FabFinca: Powdered Milk

I never thought I’d be so grateful for powdered milk … well, actually powdered milk that mixes. Nobody likes powdered milk nor the fact that you have to put it in the bowl before the cereal. But let me tell you how it makes my day when my powdered milk at breakfast mixes easily with cold water. And so begins our catch-up for the past few months …

I left off a few weeks before Ruthie, the nurse from the previous year who was orienting me, and I gave an awesome presentation to women and girls from the community and girls from the Finca about La Salúd de la Mujer. It was a talk all about anatomy, menstruation, and pregnancy, and at the end of the talk, we gave out reusable pads, made possible through an organization called Days for Girls. It was very successful, and I got by with my limited Spanish! It made me excited to give more important health talks to the community and to the Finca.

Time really does fly here!

On December 4, the old missionaries (from the previous year) left, and Ruthie, went with them, leaving me to fend for myself as the nurse. My designated jobs are Nurse, encargada de la bodega (sorting through donations and distributing when appropriate), and community outreach.

When I arrived at the Finca I met a family with a baby who has a very severe cleft palate/lip, which disabled the baby from forming any suction on a bottle, thus leading to pretty significant malnutrition. By the grace of God, we were able to get supplies and formula from the renowned Dr. Kelly. We formed a plan for the baby, his mom, and grandma to live at the Finca. The baby's mom and grandmom are both unable to read, write, and tell time. I was very nervous, but they were SO happy to learn these processes to help him!! Por una verdadera obra del Espíritu Santo, during their five-week stay in December, I was able to use my knowledge and experience to teach (with limited Spanish) the baby’s mom how to insert and give formula through an oro-gastric tube. She rocks!! After supervising the learned skills over and over the family was able to go home to the mountains with plans to check in frequently. God willing, a medical brigade is set to do surgery on the baby on March 8 in Tegucigalpa, which is about seven hours away. The goal is to get him more well-nourished to aid in his healing process after surgery. **I just weighed him in the clinic and he is now 15 + pounds and growing!

Looking back … what a fortunate experience that was. Coming from a pediatric inpatient nursing background, feeding tubes are second nature to me, and after trying many less invasive methods, I went to Dr. Julio for his approval of the plan. I received much push-back because “feeding tubes are not used here,” but in the end, the doctor supported the plan because I was so comfortable with them. He warned me, “I won’t be of any help to you because I’ve never even seen one.” What a blessing it was to form a relationship with this family and to empower these women to help the baby.

Megan, another missionary, and I are in charge of community outreach. We picked up a women’s group with women from the neighboring communities, and it’s turning out to be such a beautiful encounter! It’s very exciting to have the opportunity to meet women in the community and share time and faith with them, where they are. I absolutely LOVE it! Megan and I started a young women (adolescent) group of girls from the community mixed with the girls at the Finca. It’s only a few weeks old, but the purposes have been sharing faith, bettering ourselves, and building relationships, and so far, ha sido exitoso.

Megan and I also help with a food donation program, through which the Finca gives food provisions to neighbors in dire need. We give out about 10-12 lb of rice, 10-12 lb of beans, flour, corn flour, tomato paste, sofrito, salt, baking powder, spaghetti, coffee, and Manteca to families on the first Friday of every month. It’s really been a blessing to see and get to know the women in this program and in this way.

There is no birth control here, no condoms, and people are still having lots of sex (as people do). However, with sex comes babies and STDs. I perform 1-3 pregnancy tests most days of clinic, and about half of them are positive. There is very rarely a “planned pregnancy” that I have witnessed, and often times the women are overwhelmed with the thoughts of, “How am I going to provide for another child?” And so life goes for these women and we provide some prenatal care in the clinic and accompany them to birth and beyond. We make them little newborn care packages with whatever donations we have that a baby could use (Desitin, toys, onesies, etc). One of my goals is to teach about natural family planning in the hopes of empowering women, and maybe have a domino effect, where they could teach…All thoughts right now.

Another one of my jobs is Encargada de la Bodega (along with missionary Adam), which means we get to sort through all the donations. It’s very humbling being on the receiving end of donations and donation programs, like Feed the Children, Vitamin Angels, and Days for Girls. We get our rice from Feed the children, and prenatal vitamins from Vitamin Angels. Since there are so many unplanned pregnancies here, we give all girls, age 14 and up, prenatal vitamins in the hopes of nourishing them before they become pregnant.

Encargada de la Bodega also means that I go through the donations distributed by the government: donations from the US, from churches, American Red Cross, and other organizations. We sort the donations between what our kids will use and what we can share with the neighboring communities. In the bodega (closet), we have clothes, shampoo, toiletries, shoes, socks, sheets, blankets, coloring books, some toys, soccer balls, etc. All of which have been donated. And school uniform stuff…

Wow! School Uniforms. What a feat! Checking the size, what they have, what they need, what can still be used…And I had the honor of figuring that out (Thank God that I only had to do it for the girls). We have so many donated skirts that had never been touched, and so my thought was to use them, but they are SOOO long. So anyway, I pretended to be a seamstress and tapped into memories of my mom hemming our school uniforms. I measured, pinned, ironed, and hemmed 5 skirts, and I was so proud of my work! Thanks, Mom! School started February 4, and those kids were dressed to the nines in their school uniforms!

The start of school also meant decreased patients in the clinic- BONUS! I had the pleasure of teaching 1^st and 2^nd graders how to brush their teeth and gave them each new tooth brushes (donated by a dental brigade). That was fun! I had them each practice brushing their teeth in the clinic one by one.

There were SOOO many boxes left here by past brigades, and I went through to organize the contents of the medical ones before Ruthie left, but I never touched the dental ones. Well, recently, I went through the dental boxes and I found a mountain (over 300) toothbrushes for kids of all ages and for adults! It was a true blessing, as we were almost out of toothbrushes in the clinic. Wow!! ¡Qué suerte!

Two weeks ago, six new kids came to live at the Finca. Previously, our youngest kid was 9 years old, and the oldest of the new children is 7 years old. All little girls, except one baby boy of 18 months. So that has been a transition for the Finca, and things have been a bit hectic from a salúd standpoint, but hopefully settling down.

Community life has been good. There are 7 of us now, and in a few weeks, Emily (an oldie who stayed back to help us) will leave, making us 6. Nohemi is the subdirector at the school, she works closely with the principal and helps the functions of the school to run. Melissa is the librarian and the special education teacher. Ryan is the new missionary coordinator, so he does a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but he also teaches 5^th, 6^th, 8^th, and 9^th grade English. Megan teaches Kindergarten and does all the women’s group stuff with me. Megan also is in charge of all Spiritual event coordination and retreats. Adam works in the bodega with me and is also the head of the kids work program, called PAVI. PAVI is an after school program through which kids are able to work in maintenance, sewing, painting, English studies, event planning to earn points. With their points they can buy things from the pulperia (corner store/only store) or save them for money after they leave the Finca.

Spanish has been tough. I do a great job faking it, and I can even tell I should laugh based on people’s faces when they talk. LOL! I do understand and speak a lot, but still a LONG LONG way from fluent, but poco a poco.

Two mission groups are coming in March, which is exciting. And in April, I have some visitors of my own! Super psyched!

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, patience, and for your generosity. The holy spirit has been so present here. Alive and well! I pray for you, my friends and family from the states, daily and think of you often! May God bless you as we begin this Lenten season!