Hope Ministries has had 8 that have already graduated and I am so proud of them because any of them are in lead roles in their departments. We currently have 7 in school and I will be getting to meet this the next few days. I am so proud of all of them and they are working hard and are so grateful for Hope Ministries helping them to make their dreams come true. God bless all the people who are assisting this program financially.
Mama G
Today was my favorite day by far. Today Julius and I went to an orphanage in Mwanza. We got there around 10:30 and I was given a tour of the place. There were boys rooms and girls rooms and a classroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. They said they had 52 students and more girls than boys. Then Julius worked with the staff to get a list of the things we could buy with our budget for the orphanage. We went out to town and bought corn flour, wheat flour, notebooks, and sardines. Sardines smell disgusting and I was not a fan of the fish market but other than that it was good. We went back and got there around 1:00 and unloaded stuff. The plan was for the regional director to come to the orphanage at 2:00 so everyone was cleaning, so I spent some time with the kids teaching them colors. When the director didn’t come we had lunch around 3:00 and I did my teaching project around 3:45. I split the kids into a younger group and an older group. I did addition flashcards with all of them though I did harder ones with the older kids. The older kids also knew their multiplication tables very well. I gave prizes to all the kids and extra if they got the answer right in flashcards. It was amazing I felt so good teaching the children and helping them learn and I really felt like I connected with them. Then Julius and I headed back to the hotel to meet the rest of the team.
Belle
The rest of the team spent the day at Bugando hospital. This was our first day running clinic with the new foot and ankle specialist team led by Dr. Goswami. We arrived at Bugando at 730 am just in time to join the monthly administration meeting. The team received a warm welcome from the head of the hospital before departing to the conference room in the orthopedic department where we listened to the residents present the patients the attended. Then Dr. Goswami did a teaching session to the residents and medical students. They were all very attentive to hear what he had to say.
We then went to clinic for the day at 9am. From 9am to 8pm we held clinic, seeing a total of 26 patients in which half were booked for surgery. We saw a plethora of different indications. It was amazing to see the eagerness to learn from the Tanzanian team. The natural chemistry formulated throughout the day helped entice a well running clinic full of great teaching lessons for everyone. Tomorrow we will begin our first day of surgeries may we pray for successful outcomes and a day full of education and joy.
Arthur
Hi Mama Gayle. I am so excited to be working on implementing a foot and ankle program here at Bugando. The team and the Tanzanian team have displayed so much excitement to do this and what an awesome teach with a great passion to make this work. Hope Ministries donated a lot of badly needed medical equipment and things that we will need to do our surgeries this week. They are so grateful for the equipment that donated.
Dr. Gaswomi is a great teacher and did a great job in clinic. The Tanzanian doctors were like sponges taking in all he had to offer and some even taking notes. At the end of the clinic we made the surgical schedule for the week. Please lift the team up in prayer for successful surgeries and healing for our patients.
