Today I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Alfredo Lopez again and see some interesting things. I learned how to take blood pressure the correct way. There was one woman who had really high blood pressure but alarmingly her pulse was really slow so if she didn't die from a heart attack then her heart might just stop completely. The only other interesting thing was one woman who had an irregular heartbeat, Dr. Lopez let me use his stethoscope to hear her beat. It was crazy! After lunch I did children's charla which is basically translated as educational talk or lecture. Most of the time we would sing a song to the kids about brushing their teeth then we would give them all toothbrushes. After doing the educational part we played pato pato gonzo with the kids I taught the kids princess knight rider. I had a lot of fun translating and calling out the actions for the game. After kids charla I went to adult charla and helped out the young lady stationed there give the presentation about diarrhea and cholera. That was an interesting experience we would have about 25 people crammed into a classroom and hey would listen and answer questions about the presentation I was helping with. Because my Spanish is not very good I just held the flip chart with diagrams and helped her hand out toothbrushes. Today was good between busy times for charla I interacted a lot with the kids, one of the boys taught me a special handshake and I showed the girl who led the adult charla pictures of my family back home. Today I feel much more tired than yesterday but at the same time I feel happy that I was able to help so many people by giving them toothbrushes. While I was shadowing Dr. Lopez he would speak only Spanish and I would do my best to understand him and I would hand out pills to the patients who had intestinal worms and bugs. I feel like I am doing good work but because of the language barrier, but I constantly feel frustrated because I'm not fluent, I try my best. Tomorrow we have our last day of medical brigade, I'm kinda looking forward to it because I feel that I'm not really that useful because I'm not communicating directly with the people. I know I'm still being a blessing to the people of Nicaragua despite the language barrier. Later on tonight after debrief and reflection we helped Fragner sort the drugs in the pharmacy and when we were done Dr. Ubeda played his guitar and sang several songs about Nicaragua and love. I got to play a little bit, I played How Great Is Our God and Thunder it is so much fun chilling with the crew from MTSU! Sobe our coordinator was with us and she sang a little bit, it was a fun night. I love evenings because I always have great conversations with my roommates Don, Mohit, and Demitry. I always talk about The Lord and explain to them the differences in religions and clarify what makes me a Christian. I have really been realizing it on this trip that its not so much about what I do that makes me a good person, but rather its the motive of my heart. There are 80 people here in this compound who are here for good reasons, but for many of them they only know that giving their time and energies is helping others. What is lacking is that they (and I) will never ever do enough good, there will always be need in the world and without the grace of God abounding they will burn out. God must be the focus and motivation as an altruistic person, unless I'm pointing others to God or bringing him glory and honor then me trying to do as much good in my own strength is not worth it and a waste of time. Bringing glory to God and directing others to him needs to be my focus, meeting the needs of others and by showing them, and telling them about the love of Christ's death and resurrection. Today we saw about 175 patients and at the end of the day we had to turn some away, even though we are human and have limitations we serve a God who knows all things and has a deep love for all of his children.
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