La Virtud

May 22, 2026

Today we visited La Virtud.

We started our day with breakfast baleadas with the Honduran staff. A very special gathering to end the week as a cohesive team. This was a practice before the pandemic that has recently been restarted. So, even some of those who have been before had never had one of these beautiful big breakfasts.

The community we visited is very large and very close to both Friends of Barnabas House and Pena Blanca. So, because of better access to resources, we wrongfully assumed it would be both the most well and the quickest visit. However, we were very wrong. In our evening debrief many shared they felt this was by far our sickest community and the amount of diagnosis, referrals to higher care and medications we gave out confirmed the feeling.

The overall clinic-related low today was a pretty unanimous sadness at the level of illness in this community and the limited resources we had. However, it was a blessing to be able to do something and treat what we could. Dra. Rikayla gave her cross away to a little boy who came with his grandma. His siblings were hospitalized with asthma exasperation, so she gave him the cross to provide strength and hope during this time of loneliness and worry for his family.

Highs for clinic today:

This community was huge and the amount of playful, thankful kids was an incredible way to end the trip. Many expressed getting to play with the kids was by far the high of the day.

Dra. Alison shared while today was incredibly busy she was able to find her grove and take a moment with each family to really enjoy the interaction and play with the children.

Dylan shared he was able to play an imaginary game of volleyball from the pharmacy table with a little boy named Juan Carlos whose sisters younger sisters required extra care and therefore he was stuck waiting patiently at the clinic station.

Julie gave her cross to Milo who was her little buddy today and brought her a little extra joy.

Kim and Rhonda loved the high volume of children and having their groove down for their station.

Gabbi gave her cross away to a heavy sleeping baby she ended up holding for long while so their mom could get the best care for her large family and rest in knowing her baby was held and taken care of.

Emberli felt blessed to be able to refer a child with Down Syndrome, not currently being followed by a medical provider, for developmental care provided by FOB's Healthy Kids Program. She got to hold and take care of a sweet infant and his very young mom who just needed some support and confirmation she was doing all the right things and was a good mom.

Elias was finally able to break the ice with our military guards for the week, and they even asked him for a picture together.

Thanks so much for following along this week! We will follow this with a farewell summary post for the week!

To the ends of the earth,

Team aMAYzing