Nicaragua Mission Day 5

This is it. The last day of surgeries in Nicaragua. Everyone did well last night after their surgeries and we were able to catch an older group who we hung out with yesterday before they went home. One girl was Maria, a 14 year old girl who had a bilateral lip repaired at a younger age. The bilateral lips are more difficult to repair and so she needed a revision to make her lip more full. At this age they are much more conscious of how they look and she even was brave enough to ask us about her teeth and whether or not she could get some work done to them. When you are born with a bilateral they often have to pull the front teeth because they are sticking out or the gum has not formed correctly so they do not have front teeth. We wish we could help them with this, and we could in the US, but unfortunately, she is going to have to get comfortable with the fact that they are missing and to keep the teeth healthy that she has. I discovered yesterday that she is very smart and works hard in school, so I gave her a challenge. Audrey Williamson gave us some magic Treehouse books to bring over and although she cannot understand English, she can read. I gave her the books and a Spanish/English dictionary and told her if she tried hard enough she could probably understand a little bit of what she was reading. This will be up to her. We said good bye to her and several other children in the post op area waiting to leave. Alec had a few more soccer balls left to give out along with the baseball mitts that the O’Brien boys gave us (thank you) and we were able to give them out. Of course they were all very thankful. (We have to leave for the final team party so this day will be in two blogs!)

- Brigette & Alec Clilfford (To read more about Bridgette and Alec’s mission experience, click here.)