Today (July 1) was our 2nd neighborhood medical clinic, and we held it next door to the place where we’re all staying – New Creation School. New Creation School is part of an area Loving One By One owns/operates, and the entire complex is called Graceland. No, Elvis isn’t here. That’s a different Graceland. So, we’re staying in our houses at Graceland, and we set up our neighborhood medical clinic at our school at Graceland.

So, as for today – look at the above left photo. The line was like that ALL DAY LONG. Our preliminary numbers were just under 900 patients, though it felt bigger than that. Of those patients, 157 people, mostly children, tested positive for malaria. Several people were hospitalized or sent for further medical evaluation. One woman was on a stretcher, because she broke her back several years ago, and was told she was fine using a wheelchair – nothing was ever actually done for her back.

Today, here on my fourth trip with Loving One by One, I felt proud and overwhelmed at the same time. Proud, because on my first trip in 2011 this place we were working today was just a bunch of wild, undeveloped land we had just purchased. Today there are three houses and a school, as well as a permanent medical clinic under construction, hopefully opening later this year or early next year. I was proud that we could provide free medical care for all those people, including malaria treatment for so many children; malaria is the number one killer of children in Uganda. I was proud that 90 people can see better because of the reading glasses so many of you continue to donate each year. I was proud that 35 people could come together thousands of miles from their homes, and run like a well oiled machine.

But it was also overwhelming, because some days it seems the more needs we meet, the more we find. The 800-something people we helped are just a drop in the bucket in our community, a community full of all kinds of preventable/treatable illnesses.

So we’re in the right place, doing the right things. It’s just going to take a long time.

**Photos: left- the never-ending crowd. Right – another wife possibility for me.