Amanda and Emily in Las Minas



(copied from old blog. entry dated: 9/3/2007 8:37:00 PM)

Amanda and Emily at the Las Minas health centre

Back in June 2006, Dr Ron White who is an eye doctor in Ocala Florida, visited us in Honduras. He brought his three grandchildren, thousands of pairs of glasses and Amanda and Emily Miche. When we visited the Miche ladies on our last trip to the States, they told us that they have been thinking about going back to the Las Minas area.


Village girls being de-wormed                              Young boy in Nombre de Dios Morazan

So August 26 Amanda and Emily and I went back to Las Minas to de-worm the kids and distribute multivitamins to about 150 kids in elementary schools. We faced many challenges, one of them is transportation. It is definitely the wet season, with tropical storms and hurricanes at every corner. On our trip up to Las Minas it rained but as if that wasn’t enough, when we finally made it to the centre, we were greeted by a small mob. They were all concerned over a man that on Saturday had cut himself with his machete and had been bleeding since. It was Sunday night about 9:00 pm. He was talking nonsense, so naturally I thought he had been drunk and mouthed-off at somebody and been cut in a fight. When I examined him, he was hypovolemic (low blood volume, low blood pressure) and was loosing blood constantly. The centre has no electricity and just to make things interesting, the bathroom had flooded and the entire building had 2 inches of water on the floor.


Next morning our patient is doing well.

So we started sweeping water out the door and started looking for surgical hardware and the suture kit that I had been prompted to bring along on this non-surgical trip. Thank God, the suture was with us. We all prayed and asked God to help me find the vessel that was causing the bleeding. He heard and answered and after a couple of sweaty moments, the bleeding stopped. I urged the family members to stay close to the centre for the night so that in the morning I could check him again. On the next day he was coherent and could not recall the night’s activities. I prescribed some post-op antibiotics and sent him home. Amanda, Emily and I rejoiced in the fact that God was there and heard our prayer. God is so good, and He is that all the time.