Day 6

Hey everyone. Today was Wednesday, and if you’ve ever been on a M.A.S.H. trip you know that it is possibly the most dreaded day of the week. This is primarily due to the fact that by Wednesday most all of us are quite tired, especially the doctors. In addition to this, we generally have more people show up on Wednesday for care. This year however things were not so bad. Although many of us were feeling a bit worn out from yesterday and the trip as a whole, we managed to pull it together and actually ended up closing a bit early. By 3:00 P.M. things were really beginning to quiet down, and by about 4:30 P.M or so our last patient was on their way. We had seen 139 patients and had 17 new believers in Christ! After a brief team meeting we ended the clinic the same way we started it every morning, with a roar of Hallelujahs and Yes, Jesus, yes’ that echoed throughout the Teen Challenge center.

With the day’s work behind us and some free time left before dinner we were allowed a special treat of heading to the nearby waterfall for a chance to relax and cool off. When we returned we had another great meal before us consisting of the best fried chicken we’ve ever had, some rice, plantains, and Chef Mello’s incredible sweet and sour sauce. Also below us we had some of the locals gracing us with their rendition of Bob Marley’s song “Three Little Birds”. Once dinner was over we gathered together for the nightly devotion, which was read to us by Ellen Gregory. Following this, Vonnie read us a book called, “The Pineapple Story”, which was a story about a missionary who desperately wanted to grow pineapples for his family, yet every time they would ripen, the natives would steal them. After many years and many attempts to keep them from stealing the pineapples, he finally put it in God’s hands by acknowledging that the pineapples were never his to claim in the first place. Once this happened, the missionary stopped getting angry at the natives for stealing his crop. Seeing this, the natives told the missionary, “You are no longer angry at us for stealing the pineapples. Have you become a Christian?” However, once it was explained that the pineapples were no longer the missionary’s the natives stopped stealing the pineapples since they did not want to be caught stealing from God. In the end the missionary learned just as all of us must learn, that demonstration equals proclamation. With this story for us to dwell on we all broke into fellowship for the rest of the night before continuing to bed.