TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS of Life and Work in the D.R. this Month (In no particular order.)
NUMBER 1:
We had a team of 5 Doctors, 7 Medical Students, and 1 Librarian come from the U.S. to volunteer in our Field Clinics in 4 communities. Together with our 19 Dominican Community Health Workers, the combined team treated several hundred patients in 4 communities in just 4 days, including clinic and home-visits.
NUMBER 2:
Right now I'm Super, Super proud of all the Community Health Workers - photos directly above and below. Many of them have as limited as a 4th grade primary formal education, but they have taken the opportunity to be trained by HHI as Health Workers in their communities and they are now expanding their work even more into leadership roles in ALL areas of the HHI field clinics-- from documenting patient medical histories in the charts at intake, to running the lab and training U.S. medical students on lab protocal, to finding charts in medical records, to managing clinic flow, to working in the pharmacy counting meds, and of course, they're continuing in their initial job of taking heights, weights, and vitals on all patients. Go team! It's my job to train and supervise these great women and men -- and I'm excited to see the growth in the CHW program! But I definitely can't take credit for how awesome they all are! Teach a man or a woman to fish.... and then they can take it from there! I love working with this amazing team, and I am forever honored to know them!
Here CHW's (Community Health Workers) Dania and Claudia are organizing the clinic patient flow in the doctor's waiting area in our 2-day-long makeshift clinic at the local Haitian church, in Pancho Mateo, Dominican Republic. We treated approximately 200 patients in 2 days there, from children through adults.
Here CHWs Ribe and Elisa are locating patient medical records while CHWs Genesis and Larikza document patient information in charts at the Intake table before patients can pass on to the station where they can get their vitals taken, then consult with the Doctors.
NUMBER 3:
I have been invited to be a part of the newly-formed Pastoral Search Committee, to seek a new pastor at New Life (Missionary) Church, in Sosua, Dominican Republic. Our prior pastor had to return to the United States. Please join us in prayer for God to lead a new English-Speaking pastor -- with a love for the D.R. and a heart for pastoring foreigners living in the Dominican Republic -- to this church of approximately 100 international (U.S., Canadian, and European & Eastern European) missionaries, humanitarian workers, retirees, and other foreigners living and serving in the Dominican Republic!
Here are some photos of life at the church
New Life Church 
NUMBER 4:
Highlight # 4 is: THE FUN STUFF!
This month...
...and we've danced around the patient charts on the office floor still waiting for our attention that day, as the Dominican "Office-Team" fare-welled a medical student from the U.S. whose time had come to return home to finish school (Below).
NUMBER 5:
And the final special things to report this month actually came in late December (right before and right after my wonderful trip home to the U.S to visit my parents and other family in Pennsylvania for Christmas! What a great trip! Love you all!)
But -- since this blog shows my life on the D.R, here are the highlights of the Christmas and New Years Holidays for me in the Dominican Republic.
A.) The birth of two of my co-workers' (CHWs Carlito and Claudia)'s first little grand-baby - adoreable Manuel, (a derivative of Emmanuel, and born right before Christmas)! Here he is laying under the family's pink mosquito net, safely home from the local hospital and surrounded by his Mom and Grandparents who just couldn't stop smiling at him. It was a beautiful moment!
B.) I also loved seeing my good friend Carmen's college-student daughter representing Mary in their local church's live Nativity. It was great to see a young woman who's studying for her engineering degree and who is sure to become a leader in her community, like her parents, still taking the time to remember the reason for the season.
C.) And, finally, I attended a beautiful candle-light service here in Montellano, filled with friends I've met in my work at the local hospital, friends I've met in my neighborhood, friends I've met paying my cell phone bill downtown, and friends from all over this community. It was a wonderful moment of feeling like -- `hey, this town is as much my home now as my other home towns are.' It was great to light my candle among friends and neighbors, and to pray with them for people in all the other nations of the world (including my home country)...
It was a wonderful time,
and a wonderful place
and a wonderful month
to raise a candle.
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