The Healing Power of Touch...

My good friend, Ashley, holding hands with Carla, a resident of Hogar Betania


Monday, July 19, 2010
This morning we headed to Hogar Betania (Bethany Old Folks' Home) here in Quito to provide screenings and, as Dr. Moss would say, "love on the people". Dr. Moss' husband helped build some of the buildings at Hogar Betania when they lived and worked here as missionaries several years ago. We were all prepared for decrepit conditions and for the residents to be pitiful and smelly; but we were pleasantly surprised! The place was beautiful, with well-tended flowers and lawn and carefully laid out paths. It moved our chaperones to tears when they saw how lovely and well-kept the place was.

The residents were clean and well-cared for and the staff was attentive. The fact that the residents were receiving good care was obvious in everything we saw today. They were relatively healthy (for old folks) and Dr. Moss will need to make only 1 referral for follow-up! Praise the Lord for blessing this home so richly with excellent staff and people who care enough to give.

After we completied the screenings, Dr. Moss had a teaching session with the staff to help them understand the importance of hand washing and proper dental hygeine techniques when caring for the clients. Then we had the opportunity to give back rubs, manicures, and hand and foot massages to grateful recipients. The people were so dear -- serving them was a joy for all of us. We left feeling incredibly blessed...

This is me with Maria. I hugged her close, gave her a back rub, held her hand and she laughed with joy...





Later tonight, we headed to an upscale shopping mall for dinner in the food court. We could have chosen KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Sbarro, McDonald's or Burger King, but we wanted something more traditional. On Dr. Moss' reccomendation, many of us chose a popular Spanish dish called Ceviche. It consists of shrimp with onions and cilantro in a soup served with white rice on the side-- mucho delicioso! Popcorn and corn nuts were also on the tray alongside banana chips. They were intended to be put into the soup, but I didn't care for soggy popcorn. The banana chips were good.

There was little time for shopping, but it gave us an opportunity to glimpse the upper class of Ecuador. In this country, there has traditionally been a large gap between the upper and lower classes. A mddle class has recently emerged and is growing.

After returning to the guest house, we counted out the rest of the vitamins and put them in packages of 30. Whew! At about 10:00pm, we got started on our homework...





We have a long day ahead tomorrow -- we're completing a screening at a daycare that a mission has built at the local dump! After the children go home, we are planning to stay until 11:00 pm "doing whatever needs to be done..."