Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! I am home in Michigan for a couple of weeks. It has been very nice to be home with my family relaxing, eating a lot of food, and playing games.
The most exciting news I have for you is about the clinic…We are finally making progress! As frustrating as it has been getting everything to fall into place, it is finally starting to happen. We have smoothed out all of the walls upstairs and downstairs of the clinic and put a sealant on the roof to ensure that it won't leak.
The floors upstairs and downstairs are smoothed out and ready for the ceramic tiles to be placed. Before I flew back to Michigan, Dr. Angel and I picked out all of the tiles that we would be using!! Thank you again for those of you who supported our last fundraiser in August by purchasing windows, tiles, or doors. All of them are purchased and up the mountain. I can’t wait to share pictures with you when we get them all in place!
Before I left, the roof on the medical staff/volunteer house had all of the wood in place, ready for the cement to be poured. We got the exciting news that they poured the cement roof the day before Christmas!! Honestly, I did not think that they would get anything else done before I went back in January.
Another exciting thing is that we have started building the security wall around the clinic as well!! This has been a bit of a challenge! When digging, we have come across some very large rocks.
The clinic and the medical staff/volunteer house have come so far, but we still have some work to do. Our hope is to do another fundraiser in January or February in lieu of our annual Gala that was supposed to take place in November.
We still are unable to do our mobile medical clinics in the mountain. Our plan in January is to have another conversation with the Public Health Department to come up with new protocols so that we are able to restart the mobile clinics.
Our main office continues to see patients, and we are seeing more and more everyday. Our elderly center is still not open, but we have been doing a few home visits. At the end of November, Public Health assigned a new nurse to work at the elderly center. We have gotten the opportunity to work together a few times, and when I return in January, we are hoping to expand our home visits.
In the near future, we are planning to do a sea-container to get some of the equipment and materials that we are going to need for the clinic and the medical staff/volunteer house. My parents are graciously storing about 15 large boxes of donated materials from St. Mary’s Hospital.
Also, a very big thank you to Barbara Stoffer. We found ourselves in desperate need of both cloth and disposable masks. I reached out to Barbara, and within a week she had collected the funds to send us 6,000 disposable masks and just finished sewing 200 cloth ones that I will be bringing back to the DR with me when I leave Dec 7th.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support during this last year! I am so blessed to have such a great support team.
Please continue praying for these intentions:
*That we are able to return to the mountain communities to provide health care.
*That the construction of the clinic is able to continue.
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