Tomorrow it will be a week since I ventured out of doors, out of quarantine, into the new world that was waiting for me… It seems like longer, because I’ve had so many new experiences in the last week. Was it only a week ago that I realized with something like trepidation and surprise that I would be eating rice and everything else with my fingers on a daily basis for the next 6 months? (We wash our hands before and after–very sanitary–and I had to remind myself about the meaning of the word egocentric and how I don’t want to be that.) Has it been only a week since I’ve been wearing leggings and a scarf and a vest in 90 degree weather and found I don’t die and it is actually not so bad after all?

Saturday was my first day at the clinic. For 5 days in a row, I helped triage dozens after dozens of patients, listening to their complaints and choosing who could be seen and who needed to wait. I superglued a boy’s arm shut after he sliced it with a knife and tried to clean a burn injury that had been slathered with the Rohingya cure-all, lipstick. I learned to know staff people, both Bangladesh and Rohingya, and as the week went on I felt a growing respect and comradery for them. They are friendly and generous and caring. They also have great senses of humor. And I don’t know what I would have done without the translators and their wisdom. They know the ropes and are so willing to teach me, and I am so grateful.

Two days ago, at the end of the day, we went to shut the clinic door and there was a crowd of ladies around the door. They had pleading eyes as they gestured at me and told the translators, “She marked our hand!” I couldn’t blame them for being sad, some of them had waited for hours even after I had told them they probably could not be seen that day. How were they to know that the mark I put on their hand only meant they didn’t have a fever and could wait in the clinic waiting area? To them it seemed like I had picked them to be seen by a doctor and then told them they couldn’t after all. This happens almost every day…

I see so many patients in a day. I try to look at their eyes as I check vital signs on patient after patient… Even the ones we turn away, I know that God cares about deeply. He can work in their lives in a way that I can’t. I am overwhelmed by 100-200 people a day, but God can work in the billions of lives on the planet, and not be in the least overwhelmed. This is amazing, that He cares intimately for each one! And so, I try to look at their eyes, the holes to their soul, and think how God sees them–the little boy with nephrotic syndrome and long eyelashes, the girl who is so shy she will not look at me, the middle-aged woman with only her eyes showing, but those eyes look worried, but then she smiles suddenly when I smile at her…

God’s love is incredible.