We had to get up Saturday at 4 AM to catch the plane out of Fort Smith. We met up with the rest of "Partners In Progress" (60 people in all) in Miami. From there we flew to Trinidad where we got to bed in a hotel about midnight. The next morning we flew to Guyana.

In Guyana it took what seemed like forever to get everyone through customs. The airport is nearly an hour away from the capital city, Georgetown, where we stayed in a hotel. From the airport we rode in a large van and a school bus packed as full as you could imagine with people, luggage, and 26 crates of medical supplies.

Everyone was surprised to find that nearly every room in the hotel was air-conditioned, when the electricity worked. We "sacrificed" little. The hotel even had a swimming pool, but most of us were much too busy to ever get into it.

Sunday night we walked nearly a mile to the North Road Church of Christ. They have a very nice building. There is a preacher training school there. The attendance on that Sunday morning was 316. It gets dark early in the tropics and practically everyone from the States forgot to take a flashlight to help us get back to the hotel.

Monday morning we divided the 60 people into 2 teams. There was a group from Birmingham, Alabama, with 23 members, including 4 doctors. They took 3 extra people and went to a site for one clinic. The rest of us went in 2 vans to a village called Canal Number 2, which was nearly an hour away from our hotel.

More than half the team members had been to Guyana before. Their prior experience helped the rest of us quickly figure out how to get everything accomplished.

Those who had worked on such a mission trip before went quickly to work in setting up a clinic on Monday morning. I helped, but not without direction. We were given use of a large elementary school building that had 4 large classrooms. School was still in session. (They get only 8 weeks off for summer.) We took one of the classrooms and all the kids crowded into the remaining 3 rooms with their desks. Several school girls swept the floor clean in just a few minutes. (They have brooms with no broom handles. This sweeping position causes every female over 13 to have chronic backaches and heartburn from stomach acid flowing up the esophagus.)

We fashioned clinic exam rooms by hanging sheets from lightweight rope. Fortunately it was breezy and kept the sweat down, but the sheets (serving as walls) would blow horizontally occasionally. Most patients did not seem to mind the sheets blowing over their heads. For me it took awhile to become accustomed to this, but I was soon able to just go on without paying attention.

Every person coming to the clinic was given the opportunity to study the Bible with a personal worker. Very few declined. This occurred in a separate, hot building located about 20 yards behind the school. Patients were not seen till they went there first. After being checked in by the nurse, they waited on benches till a doctor could see them.

We had 2 family physicians, 1 ER doctor, 3 pediatricians, and 1 nurse practitioner examining and treating patients. I saw only about 50 patients the first day, but learned how to see 80 a day before it was over. It sure was nice to not have to write but a few words in a record.

Each clinic record was a single sheet of paper with information about the patient's religion and how the Bible study went. We ran out of these papers about midday on the fourth day and were forced to use blank paper. In other words, we saw more patients than had been anticipated.

I took 200 tracts called "The World's Greatest Question" which I gave to each patient up to the 50th one each day. One day I ran out of my set of 50 by 1:30 PM.

The patients for the most part had problems similar to what I would see in my practice in Roland, Oklahoma. I saw only one girl with head lice. There were several cases of pinworms and other intestinal parasites. I saw one elephantiasis, that was already under treatment. There were an incredible number of cataracts, many before age 40, due to bright sunlight. Lots of people wanted eyeglasses, but many were disappointed that they wouldn't help. There were many minor backache complaints. There were fewer infections than I expected. I saw several diabetics and patients with high blood pressure. There was a lot of tinea versicolor which is a fungal infection on the skin a bit like ringworm. The locals called this rash "lata," which translates to "lot of" (or lotta) rash. We ran out of medicine to treat this by the 3rd day.

For the most part we had little trouble communicating with the patients. There were a few every day that I could barely figure out what they were saying to me -- their English was so slurred. Most of the people were educated, but incredibly poor, nonetheless. I saw no one who appeared hungry. A small percentage of the women were actually obese. A few of them even asked me for pills to take off their fat. This I found most amusing. I even saw a few teenagers who wanted something for the boils on their faces -- this was only acne and not severe enough for me to pay much attention to. There were a lot of people with just simple nasal allergies. I previously had thought that was a plague of citizens of industrialized nations. There were many older patients with arthritis, but they couldn't afford the over-the-counter aspirin available in Guyana.

