It was sad to say goodbye to all the Quiet Hour gang after spending the last 10 days with everyone. Not only did we miss our newfound friends, but the medical support of nurses and physicians that had come down with Quiet Hour. From Tocoa we traveled up to La Cieba and checked into a local hotel. The next day the students had to catch up on travel and tropical- and emergency-medicine lectures. On Monday they had a breather and many traveled into the National Park of Pico Bonito to play in the waterfalls. Tuesday through Friday, we did medical brigades. The first two were in the poor areas of La Cieba and the last two were up in the mountains outside of La Cieba. We spent three hours of driving through rough, winding dirt roads to get to our last clinic on Friday in the mountains. We were well received and the governor of Colon (La Cieba and the surrounding region) met us twice with news crews. On our last meeting with Governor Margie Dip, she presented us with awards thanking us for our humanitarian medical work. She also mentioned that she had talked with the President of Honduras that morning and he thanked us for the work we were doing.

God tremendously blessed our clinic work. We had told the governor’s office that after losing our physicians and nurses with Quiet Hour's return to the US that we now only had two physicians and could only see about 100 patients a day. We were blessed and were actually able to see 160-230 patients each day. It was neat to see the students start praying with some of their patients. One patient stands out in my mind. He was a 35 year old native who had broken his mandible three years ago. It had never been surgically repaired and now he was grossly deformed and could not eat solid food. Our students prayed for that gentleman and tears streamed down his face at realizing that we really did care. We were able to give him $100 to at least see a specialist to see what could be done.

On the way back to our hotel from a day of clinic, we came upon a bicycle wreck in which a patient lay unconscious in a pool of blood, with by-standers all around him not knowing what to do. Our students ran over with medical supplies and immediately took charge. The patient regained consciousness and did not need to be intubated, but was back-boarded, C-collared, an IV started, and the gash on his head bandaged. We then waited for an ambulance. We expected a nice diesel ambulance to show up with paramedics so we could hand care over to them since we were not far from downtown La Cieba (the third largest city in Honduras). What arrived took us all by shock, although it shouldn't have since it was Roatan deja vu all over. It was a police pickup. We placed the confused, head-injured patient in the back of the open bed of the police truck/ambulance, climbed in, and sped off. I think it was one of the most terrorizing rides our students have ever been on. With emergency lights on and sirens blazing, they wove in and out of oncoming traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, dogs, and chickens to arrive miraculously unscathed at the public hospital. We never did learn the outcome of that patient. We prayed to God that he would walk out of the hospital, well.

From La Cieba we went to Pena Blonca where we stayed at an Adventist boarding academy called CEA. There we finished up our didactic studies and tests. We hiked into another village in the mountains to do two days of clinic. We also worked with the Youngburg Orphanage and local Pathfinders. The three and a half months that we were gone were awesome. One of our highlights was working with The Quiet Hour team. This part of our adventure was exhausting, yet very rewarding. As Joedy Melashenko would say, our students learned more about the only F word he knows - FLEXIBILITY- and how God overcomes difficulties. Thanks for teaming up together.

God bless.

Michael Duehrssen, M.D.
Director, International Rescue and Relief
Union College
Lincoln, Nebraska