Mending Bodies and Healing Hearts

      Some days are harder than others. Some days are full of patients that are here for routine operations such as having their gallbladder removed or come in for stitches in their cut finger. These are the good days, when we can laugh with the patient and make lighthearted conversation. And then there are hard days, when it seems like every patient is very ill and needing a lot of attention. Those days can bring lots of talks with patients about death, the life thereafter, and sweet discussions about God. Sometimes these patients are children such as baby Isaac who was brought in from our Children's home due to severe respiratory distress just yesterday. We thought for sure that he was going to die. We fought to give him his every breath. If he stopped breathing, he was going to die as we do not have a ventilator small enough to support his tiny lungs. It's so hard to watch a baby struggle. His tiny chest collapsing with every breath. With a lot of IV fluids and some dextrose

 As several other single missionary women and I were sitting at the hospital bus stop waiting for the church van to pick us up this morning, we started talking about culture. I am not entirely sure of what started the conversation but Julie said, "Sometimes I feel like as an American I don't really have culture." "Sure you have culture!" exclaimed Annie, "You have a very mixed culture. An American culture. Americans are very independent, value their individuality and privacy, have high expectations, and very success driven."   We went on to talk about the difference in American versus Honduran culture. Hondurans are very dependent on each other as a family unit and there is no such thing as privacy. Everyone knows everything about everyone even without Facebook. As a Honduran, if you are admitted in the hospital, everyone in your community knows you are there and what is wrong with you even if they don't personally know you. You might  even get