November 13

Last week I was asked to finish my class. I pulled together an idea for a final exam by Monday, and now I am the first and only teacher to be done. Why did they want me to finish so early? It's because they needed my class slot for outreach.

Outreach is a wonderful part of the curriculum that gives each student some very practical experience in the medical missionary things they learn at BMMC. Obviously they can't do outreach from the beginning of their school session since they need to learn the stuff first. That's why they are just starting their outreach now.

Currently the outreach takes place in the villages of Mashabo and Bethany. The students go out in groups of 2 or 3, with a staff member for each group and visit different families in these communities to do either Bible studies or medical work with them. The Bible studies that they do are based on an Amazing Facts Bible study series that goes through I think 27 different topics. They are quite thorough and are very much based on the Word of God.

Since today was the start of our outreach efforts we started by visiting a few homes at the top of the Supaanam River. There were 5 of us and we basically just introduced ourselves, told the families what we were doing, and found out if they were interested in receiving Bible studies. We were very well received and everyone said they would like the studies. How cool is that! We even got to give one unscheduled study since it started pouring rain before we left the first house we visited. It didn't sound very fun to be riding down the river in that kind of weather! It was nice too since we were definitely able to clear some things up for Vera (the lady we were studying with).

It's kind of strange for me to be going with the Bible study groups as I wouldn't say I am that knowledgeable about the Bible. But that was actually one of my main motivations for signing up to go out. I am hoping to catch a few new bits of Biblical information as the students lead out. We'll see how much they learned in their Bible studies class!

Part of the medical outreach we will do is to have one group help out at the Bethany clinic every week. The health care system in Guyana starts with community health workers. There is one health worker assigned to each village to take care of the basic medical needs there. Health workers only get four months of formal training but are expected to do a huge amount of work. From what I have heard, most health workers are rather lazy and usually not that compassionate. Luckily the village of Bethany has an incredible health worker named Ramona who is extremely good at what she does. Melissa has worked things out so the students can work with her to learn the proper way to work with people.

The group that did medical work at the clinic today had an interesting experience. There was a man who had chopped off part of his finger yesterday who didn't come to get it looked at until today. Ramona, the village health worker, was all mad at him for waiting. She probably could have saved the finger, but he said he had thrown the finger tip away. He was there because the rest of his finger kept bleeding and bothering him. So one of our students got to change his dressing and actually cut away some of the dead skin around the top. She claims the experience has dissuaded her from ever becoming a nurse. Too much blood for her liking!

It's really neat to hear the stories that everyone comes back with . Outreach is definitely a blessing for the students, staff, and those receiving it!