Saying Yes

The little three letter word we use so often has so much power. It is the word “YES”. I can see myself as a child anticipating that word after asking a hope filled question. It might have been: Can I go to the lake? Can I have some candy? Can I stay overnight at my friend’s house? I can remember waiting to hear that little word — "Yes". When you think about it, it is a very powerful word. It can bring a smile and the hope of a good experience. That little word has been used to start the process to help so many in need: "Yes, we can help you."

I can think of six families who have heard that word when they have asked the question regarding the possibility of sending their children to the U.S. or Australia for extensive medical care. Their future became bright, but if these children are to be helped, so many people have to say yes. I am so grateful for the amazing people who make it possible to change a person’s life. If a number of people agree to help, then it is a shared effort. A life can be changed if we can find a way to say, "Yes".

Clean Water

Clean water is vital to good health. There are several ways to transform marginally safe or contaminated water into drinkable water. A common practice in the remote islands of Indonesia is to boil the water. It takes time and fuel to boil every drop of water a family drinks. A well (bore) can be drilled at a per-foot cost. It can be too expensive for some villages. Another option is to hand dig a well. This is a lot of work and the well remains open to future contamination. Roof catchment systems can also provide drinkable water. The challenge with this method is that you only get water when it rains. In a region that has a wet and dry season, there can be long stretches of time between the rainy days. Using water out of streams and rivers is also common. The rivers are used by everyone who lives near the river for everything including bathing, toilets and washing clothes. The water from these rivers can be just full of disease. These are all methods used by the poor to get drinkable water.

Recently we had a wonderful portable hand pump water purification system donated. It will be very valuable for our teams to use on mobile clinics. The medical and dental teams go to remote villages to serve the needs of the poor in their villages. These teams will stay in the villages for one day or as much as three months. In many villages the challenge is having clean water to use for the medical and dental work. This portable purification system weighs only 20 pounds and will be used by the mobile clinic teams to guarantee they will have good water. It doesn’t take a lot to help in big ways.

Surgical Team

TheIFC/Hohidiai staff at the Medical Clinic and Hospital are looking forward to this team coming to focus on cleft lip surgeries. The permits have been secured with the Department of Health for this team to bring hope to the poor that come for help. Those needing the cleft lip surgeries are now just waiting for the team to arrive.

There are a couple other special cases for the medical team to assess. The top of the list is a middle aged man who is badly burned on his back from his neck down to his feet. He is in desperate need of specialized burn care.

There is a lot of logistics for a medial team of 13 people. Our short-term team coordinator and team leader, Dan Holmgren, have worked long and hard to get the travel, lodging, visas, letters, supplies and permits organized. It is a huge job but well worth the investment--those cleft lip patients will leave with a new face and new future.

Jet Lag

The sky was a stunning blue as I looked down on the glaciers and snow covered mountains of Western Canada and Alaska. It was a view that was the best welcome sign you could see. I was nearly home—weary but excited to be close to the end of my travels. There is no place like home even after being in the remote islands of Indonesia and the beautiful continent of Australia.

I left the northland with a dental team in early February. Seventeen flights later I am back in the same place from which I started. The international flights were all packed and the local puddle jumpers were nail biters. I was stuffed into seats made for people much smaller than I, and I sat next to Sumo wrestlers in training on a nine hour flight. The one I communicated with could not speak very good English and he definitely took up his seat and more. I even gave him part of my in-flight meal which he received with a smile. The meal was hardly a snack for him even with my donations. I met a wonderful 18 year old Singaporean who was going, during school break, to join a team to help the Japanese tsunami survivors. It has been one year since that disaster and he was giving his time to make a difference. I was so proud of him and only imagined what he will change in his lifetime. He did spend most of the trip sleeping on my shoulder. I met people who wanted to talk and those who wanted to sleep. I slept when I could and read a couple books between Sumo wrestlers in training, young world changers, cramped seating and wondering how the plane landed in that tropical rain storm.

The miles went zipping past at 600 mph over the Pacific Ocean and over the dry plains of the great southland. I am now home but jet lagged. I know what that means for me over the next few weeks. I met some wonderful people and added thousands of miles to my mileage plan. I will need to use them because I will be back in the air in a month or so. I wonder who will be sitting next to me over those cloud piercing miles.

Dr. Gigi

In Indonesia the word for teeth is gigi--so a dentist is Dr. Gigi. We had our own Dr. Gigi on the recent team. He came from the place on the planet that has had a record snowfall and now he is in the remote islands of Indonesia pulling and filling teeth.

Dr. Paul (Dr. Gigi) was just been amazing as he patiently took a look at the dental needs of each person. He was also there to train the dental support staff. It was fascinating watching him instruct each one of them--they were each at a different skill level.

The bonus was his interpreter, Annie. She was born in Indonesia and moved to America as a young woman. She has family who live in Java. She flew up to the base and was a great help to Dr. Gigi as he instructed his staff. She just stood back until she was needed. She had a very good grip on the more technical part of the language.

He has children come to the dental room who did not want to get close to a dentist and others who just opened their mouths and came out smiling. I saw the first boy who came to see the dentist and his dental needs were major. There was another that needed the best part of three days to help his mouthful of cavities.

I could see the confidence of the dental staff increase as each day passed. Dr. Paul let them assist and even do some of the work under his tutelage. The staff is learning the practical experiences and upgrading their skills--step-by-step.

Extreme

I would confidently say that minus 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit is extreme cold. How about over 300 inches of snow accumulation and the winter isn’t even close to being finished? That is an extreme amount of snow. Alaska is beautiful by any measure and it is a place of many extremes. It gets dangerous to drive in these extremes. There are plenty of documentaries and reality shows about life in the Great North Land. The crab fisherman, gold miners and State Troopers show the rest of the world just how extreme this place is. If you are still not convinced, just take a walk near a salmon spawning stream when the brown bears are filling up before they hibernate. I guarantee you will feel very small and vulnerable.

I guess it might take some extreme adventurers to volunteer to go to the medical base in remote Indonesia. It might take people who see extremes almost every day to board a series of flights and fly 35-40 hours to serve the needs of the poorest-of-the-poor. I look forward to serving with six volunteers from Alaska. We will join together and put our energies into making a difference in the lives of the poor. I have a core belief—it doesn’t take much to make a difference. There will be two things for sure—there will be no piles of snow or minus temperatures on the islands of Indonesia.

Clean Water

Our mobile clinics go to some of the most remote places on the planet and serve the poorest people in these secluded mountain regions and isolated islands. I have personally been on several of their mobile clinics and I am amazed at, and blessed by, the devotion of these mobile team members. Sometimes the teams are greeted with dancers and music and there is usually food served to the team members. These teams stay in the villages for as long as three months or just for the day. The lines of patients can be long as they wait to be seen by the medical staff.

These villages do not always have clean water available. I recently met an amazing man, Jon, who is an inventor and specializes in clean water systems. Jon donated one of his smallest units—only 21 pounds—which are very portable but very efficient. You can literally pump out of any river and have drinkable water. The fact we can have good water at any place makes our medical care that much better. This clean water hand pump system is just what we need to improve our treatment. If it saves a life or reduces suffering it will be worth every mile it travels to these remote places.