Hello again from Panama! Tonight´s our silent auction night, so Dana asked me, Joanne, to post with today´s stories from another great day at clinic in La Chorrerra.

We served over 1470 patients today, and it was another great day, even if the thunderstorm shut down our electricity for a couple minutes. Some other loud noises were due to celebrations for today´s Panamanian holiday, the inauguration of their new president and government. (We saw some of the setting up for the ceremony on our way to clinic this morning.)

Krystina had a fun story today. She worked in IMS (with me!), which is where we match patients´ prescriptions from the inventory of glasses that we have here. Krystina had brought glasses of her own and from friends, and she was able to match one of them to a prescription for a young girl. The glasses were ones owned by her former boss, and she went to the dispensing station to present them to the girl herself. It was a really special moment for her, and we will try to upload the photo of her and the girl as soon as we can!

We had some interesting stories with patients who´d never had glasses yet had strong prescriptions; for example, I enjoyed watching as Mary dispensed such a pair to a young boy of 11. Vincent told us about a woman who had -17 in one eye and something like -11 in the other (a very strong prescription, indeed!). She´d been wearing very scratched and almost unreadable lenses for five years, and Vincent was pleased to provide her new glasses that matched her need. So was she!

We´re excited about our silent auction tonight, hoping to raise more money for OneSight as well as find something fun to take home. Was that Wally modeling one of the items at last night´s dinner?

Tomorrow is the last day at clinic, and we´ll be sad to see it end. Our Lions will treat us to something special on Friday (we´re hoping it´s on the Panama Canal), and we´ve started making plans for Saturday too. Look for our stories here in a day or two!