Friday, October 20th, 2017
Friday went as smoothly as any day for the Harrisonburg team; we held clinics in the village of La Libertad, which had a “light” crowd of only 156 medical patients to be seen, and we finished up shortly after noon. The villagers were as glad to see us as we were to help them, and we spent a while once clinics were finished just playing and talking with the children of the town. After some singing and dancing in the street (I won’t name names), we loaded the bus and headed back toward the FOB compound. We visited a waterfall near Pena Blanca for an hour or so in the afternoon and then returned to Alfredo house for the evening.
Right before dinner, Lidia gave us “first-timers” a full tour of the FOB property. It may strike you as odd that we received a tour of the facility on the evening of our last day in Honduras, but it made perfect sense as it was happening. At the beginning of the week, we were taking in a huge amount of information about the Foundation, never having been to a village or met a Honduran child yet…not to mention we had just traveled thousands of miles to a country that is like nothing we’d ever experienced. We were not in a good place to absorb information or truly understand anything. Lidia wisely waited until we had seen five days’ worth of the work FOB does on the ground here before using a tour as a tool to teach us about ALL the work the Foundation does beyond the Mountain Medical Teams. Seeing the rooms where children and their parents live while awaiting and recovering from surgeries, the areas where Pascuala teaches mothers how to care for children with special needs, and the office where the doctor sees the children in the Extended Care Program meant much more once we’d spend a week working with the staff and meeting the patients.
I’d highly encourage anyone reading these journals who hasn’t read the “Programs” section of fobf.org to take a minute to read about what FOB does beyond sending 12 teams per year to Honduras for community clinics. I’d also like to add the caveat that if you truly want to understand just how valuable this organization is in the lives of thousands of people, you need to join a team bound for Honduras.
~Taylor Rhodes
