Ecuador 2012: Nature and Nurture

Howdy Ya'll

To all my friends at Hope College I hope you are all having a splendid winter break. Keep up the good work you savvy, sharp-witted students.

On the flip side, life outside the world of academia has been stellar. This weeks segment of life in Ecuador is filled with both nature and nurture. Lets start with the nature. The weather down here is starting to make a turn for the best as we begin to exit the rainy season. It came at the perfect time because I needed a little boost for the 5:30 AM alarm this week. As you know from my last post, we had a team from Great Lake Eye Care down here this week and we went out on brigades to different communities to do free eye screenings. This of course meant that Carpe diem was in affect. However, 5:30 is a whole lot better when the orange sun lights up the mountains and the clear sky allows you to see the friendly neighborhood volcano puff smoke. Hooray earth! A second nature point was this past Friday when we traveled to Rio Verde and did a hike to a waterfall called Pailon del Diablo (The Devil's Cauldron). It is one of the biggest water falls it Ecuador and Boy-O-Boy was it powerful. Final nature point was our gondola ride across the valley that gave some spectacular views. Enjoy the pictures!

On the nurture side of things, this week was dedicated to an eye medical brigade. The eye clinic was extremely effective as this week we were able to see more than 750 patients from 5 different cities! My primary job was to work as a translator for distance vision tests. The Ecuadorians were such grateful patients. It was really fun to be consistently greeted with the phrase Doctorcito Dios le bendiga (Little doctor God bless you). My favorite part of the week was seeing the reaction of the patients. A majority of the people we saw just needed pair of glasses, but we did get a good number of dense cataracts and other more serious eye aliments. These patients were often blind or very close to it. Dr. Pletcher was the final eye exam station. He would assess the patients and forward them to surgery if he thought the problem was curable. When I had time I would go over and listened because I loved hearing him tell people that their vision would be restored. Reactions to that beautiful phrase were nothing short of incredible. A mother's tears of joy for her blind child, a old man's smile of hope, and a woman's praises to God were precious moments that I will never forget.

Luke 11:33-36
"No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on its stand, so that those who come in may SEE the light. Your EYE is the lamp of your body. When your EYES are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you."

Grace and Peace
Kyle