Pastor Rich's Visit

I was able to see Pastor Rich this week. (For those of you that don't know who Pastor Rich is, he is my school chaplain and is also in charge of the SMs). It was a very short, but very fun visit. Although his ticket said he would be in Tchad for four days (5 depending on how you count the days), only one of those days was spent in Bere. 

It was women's day during his day visit. Therefore, he was able to see and do more then a typical Sabbath day. A woman preached in church, which is really rare/never happens in Tchad, and Danae bought presents for all the women in the congregation. The sad thing about Bere, or at least near the hospital, many people aren't very appreciative. Most women just took the gift and left without saying thank you. It was an expensive gift (for Tchad) and you would expect them to be more thankful. 

Thankfully, there were many gifts left over, so we went to the bush to pass out the left overs. We drove 5 or 6 km and began handing out the presents. You could really see the difference between people near the hospital and people in the bush. Everyone in the bush was very grateful. All the women said thank you multiple times. Some even shrilled and danced with excitement. 

After that experience Pastor Rich and I were suppose to go to a traditional party. I wanted him to see and try the traditional dances. Although I asked many times (and was told) wheter the festivities would be after sundown they weren't. By the time we returned from passing out the presents (basically sundown), the party was ending. But to make things more interesting there was an emergency operation that Pastor Rich was able to scrub in for. It was a strangulated hernia, and the perfect surgery for him to be a surgeon's aid.

Hernias are typically short and easy to do. So there wasn't to much stress about messing up or things going wrong. Pastor Rich did a wonderful job. He looked like a pro surgeon....well he looked like a pro if you didn't watch what he was doing with his hands. He was holding the clamps and compresses with confidence though. Overall I think Pastor Rich really enjoyed himself. We both had a great time.