Mission of Hope

All this week we are helping out a surgery team down from the States (mainly Virginia) at Mission of Hope, a small hospital we have been working with since being in Santa Cruz. There are nurses, surgeons, translators, residents, as well as completely non-medical people there who just want to help and they make lunch, pray, clean toilets, color with kids, etc. It's really cool to see everyone work together for one common purpose. These surgeries are completely free and they just found out on Saturday they were being operated on...so fresh and exciting for the patients. Here in Santa Cruz, there are obviously Bolivians but also a large population of Mennonites who speak low German (the husbands usually speak Spanish but not the rest of the family). It made it interesting as far as communicating because about 2 people at the clinic speak both English and low German-they were pretty critical players!

Today, we observed a ear canal being made from the patient's own ear fascia. He was born basically without an eardrum in one ear because of exposure to the Rubella vaccine and thus had no hearing capability in this ear since birth. Then, some years ago, he fell out of a truck on the other side of his head and lost hearing in that ear. After surgery, he would wake up and hear again! So cool! Yesterday, we saw a Mennonite lady get a prosthesis for one of the 3 ear bones within the inner ear. She also had not been able to hear in that ear for 20 years.

One of the ENT's told me while we were in the OR, the inner ear is so beautiful, such an example of how creative and expressive God was in creation. I thought, how "beautiful" can the inner ear be??? But then I looked in the microscope and she was so right-amazing-bright red with shiny white bones-just beautiful! No matter the race and ethnicity, Bolivian, American, Mennonite, African, everyone's inner ear is the designed that beautifully and intricately!

More to come on this week with pictures!
The Kidds