Monday, August 11, 2008

Almost there...

Hey Nativity!!
It's hard to believe that the trip is almost over! Two weeks certainly does fly by fast. The Jos Crew had another exciting weekend with a great Support Group meeting on Sunday. The Support Group meeting here at Faith Alive is an entirely unique meeting. The group begins with songs and dances, and most times, visitors are invited up front to display their own dance moves. This occurs to both those who are willing to dance and those who are unwilling, hahaha!
This past Support Group meeting was especially touching, because the patients asked our group to get up in front of the entire congregation and share our experiences of the past two weeks with them. The group did amazingly well, and we even were asked to lead prayer after the meeting. It was a great time to put our Hausa lessons to the test.

Today, our group got to experience something new, when we assisted the Home-Based-Care Unit with one of their visits. During these visits, volunteers travel with doctors and other Faith Alive Staff to the homes of HIV / AIDS patients who are too weak to make it to the clinic. On today's visit, we helped the staff apply a plastic cover to a villagers' hut that was leaking. After the visit we were excited to hear to how great the patient was doing. She was able to walk around the village, and wasn't even originally at her home when we arrived, because she was visiting her sister a few villages away. This was great news, because a few weeks ago, she had to be carried everywhere she went. This just goes to show the great work that the doctors and Faith Alive Staff perform on a daily basis. On a random yet exciting note, one of the nurses here in the clinic, gave birth to a little girl today!! Congrats!!

The Abuja Group also checked in recently with us, and they are having many of the same experiences. This past week the group traveled to an outlying village, and helped in HIV outreach. While there, the group helped organize the villagers for testing, and helped to record the results and status of each patient. They also had some exciting news to report this morning, when one of the teenage mothers gave to baby boy. We are looking forward to hearing more form them, and will report back when we get more information!!

Hopefully we will be able to blog once more before leaving on thursday. We miss you all and will see you soon!!

-Jason and the Jos Group

1 comment:

Meg said...

Hi Dad! It’s Wednesday and that means your trip is coming to an end. I’m sure you will be sad to leave but at the same time excited to get back home. Things are good on our end. However, I know Mom is ready to have you back home. We had a great time in Hershey Park. They still have that old flume ride and the kids loved riding it. We kept riding that one over and over. I think Creighton loved it the most though. I don’t know if you guys hear any Maryland news over there so I thought I would give you an update. Michael Phelps has now won five (5) gold medals as of last night. He has a chance to win three (3) more. The Ravens had their first Preseason game last Thursday night against the New England Patriots. Ravens won 16 to 15. Speaking of football, Brett Favre was traded to the Jets last week after retiring from the Green Bay Packers. Unfortunately, the Orioles are still the last place team in the American League East. Gas, as of this morning at Extra Mart in Hampstead, was $3.55…so it’s coming down thankfully. We have started packing for Deep Creek and the weather is supposed to be in the low 70’s during the day and in the 50’s at night all next week. Well, have a safe trip home. We will see you on Sunday at the lake.

Love,
Meg, Chris, Cam, Livi & Creighton