Seven Weeks! So many successes and such immediate challenges.

Two months ago today, Jo Ann, Eliott, Judy and I arrived in Fort Lauderdale and excitedly began repacking bags in our hotel room so we could fit more crutches in them. Who knew there were entire rooms filled with crutches already awaiting us in Haiti!
The Global Therapy Group clinic has been open for seven weeks now and is already seeing 20 to 25 patients a day. The teams who followed us did such a marvelous job. They expanded on what we had started and began new ideas of their own. One team created an outreach program to a nursing home behind the hospital and began holding group exercise classes there a few afternoons a week!
Our immediate problem is that we are coming to the end of our scheduled volunteers. Our last team leaves June 19th and as of today, I have no team in place to follow them. The idea of the clinic sitting empty for 2 weeks makes me so worried and sad. Patients will come each day and no one will be there. Will they ever come back? Will they just assume the volunteer therapists have now gone like all the other medical teams?
I have some therapists scheduled for July, August and early September but need many more. I have had lots of email inquires from volunteers asking for more information, but few have made a formal commitment to dates. I just keep trying to have faith and put one foot in front of the other each day. (Or one finger in front of each other as most of my work for this project concerns sending hundreds of emails!) I keep waking up at 4:00am worrying, say a prayer, and then try to go back to sleep.
Jo Ann and her husband have been busy working on our website and hope to have it up and running by this weekend. Try typing in www.globaltherapygroup.org soon and hopefully pictures of some of our wonderful patients will appear.
Judy has volunteered to host a fundraising event for us at her family’s new venue in south St. Louis called “The Warehouse”. Save the date for July 17th at 7:00pm. It will be a great party with music and a silent art auction featuring photography from an artist who just spent a month in Haiti.
Things have come together over the past 2 months in such an amazing way. We just need to find a way to keep it going!
Donna