Crazy

Honduras. Day 14 (Tuesday).

Let me tell you about the crazy day that was my yesterday.

We all got up a little earlier to have devotional on the roof of the apartment complex. Marc asked me to take the message, and I did a devo on Isaiah 40, about how sometimes we see and hear and know that there is a God and that He is great and powerful, but that sometimes what we really need to know is whether or not He sees what we're going through and understands our concerns. And the answer to that question is: He understands more than we can understand, and "for those who trust [hope, wait, look to] in the Lord, He will give them new strength."

Then we loaded up and went to Sector Ocho to finish the house from yesterday. Translation: there were already way to many people working on it, so I dropped off my tool belt and went and found all of my kids. Let me just tell you about my kids. Danella, Josilyn, and Lester are all brother and sisters, and they are the most adorable kids on the planet. And now, every time I go to Sector Ocho, I walk up to their house and they start hollering, "Arroz! Arroz! Arroz!" And then I'll pick 'em up and twirl them around, and hold Danella's hand (she insists that she can't walk without holding my hand, apparently). They all have the biggest smiles, and when I asked them if I could adopt them, they said it'd be okay so I'm working on getting the papers for that (of course, I asked in English, and I think they just agree with everything I ask...). My other kids are Pamela and her older sister. They have head lice. And all of the boys in the neighborhood call them ugly and make fun of them. But I still spend time with them, and yesterday I told them that I thought they were beautiful. My other kid is Mirari. She's always got a smile on her face, and since she calls me "Arroz" ("rice"), I've started calling her "Papas" ("potatoes"), and that always makes her laugh.

So I played with the kids for a while, and then eventually headed back to the house site. It was coming along, so I just sat inside with Felicia and a bunch of other kids and listened to a little girl named Deside sing church songs that she knew. Eventually someone came in and said, "Russell, you've gotta go. Someone's sick." So I got up and left and ran towards the church building. I saw Karis on the way, and she said there was a lady who was having really bad stomach pains. I got to the house across from the church building where a bunch of people were gathered, and I tried to assess what to do. Nolan ran up, and we talked and made the split second decision to just get the Galloper and drive her and one other person to Hospital Escuela. So we loaded them up, the lady and her grandmother, me, Nolan, and Karis, and booked it to the hospital. We rushed her in through the emergency gate, and I helped her through the emergency room doors. We had talked about it along the way, and told the nurses it may be something with her appendix. One nurse looked her over, and then the waiting game began. Nolan had to go back to pick up the AIMers at the house, and so then it was just me, Karis, and the grandmother waiting outside the emergency room doors.

Let me just tell you: I saw a lot of things in that two hours of waiting that should never be seen in a hospital. It was pitiful.

I saw a dead woman get wheeled in; I saw a man lying on a cart with his legs chopped off; I saw a man walking OUT (as in, leaving, not coming; as in, the hospital had already done all they could for him) with a mangled hand, dripping blood all over the floor. There were people wailing and crying, trying to get through the emergency room admission line. There was a son that carried in his old grandmother, and the grandmother was screaming at the top of her lungs. It was crazy. And it was dirty. It was a third-world country hospital to the core. And I had visited kids in this hospital for years and years, but I had never seen this side of Hospital Escuela.

Eventually Reyna (the lady in the emergency room) came out, and her grandmother showed me the receipt the doctors gave them for it all. Reyna had appendicitis. I asked if they were going to do surgery. She said no. She said they just were going to give her painkillers and antibiotics.

I know. I was thinking the same thing too.

So Nolan shows up right about then with Burger King for Reyna, the grandmother, and Reyna's mother who had come along right before Reyna got out. We gave them all a ride back to Sector Ocho. And then we had to go and meet Marc and the others at the warehouse. I'm not going to lie, I was not okay about all of it.

Reyna couldn't afford surgery. The doctors wouldn't perform surgery. There's a chance the antibiotics will save her. But there's a chance it will resurface and rupture.

It's just not fair.

Then we went and unloaded Tim Hine's container full of school supplies at the mayor's bodega. There was a lot more tension, and the three interns pulled Marc aside and said we needed to talk to him about the tension issues. He was cool with that, and we all went out to eat (me, Nolan, Karis, Nicole and Matt, Milton, Marc and Tim) at Carnita's (a Honduran steakhouse in the old dug-out of a baseball field with AMAZING food). We were open and honest with him about the tension issues, and just expressed that we felt that we needed to be working more with TORCH. He understood, and it really was a great night after that. The three interns went and picked up an ice cream cake for Keith (it was his birthday) and took it back to the apartments for everybody to enjoy.

The day started with cute kids, continued with an appendicitis, and ended with an ice cream cake. Yesterday was a crazy day.