Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua PM

Hi everyone!!! After a morning clinic in the Tisma area we drove to this church in Pilas Orientales.  This is the front altar of the church and it is also where we set up our Pharmacy. That is Mom in the picture in front of the pharmacy. The mission actually brought our lunch here and we had chicken fingers, homemade pico de gallo and beans and rice prior to the clinic starting.

You can see our lunch in the Tupperware containers on that table. And the woman with her hair in a bun is the pastor‘s wife. I was trying to feed the cats and they would not eat the cracker I gave them. The pastors wife took some of her plain rice and put it on the ledge of the wall and all the cats jumped up to eat it. These are just stray cats but apparently they hang around a lot. The cats here are not big fat cats like mine… Lol! Just about every animal here looks hungry to me.  I really wish I could’ve packed them all up and brought them home with me! 

These two adorable little kids came to the clinic with their mother. They were so appreciative of the beanie babies and socks. We also gave them a bunch of candy and bubbles.

Here’s a picture of another adorable little kid that came to the clinic with his mother. We gave out a lot of cars and things like that for the little boys too. You can see his mother holding his socks full of candy and him holding his truck. Look at that head of hair! So adorable!

Here’s a picture of the clinic in action…

Many of the churches where we had our clinics were rural areas where nobody else would go. They were very unkept, back roads. We were on one of these roads when a farmer came by with eight of his cows. We stopped our truck for them to go past us… Look at this tight squeeze - the cows are literally right up against our vehicle. Lol!

A lot of people ride on mopeds here. They said that they can drive for two weeks on one tank of gas on a moped. They ride with two people three people on mopeds and probably the same amount of people on pedal bikes. But they all ride on the road with the cars. There were so many times we were in tight quarters with mopeds and bikes. It is hard to believe that more people are not killed on these roads every day. I had never been happier to not be driving a car!

Well that’s today’s recap! I hope you all had a fantastic day and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!

Day 6 Tuesday Nicaragua morning

Today is Tuesday and we are off to two different regions of Granada again today.

This picture was taken on the walk from our hotel to the mission where we have breakfast and load up our van for the day.

The picture shows all the kids walking to school or what just happened to be across from the mission.

We encountered these beautiful flowers along the way…

This is a photo of the kids going into school in the morning. The man at the door makes each of them Use hand sanitizer and put a mask on prior to entering the school. The amazing thing to us is these people do not have washing machines and most live in homes with tin or concrete walls and dirt floors but they all have sparkling clean, white uniforms on. They take extreme pride in their appearance. One of the mission translators said they believe no matter how you live or how poor you are you should always present yourself in the best way possible.

These are pictures of us loading the van to go to our first location in the morning.  Today we will be going to the Tisma area of Nicaragua in the morning from 9 to 12 noon.

The woman in the jeans and blue backpack is Blanca.  She was one of our translators and she is just such an amazing person!

Here’s a local dog that came to visit us at our church location… He was definitely a stray as he was so thin and had fleas everywhere! It was just heartbreaking…

Here is what the set up look like in this church. All the people in the back of the picture are people waiting to attend our clinic. The table at the front left is Dennis my professor and Angel our male translator. The table on the front right is where Jeremy and Shawn got patient vitals prior to sending people to consult with Dennis.

Another shot…

Here’s the name of the church for today…Iglesia Sinai. As you can see our pharmacy was set up on the stage of the church. This was my Mom and my station.

A photo of the front area of the church… Two more stray dogs

One of the dogs stopped in to visit Dennis at the clinic… Lol

The lady in the pink Steelers shirt below came to the clinic. She was a patient. She walked in and we saw her Steelers shirt which represents the town we are from… Pittsburgh PA. We here in Pittsburgh PA love our Football team called the Steelers. We were blown away! We asked her where she got her shirt and she did not even know what the Steelers were. But what a coincidence that she had a shirt on that was from our hometown. All of us that went on this trip together are from Pittsburgh. Crazy coincidence and small world! We had to get a picture with her before we left! (Left to right - I’m in the pink, patient, Shawn, Jeremy, and Dennis my professor) My mom did not want to be in the picture… Lol!

I will follow this post up with a part two that will include the location and pictures from the afternoon session.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’m sending so many hugs to you all!