Jamaica Part 1

Hello Family & Friends…we just wanted to share a few posts with you from our recent medical mission trip to Jamaica.  Here is part 1! Thanks for all of your prayers and support while we were gone.

We arrived on Friday afternoon around 3pm to Montego Bay. No flight issues, praise the Lord! It took a little less than 2 hours to clear customs with the medications, we had just a small issue with them taking 2 bottles of medication that apparently weren’t approved.

We got to El Greco, the hotel in Montego Bay where we are staying one night, and got settled and then headed out to find dinner. We had a minor incident of a key breaking off in our lock that had to be fixed before dinner, but other than that we were smooth sailing! I won’t mention which student broke the key. 🙂

We had dinner at The Pelican in Montego Bay, most of the team had Jerk Chicken with Rice and “Peas”…Peas in Jamaica are really beans. A few others had fish or curry veggies. The bill for the CU team was 11,000 Jam dollars, which is funny to see on a receipt! But don’t worry that’s around 130 USD, so it was a pretty good deal for all of us!

We enjoyed dinner and got to know some of the other team members better. We then headed back to the hotel and most went to sleep quickly since we had gotten up so early!

On Saturday about half of us got up early for breakfast in order to get some beach time,it was raining on and off but we got some beach time despite the clouds.

We packed up at 11am and left for the Parish of St. Elizabeth. It was about a 3 hour drive. We stopped for lunch at Treasure Beach home of Jack Sprat restaurant.

We all had Jerk Sausage Pizza and enjoyed the sunshine & water on the drier side of the island for a few hours…then it was time to get to the camp!

We settled into the camp Saturday evening and had chicken soup for dinner. The students enjoyed getting to enjoy a bit of Jamaican Sunshine before getting to work. We enjoyed some time of fellowship Saturday evening before getting more much needed rest!

Sunday = Church + Team Meetings + Med Packing! We had a wonderful church service held here at the camp in the chapel.

Just before lunch we took the team down the road  to check out of the great view at the Oceanview Hotel.

Then we enjoyed a WONDERFUL Jamaican lunch of Jerk Chicken (of course!). After lunch we got to work.  We unpacked all the meds I purchased from Jamaica and the ones we brought with us, out of our whole order, only the metformin was missing…too bad it’s one of the one’s we need the most! So thankful to have Jay with us again this year, he is a pharmacist from Missouri that keeps me laughing and knows how to get the job done! He was here on the first trip Sarah and I made to Jamaica too. He helped organize the med packing process along with our pharmacy students and residents, while I met with the other team leaders.

The process was also expedited because I made labels and one of the ladies from the dental team printed them all off for us in advance! We were so close to being finshed when dinner came around, just not quite. We finished med packing after dinner and spent time in prayer for the week with our team. We also lifted up those at home we knew had great needs as well.
Part 2…the real work began on Monday with our first day of clinics…Stay tuned!