The week has whizzed by...its amazing to me how the time flies. We have said a fond farewell to the "Happy Hearts" team from Sarasota and are now preparing for the arrival of a group from St John's LC in Alexandria Va. We are so thankful for the calm days we are having that permit these groups to travel as planned. The medical team saw over 400 people in the few days that they were here. Thanks to Dr Chris and his "have dental chair will travel", 78 people recieved care for their dental woes. The week was quite varied as we had clinics at the school, one for the Ganthier community, another for a small community in Croix des Bouquets and then we passed by Little Children of Jesus and Marie's to attend to folks there.....even Marie had her turn in the dental chair. I was pleased with the clinic Croix des Bouquets...Cotard 54 to be exact as I was not so certain that the health commity had done all it could to be prepared for us. It was a slow start but word quickly got out and before too long there was a good size line of folks waiting for the Dr and Nurse Practitioner. One of the highlights of the week was seeing some of the gals on the team singing "Jesus Loves Me" to a little baby upon whom Dr Steve performed a small surgical procedure. Being cradled by one of the staff members and hearing their singing settled her cries and soon she was sleeping away.

It rained a couple of evenings this past week and one night several of us decided to take advantage of the grand gush of water coming from the down spout to wash our hair. Even though it had rained for a bit of time before we undertook this activity and there had been plenty of time for the debris to be washed off the roof, just as we went to rinse our hair it was like a plug was pulled above us and the next thing you know we were covered in bits of leaves, sticks etc.. Each of us had to go to our rooms to have another shower to get all of the gunk off of us.....so much for our refreshing shower thanks to mother nature......at least our hair felt soft from the rain water!

Valentine's day took place during the team's visit. I took advantage of the team's presence to deliver some valentine cards that had been made by a preschool church class in Florida. They graced us with a song or two before we left them to their celebration of a little chocolate milk and goodies.

The election campaign for the second round of elections kicked off officially this week. It of course has caused a lot of chatter, especially as related to the planning for the elections to correct the imperfections of the round last November. Both candidates Mme Manigat, and Michel Martelly are very confident in their chances and are in the process of preparing list of names for the gov't officials they will put in place upon their "win" as president.

Wishing you all a pleasant weekend.

Debbie