This past Saturday, we finished working a two-week project with 4 medical professionals from Missouri. The team worked at the hospital in Milagro and Josh and I helped manage the trip and did some translation for them. There were two medical residents, their attending, and an ophthalmic tech and they had been working with the medical director from the hospital in Milagro for a year arranging the details of their trip. This was a different sort of trip because in addition to the team spending time seeing patients and doing surgeries, the medical director here in Ecuador taught the doctors a different technique for cataract surgeries. It was really inspiring to see the team-work that took place.
The team arrived on January 29th and we spent the 30th doing a little sight-seeing and introducing them to Ecuador.
We climbed almost 500 steps to reach this lighthouse in Guayaquil!
The evening of the 30th we went to the hospital and arranged all of the supplies that they were able to bring so that they could start work first thing on Monday morning. They all worked VERY hard throughout the past year to acquire an incredible amount of donations from hospitals and medical companies in the states and they were even able to leave a lot of donated supplies for the hospital's use after they left.
Supplies the team brought
Everyone worked very hard that first week and it flew by. Before we knew it the weekend had arrived. The team decided they wanted to visit the mountains for their weekend excursion so we went to Cuenca. Cuenca is BEAUTIFUL! We stayed at a great little hotel, saw all the sites, and headed back to Milagro on Sunday in time to see the Super Bowl in Spanish at our hotel!
The second week of the trip went just as well as the first and the team left very happy last Saturday. We are so appreciative of their work and look forward to more MMI trips in the future!
Josh and I rested over the weekend and headed back to the hospital today. We were able to spend time observing the Social Worker and we also got to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the hospital:
Tomorrow we will be going to the transportation office to find out what we need to do to get our driver's license. Hopefully this process will be quick and painless but we are prepared for anything!
Oh, for all those who love T.J.Maxx and there incredible bargains, we found a "sister"-store (A.K.A. knock-off store) in Cuenca:
Happy Valentine's Day and God Bless,
Stephanie and Josh
