Forty-eight Americans worked in Guyana, South America, under the direction of Partners In Progress. A medical clinic was conducted for 5 days at the Edinburgh school with the assistance of the Leonora church of Christ. One thousand six hundred one patients were examined and treated. Practically every patient was taught the Gospel and given religious literature. Hundreds of Bibles were distributed. Attendance at the nightly preaching services grew from 118 Monday to 356 on Friday night. Fifty-six people obeyed the Gospel.

A detailed account of this mission follows:

Twenty-five Christians from West-Ark church of Christ left Fort Smith on Saturday, 11 June 1994, on 2 American Airlines flights and 1 Delta flight. The planes departed between 5:55AM and 7:58AM. Each person checked 1 suitcase. There were also 29 boxes of medical and teaching supplies, all of which were carried by American Airlines. All flights went to Dallas where non-stop flights to Miami were boarded.

The 48 members of the medical mission team to Guyana departed Miami aboard British West Indies Airlines (BWIA) at about 2:30PM. The other 23 people were from Mayfield, KY; Tahlequah, OK; Mesa, AZ; Dallas, TX; Colcord, OK; Cocoa, FL; and Pompano Beach, FL. (All were members of the church of Christ except 3 women from Tahlequah who are Baptists.) The plane stopped in Trinidad, but we did not disembark. Our team sang spiritual songs while we waited on the tarmac there. We arrived in Guyana about 8:30PM. All luggage arrived with us. We were met at the airport by Steve DeLoach, director of Partners In Progress in Guyana.

There was a wedding party at the Park Hotel in Georgetown, the capital city, when we arrived. The volume of the music prevented many from sleeping. The manager told us it would be turned off at 12MN. At my insistence it finally was stopped at 1:20AM. Saturday night's hotel bill was adjusted to reflect our dissatisfaction.

Sunday morning we ate breakfast at the hotel about 8AM. Many of us walked to church at 9:10AM. The latter half of the walk was in the rain. Others rode to church in Ivan's van. (Ivan is a Guyanese Christian who owns a van used as a taxi. He arranges the ground transportation in Guyana for each mission team.) After church we were taken to the Pegasus Hotel for lunch where we enjoyed the steel band playing at poolside.

After lunch Sunday, supplies from earlier mission teams this summer were moved from the Pegasus to the Park Hotel.

Several key people met together at 5PM to discuss some of the details of the clinic. We learned from Steve that we would have to wait till we arrived at the clinic site Monday morning before we could decide how to set up.

We had a devotional/worship service at 6 to 7PM on the Park Hotel's veranda. After several songs the men read scriptures and made encouraging remarks about our work. After supper we divided into meetings of personal workers, nurses, and other medical workers. There were 10 nurses on the trip, one of which spent the week doing Bible studies.

Monday and subsequent mornings we ate breakfast at 7AM. Every morning included a brief devotional begun as soon as the last person was through the buffet line. Monday we left the hotel about 8AM. We had to wait about 30 minutes at the Demerara River as the bridge was closed.

We arrived at the school building at Edinburgh, near Leonora, about 9AM and immediately began to set up our clinic. The students were still having classes. They all moved into the smallest possible space, giving us about one third of the front of the upper level. We used about 150 feet of clothesline rope over which we hung bedsheets to divide the area into examining "rooms." It took us about 1½ hours before we could see our first patient.

The pharmacy was located at the far side of the building where the drugs could be kept locked up at night. Some Christians from Leonora spent the night in the schoolhouse to protect the medications from theft. The head master (i.e., principal) of the school surrendered his office near the pharmacy to provide a break room for the American team members.

The medical workers met for a prayer each morning immediately prior to seeing patients. Most of the 9 nurses rotated duties throughout the day. One nurse helped the dentist and one helped the optometry student throughout the week. We had 4 physicians. Though the school had a tin roof, the temperature never exceeded 87 F during the week.

The personal workers used the open area under the school on the first day. Many Guyanese Christians also participated in one-on-one Bible teaching while patients were waiting to see the doctors. Baptisms were performed in a canal about 100 yards from the school. Baptismal garments were brought from West-Ark.

Many of the American Bible teachers led the school children in Christian songs during their recesses. Gary Brown, one of West-Ark's personal workers, taught the students in their classroom about economics and Biblical morality. West-Ark's Shelley Frost and Glenda Hodnett taught Bible lessons to the younger children nearly every day in their classroom. (This is a public school.)

