A day with babies and Mobile Medical Clinic

I cannot believe that I have already been here a week! Praise God for his providence and for constantly reminding me that He is pulling everything together so that I will be taken care of; I just have to keep trusting him. This journey has been full of learning to trust God through and through. I can't wait to see and experience what else is instore on this trip!

Yesterday, I went to see the new Ministry of Hope sight and it is going to be fantastic when it is completed. After that, I spent the afternoon at the crisis nursery. I have become 'slightly' attached to at least five of the babies. Elenati is a beautiful about 11 month old baby who always has a very serious look on her face until I make act so goofy that she starts laughing. Chisomo is a little boy who looks like he could be a Baby Gap model with soft curly dark hair. Littly Ruthy is about 5 months old and very tiny and very very sweet. There are also the twins who are the oldest babies in the nursery and have been there the longest. 'Fi-Fi' needs to start walking and I am convinced that she will while im here and her brother, Shawn, is known for crying and being moody when he is not being held, but loves Nathan who can make him laugh so much by rough housing. Right now, there are about 17 babies in the nursery.

Today was just amazing! After getting almost 4.5 hours of sleep (we stayed up until 2 am sorting through donations), we got up early to drive to Khwamba for a mobile medical clinic day. The village was miles from any paved road and a little over an hour north of Lilongwe. It consisted of dirt roads, a lot of goats, a whole lot of kids, little huts with thatched rooves, no electricity, one well, and very warm-hearted people. I was stationed to record vitals right after people registered and before they went to see one of the two doctors. I saw people from the age of infancy through the elderly. We arrived at 10 am, set up, and then treated over 175 patients before 4 pm and I checked every single person's bloodpressure or pulse that was treated. I must say, my back is feeling it! I am now at even greater qualms about if I am supposed to pursue further medical training for missions or not because I enjoyed it so much!

I made a new friend today named Kingsley Banda. He is one of the MOH scholarship recievers who is my age, so he speaks pretty good english. He is now living with his grandmother in Khwamba and volunteers with the feeding center. He stayed in the vital signs area the entire time, helping us with translating to chichewa and english. He really wants to go to college and I believe that he is someone who will be able to succeed and then give back to the community; he just needs to somehow get the funds to go to college. I also really enjoyed riding squished in the middle of the front seat of the mini-bus between two malawians. You get alot of funny/surprised looks on people's faces when driving by! Tomorrow, we got to a different village named Salingo for work with the children programs there so say a pray! I love you guys and hope everything is going well back home! Keep me up-to-date with whats going on over there too!

ps-I promise I will upload some pics of the past few days if the power does not go out tomorrow night!!!