Yesterday, Sabbath after I taught the ladies Sabbath School and after church, a young guy showed up telling us about more people that were sick in an area that Kent and Jilin had hiked to the previous day in order to make sure a landing pad was appropriate for the helicopter to get in.   Kent had also gone up to this location - several mountains over, to do a visual assessment on a child we thought may be a candidate for being brought to our jungle hospital or else to the government hospital in town - the reason the helicopter needed to go in in the first place.  With a two-meter handheld he conversed with me and we decided he really needed to go to the government hospital cause we didn't have the appropriate resources.  So just before sundown, the helicopter was finally able to land in that area and get him out to the lowlands where our truck and student missionary driver met the copter and then took the patient to the hospital where he was able to receive the needed blood transfusion.
Then yesterday - returning to my story - a guy shows up and says that more people are sick - and so many that couldn't possibly walk to the clinic, etc.  So Dwayne, the pilot and I flew up there and sure enough, find a number of people rather miserable, and some seriously ill with measles. (There have already been deaths from measles- peole who didn't come for help (which go through here about every four years), so we are trying to be agressive in treating them as best we can - though there is NO cure for measles.....  Anyway, I was glad to get to fly - it took about two minutes to get there and would have taken me at least two hours on foot - and I would have arrived exhausted!)  As it was we did quite a bit of hiking from the landing strip in order to find the patients, so by the time we returned - not long before sundown Sabbath afternoon - I was pretty tired.

   Then today, I was the sole primary care giver at the clinic, since our two other personnel were either out of the mountains or sick with malaria.  I arrived at the clinic this morning at the same time that a young couple was arriving with a seven month old with what appeared to be status asthmaticus - and had my hands full trying to stabilize  her plus see the multitude of other patients that were arriving in droves!!  Whenever we have epidemics, the work load increases greatly.  Anyway, it was a long full day.  I was grateful that David returned about noon and he pitched in to help me.  He was there in time to catch a patient that went into grand mal seizure as I was writing what he was telling me about a sick brother - so I wasn't watching him directly.  I heard strange gurgling, almost growling sounds so I stood up quickly and just in time to see him go over -  fortunately David was there to help ease him down.  So we got him stabilized and continued on with our crazy day.  It is no wonder that I'm rather tired tonight - we saw over 50 patients today. - nine hours straight - no breaks!!  Just running from one to the other!  Many doctors  probably sees that many patients themselves in a day too, but when you have to prepare all the medicines in an appropriate way for a native, illiterate group of people it all becomes VERY time consuming.   I enjoyed being back in the clinic as primary care - it has been a while.  More and more of my time is spent in administration - administration of the clinic and the school - and Kent and I share/divide duties in regards to the church and development of leaders, and of course preparations of materials for Bible studies and also school curriculum in Pelawan  - so....yea, life is never dull!!