We had fellowship with Christians from Canal Number 2, Meeten-Meer-Zorg, and Enmore, areas where we conducted medical mission clinics in the past 3 years. It was very encouraging to us to see many people during the week who had been converted by West-Ark members during previous mission trips. In the past we had not had contact with anyone from the previous years' villages. It was especially good to discover a man converted during our work in 1991 at Canal Number 2 who is now preaching and has baptized dozens of others. Only God is fully aware of the impact our trips to Guyana have had for the expansion of His Kingdom.

At 3:15PM on Monday the back stairway at the school collapsed as the children were leaving to go home. About 25 children fell with the stairs. Bob Null, one of our personal workers, was slightly injured. One school girl broke her leg and another girl was knocked unconscious; both were transported to the local hospital by ambulance. Another girl required stitches to the scalp at our clinic. A few other problems were examined later in the week as other children reported minor injuries.

The last van back to the hotel Monday left the clinic site about 4:45PM. We ate supper at the hotel at 5:30PM. We departed the hotel at 6:30PM to return to the school house for evening services. The trip took 38 minutes one way that evening.

The song leader Monday evening was baptized one month earlier through the efforts of the first medical mission clinic to Guyana this year. (There were 3 or 4 teams before us and 3 or 4 teams to follow us in Guyana.) Roy Dunavin, our personal evangelism minister at West-Ark, presented the sermon. Bed sheets served as large posters to illustrate his lesson outline both Monday and Tuesday nights. These sheets were prepared before departure from the States by 2 ladies from West-Ark on their first trip to Guyana.

We arrived back at the hotel about 9PM. At 10PM the wife of a missionary in Guyana fell into the open drainage ditch. The water/sewage went above her waist. She and her husband were good friends of Jan Ward, our nurse from Florida. She was carried to Jan's hotel room to bathe. She had a very serious injury to her right leg below the knee and was unable to walk. In spite of intense pain, she was insistent on returning to the States on her previously booked flight the following morning. BWIA provided her with 3 seats on the airplane so she was could keep her leg straight and elevated. She went to the hospital in Miami and learned that she had broken her leg. She was scheduled for surgery to place pins in the bone.

Tuesday morning the bridge was closed even longer causing us to arrive at the clinic later than on Monday. The temperature at the clinic site Tuesday ranged from 75-80 F, but it was very humid due to raining most of the day. The rain caused it to be too muddy for the personal workers to teach under the building. They were forced to occupy the small space adjacent to the clinic the rest of the week. This space was a bit larger than Monday as fewer students attended classes the remainder of the week. We quickly became accustomed to the noise.

Jack Hinkle, a construction engineer and contractor on our team from Mesa, AZ, had the broken stairway rebuilt (properly) by late Tuesday afternoon and also improved the bracing of the front stairway. Ivan and 2 local carpenters assisted.

A newspaper reporter from Georgetown came to report on the collapse of the stairway. She interviewed a few of our mission team members. Her story appeared in the newspaper on Wednesday. She gave a favorable report concerning the Church of Christ conducting the medical mission.

One of our nurses refused to drink enough fluids fearing she would require use of one of the messy outhouses at the school. She became dehydrated in mid-afternoon Tuesday and received 2 liters of IV fluids before she was able to walk. We did not allow her to return to the service that evening.

The last van left the clinic site at 4:30PM. The trip took 45 minutes to return to the hotel. We were under instructions to leave at 4PM, but it was very difficult to plan our work load ahead. The first of 4 vans usually left the clinic about 3PM, carrying only personal workers. The first 2 vans often would stop at a shop or historical site before returning to the hotel.

Tuesday night the preacher from Canal Number 2 brought us several pineapple which we enjoyed at the hotel after returning from the evening service.

Wednesday we left the hotel at 7:30AM to get across the bridge before it closed. We were able to begin seeing patients by 8:30. There was a good breeze at the clinic that day. Due to starting the day early and having so many local Christians teaching, we did not seem to keep the personal workers as busy as we expected. This was the clinic's busiest day. We saw 404 patients. I passed out 93 tracts Wednesday, meaning I treated over 100 patients.

One of the van drivers was baptized on Wednesday. On his way to the clinic that morning he told his riders, "I am going to die today -- either on the road to the clinic in an accident or die to sin by baptism at the clinic."