The community is served medically by a medic who works for the government, somewhat like our public health service. They call him a "medix." He is responsible for the people who lived within 5 miles of his clinic, which was at Canal Number 2. This area included 8,000 people. He worked with us in the clinic, learning a great deal about modern medicine. He attended our services each night and will likely be converted in the near future, as will the school teachers there.

There were many Hindus and quite a few Muslims. Most people were of eastern (Asian) Indian descent, having moved from another British colony in the 19th century. The community had a small percentage of Blacks. We expected a considerable difficulty in converting people to Christ, but we baptized 50 at Canal No. 2. This caused incredible excitement for the team.

My lunch lasted 15 to 30 minutes each day. I brought a protein bar from the States for each lunch. There was often other food available from other workers and from the local community. We had lots of pineapple and various other fruits. We had sodas, but the taste was not familiar.

The local preacher has 10,000 pineapple plants and brought pineapples as fast as we could eat them. There were always several to take back to the hotel each afternoon.

After we finished seeing patients for the day, we returned to the hotel for supper. At first we saw patients more quickly than was expected and finished about 3:30. Later in the week the personal workers allowed more people to get in, so that we barely finished by 5 PM.

Each night we returned to the clinic site where another classroom was used for preaching. Two of the four nighttime sermons were preached by the personal evangelist from West-Ark. The congregation had 22 members before we came. We started with about 50 people attending on Monday night, but had at least 450 by Thursday night. There would be bats flying around in the building till it filled up with people. This was a fascinating sight.

Since we had to catch a flight Friday night, the congregation chose to have only a 4-day meeting. At some medical mission sites like this there will be preaching every night the team is there and then every night the following week.

We could not see the North Star from Guyana. It was too low at the horizon. We could tell where it was supposed to be because the Big Dipper was quickly recognized. We were able to see the Southern Cross, which almost no one from the States had seen before.

I was surprised at how much water there was, yet so few bugs. I did not see a single mosquito, but did get a few bug bites like mosquitoes, though.

Together the 2 medical teams saw 2700 patients. We baptized 92 people, including 2 people who worked at the hotel.

The clinic shut down (almost in minutes) at noon on Friday. It was pouring down rain when we had to carry all the medical supplies to the van. It rained about like I expected during the week. One day after a rain it was so humid and lacking wind that we thought we would burn up, but generally it was a bit cooler than everyone expected.

On Friday afternoon before we had to go to the airport, we did a little shopping in Georgetown. The gold and silver jewelry was very well priced and I got some for my wife. I brought back a few articles made of "purple heart wood." It is purple. Several of us went to the shops and stores with a local Christian girl who was able to show us about and answer endless questions. Some of the girls from Fort Smith went with another local Christian girl to a market that had been strictly off-limits. They were quite foolish to do this, and I learned of it only after they returned. They were able, however, to buy some neat things at incredible prices. This particular market is considered quite dangerous, and the girls were very fortunate that they were not robbed or molested.

Friday night we flew to Trinidad and stayed in a wonderful motel, but arrived after 1 AM. On Sunday we got up at 3:20 AM to get to the airport for our flight to Miami. The plane landed in Grenada and Barbados on the way.

We expected to encounter all sorts of problems on a trip such as this. However, the trip was essentially uncomplicated till we were back in the States. In Miami, we sat in the plane for 2 hours before take-off. This caused us to get into Dallas too late to make the scheduled flight to Fort Smith. Actually, I have never flown out of Dallas on schedule to Fort Smith, and fully expected the flight to be delayed. Indeed, American Airlines had 2 electric cars waiting at the arrival gate to take the Fort Smith/Guyana group to our departure gate. In other words, they held the plane -- something our stewardess from Miami said wouldn't happen. We had 14 very happy and excited people. We really didn't even care that the luggage didn't make it on the plane with us. It was nice to get back home, as you can imagine.

I was able to get enough rest while we were in Guyana, but the strange hours we had in Trinidad caused incredible fatigue.

There are many other stories I could tell about the trip. I believe the purpose of the trip was fulfilled more than adequately, as God was glorified and thousands heard the Gospel, most for the first time.