Doug Van Pelt

Dios te bendiga

Wow. Spent most of the day as part of a medical clinic at a soup kitchen in Saltillo. It was in a poor neighborhood and it was housed in a really nice guy's house. They host a church service there on Saturday nights (and feed people on that night, too ... thus, the "soup kitchen" ID).

We met up with one of the groups from McAllen, TX and caravaned over to this place. We set up stations inside where locals could come and get their blood pressure checked, get their cholesterol checked, their hair cut, get some safety and health counseling ( for children, mothers, as well as those with blood pressure), get some vitamins and other medicine, and kids got flouride applied to their teeth and gums. It was awesome to see such comprehensive services made available to these people for free.

It was a joy to see my daughter and her new friend don rubber gloves and using q-tips to apply the flouride to the kids. They were very reliable and took on that responsibility all by themselves. My wife, who is a registered nurse, was at one of the two blood pressure stations. I helped with some of the setup and was just there to do various favors and meet some random needs as they came up. One of those needs was to man the gift bags, which had band-aids, tooth paste, toothbrushes, shampoo, shaving creme, dental floss, soap, and other such toiletries (some were adult-oriented and some were for kids, including some toys). The locals know what a handout is and many kids tried to get multiple handouts with or without going through the various stations for help and education. I was mobbed several times and had to learn how to say things, like "No toca" (which means "no touch," if I'm remembering correctly) and "primero, aqui" ("first, here," as in "first go through here, and then you'll get this"). It wasn't a fun job, but somebody had to do it. The best part was when we communicated between stations which people had been through the stations and seen the safety/health discussion at the end. Young kids and parents were very grateful for these hand-packed packages of goods.

I got to talk to Sergio a little bit and told him that I appreciated what he said the other day about how we can't say we love God and then ignore our neighbors. I tried to let him know that I blogged about it, but wasn't confident that I was able to convey that clearly. I just learned some blog techniques from some friends from the Uganda trip -- Randy Elrod's "Watercooler Wednesday" blog, which has a "Blogging Basics 101" page referenced, which reads like it might've been penned by the mighty Shannon. One of the tips was a helpful understanding of what a "permalink" is, which now allows me to send links of a single post on my blog, instead of just the main blog link. Nice!

It's relaxing to be back here at Damon's house, with their family and all their animals. Besides 5 dogs and a cat, I noticed a hamster roll by in its own little crawling ball. How fun!

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at July 31, 2008 05:22 PM