First Medical Outreach

Today Mark held his first medical outreach in Mazimasa, a village outside of Mbale. He has been spending a lot of time these past several months thinking about the best way to do such an outreach. Those of you who know Mark know that he is a thinker. He wanted to be sure that he supports the medical infrastructure that is already in place here in Uganda. The system here isn't perfect, but he didn't want to undermine it by providing treatment outside of the system.

So, what he ended up doing was partnering with a government health center 3. A health center 3 consists of a medical clinic with a maternity ward.

Here is a picture of the health center we visited today:

About a month ago Mark visited this health center to ask how he could assist them. The staff there indicated that they would love for him to give a talk about a health topic of his choice on a day that they would be conducting pediatric vaccinations and distributing de-worming medicine.

This is Sylvia, the midwife at the clinic:

So, Mark prepared a talk about worms. Yes, it's gross, and I learned things I didn't really want to know, (Did you know a single worm can lay 200,000 eggs in your body in a single day?), but it is so crucial here where indoor plumbing is a rarity, and where a bad case of worms can keep a child from gaining any weight.

His friend Milton translated, as many of the people in the villages speak very limited English.

When Mark was done with his talk, Pastor Herbert, the pastor of the local church there in Mazimasa, shared about Jesus with those gathered at the clinic. I think it is a great arrangement, because then if people have questions or want follow up, they can talk to the pastor that is right there in their village.

After Pastor Herbert spoke, Mark distributed de-wormer to everyone gathered there.

Many of the church members came over to the clinic to greet us and their neighbors that attended the outreach.

Here are the boys hanging out with some friends from the church.

Here is Harriet, Milton's wife and a dear friend, holding baby Eric (who was terrified of us white people by the way).

Thank you for praying for us. Please continue to pray for wisdom as to how to serve here well. We want to make sure we are coming alongside and encouraging all the good things that are happening here, rather than coming in like an elephant and imposing our own agenda. Pray for Mark, who really misses full time medicine, and is still trying to figure out his role/place here.

House Tour (Interior)

As promised, I'm back with some pictures from the inside of our house. Our home probably isn't going to appear in any decorating magazines anytime soon, but hopefully, it will give you a better sense of our life here.

If you were to enter through the doors straight ahead, (I hadn't unlocked it yet in this pic), you would enter into our living room.

Next to the living room is the dining room. Aesthetically, it drives me a little crazy that this is the only place to keep the refrigerator, but I'm working on letting that go :-).

From the dining room you have two choices. You could go into the kitchen.

Once again, you might notice that our appliances are in funny places. See the washing machine in the front left corner?

And from the dining room, you could also head down the hallway to the bedrooms.

Can you spy Mark in this pic? Also take note of the "cat house" Silas built for our cat, Mina.

One interesting feature of houses here are separate rooms for toilets, sinks, and showers. Different houses have different combinations. Our house has a toilet in one room and a sink and shower in the other. Here's the sink and shower. I thought I'd spare you a toilet shot.

School room

Boys room

Master bedroom

Master bathroom

There is also a guest bedroom, but I didn't take any photos of it, since it is currently Haley and Morgan's home. Also, note to moms - I cleaned up for most of these pics, or in the case of the boys room, I made them clean it up.