Seventeen Christians left Fort Smith at 5:45 AM on 19 June. We flew through Dallas where we were joined by a nurse who used to live in Fort Smith and had gone with us on two previous trips. An additional ten people left Fort Smith at 6:05 and flew through Nashville where they were joined by a woman who formerly lived in Fort Smith and had gone with us on our two previous trips. The 29 of us met in Miami with 11 people from Kentucky, most of whom had worked in Guyana with us before. (The 40 of us worked together the following week at the village of Enmore.)

Most of us ate lunch at Burger King in the Miami airport. Also at the airport in Miami were 32 Christians from Russellville, Arkansas. Nearly all of them were going to Guyana for the first time. West-Ark had been specifically requested by Partners In Progress to work in Guyana at the same time as the Russellville team. Originally, we planned to make one big team and work in the village of Mahaica. We divided into two teams after we found out how many people were going.

Fort Smith's team was trained and responsible. We truly were blessed with a great team of medical and personal workers. The rookies were made to feel comfortable by the assistance provided by those who had been before.

The trip cost West-Ark about $48,000, all raised by team members. It is all worth it to see the transformation of the people we take to Guyana with us. I always warn their families that we will not bring back the same person we took. The power of the Holy Spirit on these people as they share the message of the Gospel is understandable only to those who witness it.

We got into the hotel in Georgetown and in bed before midnight Saturday night. We stayed at the Park Hotel this year. In past years workers have stayed at the Tower Hotel, but they were too expensive this year. We enjoyed the hotel much more than we expected, though some people didn't have hot showers. Breakfast and supper were better than in previous years.

Steve DeLoach and his family from Fayetteville, AR, are now missionaries living in Guyana. He works only to coordinate the medical mission trips and do follow-up after we are gone. I believe there were 7 mission trips this spring and summer. He is very busy. I enjoyed working with him. He came and spoke at West-Ark in April and helped in our early preparations for this trip.

On Sunday morning in Guyana about half of us walked to church and others were transported by van. I decided to walk at the last minute when I saw how many wanted to walk. It was a pretty day, but the walk is over a mile. It gave me a chance to take quite a few pictures of the city. Just before we got to the church building it came up a little tropical shower. (Of course, I forgot my umbrella.)

After Sunday school and worship services we all rode in vans to the Pegasus Hotel for lunch. After lunch everyone walked back to the Park Hotel except for my wife and me, who rode with Steve for a brief visit to his home. His two-story house has a locked gate and fence all around the house with just a small yard, reminding us of the houses in southern Italy.

After we returned to the hotel, Steve lectured everyone about how we could expect things to happen while we were there. After that everyone counted Vermox pills (6 to a bag). Before leaving the States we applied printed labels to hospital-sized zip-locked bags for these pills. The medicine was ordered from a supply house in England and shipped directly to Guyana. We purchased 40,000 of these pills (for worms). We planned to count 30,000 of them that first afternoon but only 40% of our labels made it to Guyana. One of our boxes of supplies was permanently lost in transit. The lost container had 3,000 of the labeled bags in it plus several medications we could have used.

Just days before we left we redesigned the clinic form that is used for every Bible study and every patient encounter. We almost forgot all about them. Since we were going to take the forms ourselves this year we decided that they ought to be done the way we would like best. The church office printed 2500 forms for us from the original we created with a laser printer at a local print shop.

On Monday morning in Guyana we went out to the clinic site at Enmore for the first time. It was a 45-minute ride in a van one way. We made the round trip twice daily. The clinic site was a wonderful, new building. The doctors each had a real room in which to examine patients. This was the nicest facility in Guyana ever used by Partners In Progress. There was ample space for the personal workers to be near the medical workers. We had collected sheets from West-Ark church members before we left to be used as exam room dividers (as in the past), but we didn't need them at this facility.

The Enmore church met for worship at the local primary school which was quite a distance from the clinic site. In spite of the distance, we had good crowds at the nightly meetings at the school. A different preacher from the States preached each night. Dan Lightfoot from Russellville came to our meeting to preach one evening. The rain was so loud on the tin roof of the school that he had to stop preaching for a few minutes several times, but would then pick right back up where he left off.

Will McSweeny, a preacher who came with the Mayfield, KY, group, would preach in our clinic waiting room occasionally. But most of the teaching was one-on-one.

We treated 1407 patients. Every patient was given the opportunity to study the Bible. Almost all of them did. There were 61 baptisms in the 4½ days we worked. There were probably that many more people that the local preacher, Kenneth, talked out of baptism for one reason or another.

There was a muddy ditch surrounding the building that the baptisms were done in for the first 2 days. At some point on Tuesday someone asked to be baptized in the clean pond out back. Though there was at least one four-foot alligator making his home there, most of the remaining baptisms were done in this pond. It was exciting to watch as they worked to keep the alligator at bay.

Our personal work director got to baptize a couple of the people during the week. Our past experiences have been that the local preacher did all the baptisms.

The Guyanese preacher for Enmore is engaged to a Christian girl from Florida. She is presently living in Guyana and helped us at our clinic each day.

The group from Russellville saw 23 baptized at Mahaica.

I think we could have treated more people, but the medical workers spent time preaching to a lot of the patients. We handed out my tract, "God's Plan For Saving Us From Death," to all those who were seen.

We had an optometrist working with us from Tahlequah and a dentist from Kentucky. The dentist pulled 500 teeth. We dispensed nearly all the eyeglasses we took. The optometrist and dentist were kept very, very busy.

There was always a big crowd at the gate when we arrived in the mornings and it stayed that way nearly all day. Across the street from our clinic was a Hindu temple.

Enmore had had two medical missions in the past. The local church was very well organized and wonderful at helping us run a smooth clinic. All of us felt quite close to many of them by the time we left.

We had to close the clinic down about noon on Friday to get everything to the airport on time. Most of us went shopping in Georgetown that afternoon. We ate supper early and were transported to the airport. We left Guyana at 10:30 PM, 1½ hours late. The plane was a special flight out just for our group, though they sold other seats on the plane. They let us board first ahead of all those who were not part of our group.

Friday night we arrived in Grenada about 11:30. A tour company transported us from the airport to our hotel. Most of us got to bed before 1 AM.  We enjoyed a well-earned free day on Saturday, which we spent sightseeing, shopping, and swimming.

At 5 AM Sunday morning we met for Communion, which was such a meaningful experience. We left for the airport at 5:30 AM. We had a long layover in Miami. We returned to Fort Smith about 9:30 PM to at least 100 West-Ark members awaiting us at the airport.