On returning Wednesday afternoon to the hotel, the riders in the last van bought 24 pineapple from a roadside vendor. We paid $1800 Guyanese (about $13 US). These pineapples were consumed Wednesday night after our return to the hotel about 9:15PM.

Before supper Wednesday Steve DeLoach sternly reminded us of the dangers of not following the rules for safety while in Guyana. We had cake and ice cream after supper to celebrate Janet Dille's birthday.

Two kerosene lanterns were purchased Wednesday for us to use at the school house for the nightly services. There had earlier been only 1 lantern and 1 florescent bulb providing minimal lighting for the assembly site. (On Friday night neither lantern worked because no one thought to obtain more kerosene.) Gary Brown from West-Ark and Don Nowlin from Mayfield led the children in VBS type songs before Wednesday's evening service. Ronnie Dunn, a furniture salesman from Mayfield, preached that night.

The Cokes at the hotel were 3 for $1 US last year, but cost us 2 for $1 US this year. We could get a Coke for $60 Guyanese. The exchange rate was $120 to $140 Guyanese to $1 US. Everywhere we went in Guyana would accept U.S. dollars.

By leaving at 7:30AM we were again able to begin the clinic by 8:30AM on Thursday. It rained briefly at the clinic that morning.

One of the patients I saw Thursday had been taught by Liz Cathey and was baptized at our clinic at Meeten-Meer-Zorg in 1992. I saw a similar patient on Wednesday. I saw one patient who had been taught by Tami Brown and baptized in 1992. Every Christian I asked could readily remember the name of the person who first shared the Gospel with them. They hold a very special place in their hearts.

On Thursday and Friday nights Ken Fox, former missionary to Thailand, preached sermons about Jesus. We had a PA system available on these final two nights so everyone in the building was able to hear the lessons.

Friday morning all vans stopped at a local shop to buy jewelry and souvenirs before going to the clinic.

The headmaster (same as a school principal in the States) would not allow patients to use the space below the school building for a waiting area on Friday. We saw the first patient at the clinic about 10AM Friday. It was a very busy day as we saw nearly twice as many patients as we had seen on Monday. The first van load left for the hotel at 2:15PM as we began closing up to start packing. The last van pulled away at 3:45PM. At the hotel the boxes of supplies were unloaded from the vans and divided between what we would return with to the States and what we would leave in Guyana for other teams to use this summer.

Address lists for everyone on the trip were distributed after supper Friday night.

Harry, the preacher from Canal Number 2, led the children in songs Friday night. Ivan led singing for the adults. The wife of the preacher for Leonora fainted near the beginning of the service. Two of our team members became ill during the service. I was asked to speak for a minute at the end of the service regarding our work in Guyana. We did not leave the building till 9:45PM. After the service was over Ivan sang a country-western song he had written. He enjoyed using the PA system and having such a large audience.

We would often sing gospel songs and hymns during the long van rides each evening. The atmosphere reminded many of church camp.

All 48 of us left the hotel at 7:45AM Saturday by vans and a bus to a river launch on the Demerara near the airport. We were then taken by boats up the Kamuni Creek which flows through the rainforest. We stopped at an Amerindian village where many bought native crafts.

We ate lunch at Timberhead resort which is operated by the Pegasus Hotel. After lunch most of us hiked on a nature trail. Our guide demonstrated how to build a shelter from branches and leaves. There were many interesting plants. We saw lots of birds, but no other wildlife. We returned to a nearer boat dock on the Demerara. Crossing the river was a very exciting experience.

We had supper about 6:30PM at our hotel shortly after our return. Several room changes were offered to lessen the impact of the loud music, but everyone declined not wanting to pack, unpack, and repack. We got 2 to 4 hours of sleep Saturday night.

Sunday morning at 2:45AM we had a communion service which everyone attended. This was an especially meaningful time that we spent together. We left the hotel for the airport by 3:30AM.

Check-in with BWIA at the airport was incredibly simple as they let all the luggage be checked in my name. The plane left on time about 7AM for Miami. There was a stop in Trinidad, but we stayed on the plane. We passed easily through customs in Miami. Check-in was simple with American Airlines as their agents met us just outside the customs area. Our luggage was checked as quickly as the agents could place claim checks on each piece. Most of us then ate lunch at Burger King.

Most flights out of Miami were delayed due to rain. We returned to Fort Smith on 3 different planes, the latest arrived about 11:45PM.