Bahamas Missions Trip: Wednesday!

Today was a very busy day for all of us! After working all day in the school and the clinic we went back to the hotel for dinner and to get changed before going back to the church to put on bible school. Today is the 1 year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, so we started off the service with a prayer session and some worship. After worship the team set up the activities for our carnival themed VBS. The kids had a BLAST! it was so humbling to see kids get so excited about wining something as small as a 25 cent eraser. Even the adults wanted to color and play the games. Thankfully we bought plenty of prizes and supplies. Some of the stations that we had set up were face painting, balloon animal making, basket toss, wordless book bracelet making, and coloring. The night went so fast that when it was time to clean up no one wanted to leave. we literally had to pry the children off o us because they didn't want us to leave :) We have already formed some great relationships with the children here. we are all referred to as "mam" and "sir" which is so different than what we are used to in the US. Even if we asked them if they are having fun their answer would be "yes mam". Once we got home from VBS we went to have devotions and headed to bed! We are all so exhausted that we don't even want to stay up late to get in the hot tub!!!

Nursing day 3:
today was another very successful day in the clinic! we saw over 100 patients again today! it is amazing how many lives we are able to impact even in the short time that we have been here. There are people who have told me that they have had to walk miles to get here just to have their children looked at. We were able to come up with a very efficient system for getting people in and out of the clinic so we got many more people through in shorter time today, which has been great! One thing that i learned is that they LOVE anything that smells good. i was passing around the bath and body works antibacterial gel that i had and within 10 minutes i had already run out. For some people they are not able to shower daily, or even weekly for some patients, so having something that smells so good was awesome to them, they were rubbing it all over their bodies and behind their ears! If we come next year we know that we need to bring some sort of lotion with us because they really appreciated that. Everyone has agreed that this has been a WONDERFUL experience for us as nursing students because we have seen so many problems and have applied the critical thinking skills that we have been learning. We will let you know how tomorrow goes!!!
-Kara

Ashley and Beth assessing a father and his daughter

Steph checking blood pressure

say ahhhhh :)

Brita is always surrounded by children... they are drawn to her!

Education day 3:
The trip to school this morning was a lot less interesting than it was yesterday, which we were all grateful for. Markus and Rachel were able to go to the guys basketball tournament today. They say that it is nothing like basketball back in the US. Speaking of Markus, the girls at the primary school love him. Every girl there was upset that he went to the basketball game, and wasn't there to entertain them. I switched class rooms today and I had my first experience with a Smart Board. It was great to see how all of the children were anxious to run up and write on the board.

One thing that really stretched me today is that my teacher had a meeting with a few other teachers and left me in the classroom with the students for over an hour. I wasn't left with any instruction, and I had to figure out what they were supposed to do. It was difficult to keep them quiet and busy without their teacher in the room, but it felt great to have some responsibility. I was able to walk around and teach the concept individually.

I also had the opportunity to entertain many different questions in the classroom today, and they had a lot they wanted to know. They loved hearing about snow, cold weather, schools in the US, and about all of different things and people they have seen on tv. Many of the children dream of being able to come to the US some day.

Tomorrow is our last day at the school, and I imagine that it will be hard to say goodbye. They won't want their visitors to leave, and we will all miss our new friends.

- Matt