Guaimaca hospital, Honduras

I admit that I had to look up the exact location of Honduras on a map when I got invited to go on medical missions trip with some of the surgical team from work. Not in the least chagrinned, as I've only one Honduran friend in my acquaintance, and thoroughly thrilled at getting to visit a new country and get a new stamp in my passport, we're off on Friday, the 19th.

After a very short flight, like 4 hrs, our team of 36 will be arriving in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras, and get loaded onto a bus to be driven a couple of hours north to the town of Guaimaca. The Baptist Medical and Dental Mission has a hospital there that is staffed with several teams of medical professionals during the course of the year, and I'm very glad to be getting to go. Lionel was there last year while I was in Togo and had a blast, getting to do surgeries on quite a large amount of people and do some hiking.

At this point I'm not even sure what surgeries exactly we're going to be performing. (The royal "we". "we"-nothing. I'm a ward nurse. I'll be on the wards :-). I've also got this creeping sense of minor alarm when I realize I'm one of only 3 nurses on the trip. Oi vey. I'm also sitting here wracking my brains for my Spanish surgical terms. I'm really glad to help but getting nervous-er by the minute as I've never really done surgical translation before. Loads of medical translation, but trying to remember what's a gallbladder in Spanish. Oh! Vesicula biliar. It's a whole different world then I giggle and remember how it was done on the Africa Mercy; the surgeon would explain in depth the impending procedure and the translator would then turn to the patient, state "De doctor, he fix everyting, it be fine." Don't think I'm gonna get away with that.



I've not known a lot about Honduras but apparently it's quite a poor country and the hospital teams treat a large amount of patients, so I'm really excited about this next week and seeing what the Lord is going to do in the lives of these people. Please pray for us all while we're down there, for safety, health and more importantly, to be used by God.