Operativo Medico La Victoria - a Health Fair

Health insurance is only available in this country to very wealthy people.  The rest of the folks generally just have to ignore getting regular medical treatment because they don't have the money.  There are many free clinics, but not in small towns.

Here we are way out in the country.

We drove to La Victoria, a little town about an hour north of Santo Domingo, to film a medical fair that was taking place there.  One of our Public Affairs directors who is a nurse had organized this amazing event which matched the poor people in this town with medical doctors and other services.  The Lion's Club also partnered with our church on this event.

The main street in La Victoria

We love the way folks here dry their clothes - in the country, they put them over bushes and rocks.

As we've probably already mentioned, Dominican time is at least 30 minutes to an hour later than the scheduled time.  But when we arrived before the 8:30 time when the event was to begin, the chapel was already filled to overflowing.

Here's the full chapel and then they added another row
of chairs behind.

 Here's the chapel with a line outside which got longer.

Unfortunately, the medicos didn't arrive until 9:15, but that wasn't unexpected.  There was a pediatrician, two general medicine doctors, an optometrist, and a heart ekg specialist. In addition, there were several nurses responsible for dispensing donated medication  per the prescriptions that the doctors might write.  In addition, two barbers were giving free haircuts in one of the rooms.

Here are four of our missionaries ready to present.

Young adults, including some missionaries, put on a puppet show similiar to the one that we showed you from Clay's visit.  This helped entertain the kids while they were waiting to be seen.  Over 500 people were there and were seen by one doctor or another.  It was such a touching experience to see the needs of so many people tried to be met.

 Here is the table overflowing with pills and medicine samples that had been donated.  They eventually added three more tables because of all the things that had been given including a box full of reading glasses.

Here is Rosa Paulino who organized everything.  When we first arrived here, our public affairs director, in describing her to me before we met her, told me that she was really old.  She's a year younger than me, so I must be as old as dirt!

 Here's a whole series of photos that we just took of the darling kids and families that were there.  They loved having me take their picture, and then they ran up wanting to see it.  Aren't the kids cute?

I love this little boy who just kept starring at me.

This little boy kept trying to get into every photo.

Look at all the work that went into their hair do.

And this one as well.

But this was the winner - we see women like this frequently just walking
down the street.

Here's the whole family - such cuties.

This little boy had the biggest eyes.

We think that we've mentioned how everyone poses for pictures here - can you see the little girl in front?

Here was a sweet mother with her girls. 

All three of these boys were diagnosed with heart
problems and referred to Heart Care Dominicana
where our church has donated special equipment for little ones,
and it's free!

I never saw these four siblings with a parent that day. 

Here are the Lion's Club members who helped so much.

The halls were crowded and everyone was very busy.         

Here's wider view of the other side of the river. 

 We went a little different way on the way home.  In crossing over a large bridge, we could look down to see the poor little shanties that were built along the river.  These always flood whenever there's a tropical storm or hurricane, but then they "rebuild".  Such a tough life...

Clay and Family Come to Visit

Our son Clay, his wife Amie, and their four daughters flew in from Atlanta for their Spring Break to spend a week.  We did a lot of things and had so much fun, but we'll try to compact it into just one blog post.  These are some of the things that we did:

Here they are arriving at the airport.  It was just so fun to see them!

We took them to the park to see our neighborhood.  Here they are looking at the iguana pit - it was a warm day, so all five of them were out showing off.

 The kids loved the Taino caves in the park.  Here Cailey's being silly with one of the carvings.

These pictures are outside and inside El Conoco, a Santo Domingo restaurant that features Dominican food and entertainment!

We had planned on taking them to the fort and other sites in the Colonial Zone on Saturday, but they were closed due to the Easter weekend.  We knew that they would be closed on Good Friday here, but not the next day.  There were still fun things that we could see though.

 There was a man in the square who was selling food for the pigeons.  He showed everyone how to hold it and put it on their heads, so that the birds would come visit them.  It was a little crazy, but fun!

Here they are standing in front of Christopher Columbus' statue. 

Here we are visiting our little branch in Consuelo.  Amie, like all of us, fell in love with Anna Maria, shown here with Cailey, and wants to figure out how she can bring her to the States for her last two years of high school.  It would be a wonderful experience for Anna Maria, but I don't think she could leave her family.

We spent Easter afternoon in our apartment - the Easter bunny even found them down here, and  they did an egg hunt, filling little Dominican purses as their baskets.  We spent most of the afternoon preparting for the puppet show for the next day. 

 Here they all are standing outside the Santo Domingo Temple.

 We had made arrangements to perform a Health Fair puppet show for students at ADR which is a rehabilitation center in this country that the Church also has as their wheelchair partner.  There were around 70 students and teachers who attended, many with Downs Symdrom and other disabilities. The show is provided by the Church for health fairs where, using muppet-like puppets, the audience can learn about the importance of eating well (you can see Mr. Protein, Miss Carbohydrate, and the Vitamins and Mineral twins here).  We also talked about the importance of washing hands and food before eating.  They also have a cigarette and alcohol portion, but they weren't appropriate for this audience.

 Then we performed it again that night for the senior missionaries to see in case they wanted to do something like it when they had family come.  The kids did such a great job and loved being able to serve like this.  The doctor at ADR wrote such a nice note and hopes that this can be done again.

Here are the bad "microbias" who can be removed by proper hand washing. 

Afterwards, we took them to the Doll Factory to see how those sweet little figurines were made, and they each purchased one to take home.

 Tres Ojos is a cavern with three underground lakes and one outside one that you can only reach by a boat which is hand-pulled across the third lake.

 The outside lake shown here was apparently used in the movie Jurassic Park III.

Here are the girls posed by one of the beautiful pools - "Tres Ojos" means "three eyes" for each of the three lakes that were used by the Taino Indians for bathing.  

Here we are getting settled at Iberostar, an all-inclusive restore on Dominicus Beach.  We were greeted by a beautiful peacock, sitting on an entrance table looking at himself.  One of the workers told us that he had never seen that before.
Now he's strutting through the garden.

We had made arrangements to go out on a boat with Scuba Fun to Saona Island.  The boys went scuba diving while we snorkeled.  It was a gorgeous day!

At Saona Island, the girls played in the ocean and hunted for shells.

Amie found a place down the beach where they were cooking beautiful lobster.  But we had a nice Dominican lunch in a different spot

Back on board the boat, we headed out to the "worlds largest swimming pool" or something like that. We jumped into water that was only waist deep to find beautiful giant star fish on the bottom.  Because star fish can't breath air, it was important for us to keep them pretty submerged for picture taking.  Still, it was amazing to see all of these beautiful creatures there on the ocean floor...

All and all, we had just a wonderful week, and were so grateful to share our island with Clay and his family!