January 25th: We arrived in Jordan for our mission with SAM Syrian American Medical Association on Friday with 7 bags of clothes and medicines for the refugees. We were met at the airport by my cousin Basil and we had no problems in getting through customs. I got to the house and a couple of hours later went to the airport again to get Beryl and then home and to bed.
On the following day we started a bit late due to not really sleeping much in the evening. The whole family worked on sorting the clothes and putting the boys items together and the girls items, and the medicines. The medicine we took to the SAM office for distribution to the hospitals that the surgeons on our team are doing the orperations at. The clothes went to the office of Mercy Corp, and we will be meeting the priest that is working with refugees near Irbid.
The rest of the doctors started arriving today, and there is a total of 11 people on this mission. The total amount of drugs and medicines that have been brought in are over 10,000 tablets of medicines, in addition to the various tools and other medical supplies. This is the biggest mission of SAM’s to date.
In the morning we spent time at the office of SAM and met with and watched the social workers as they learned about how the women and children got here and how many kids and how to reach them and some of their issues. The women were pretty open about the kids and the problems they were having such as bed wetting and defiant or or angry behavior towards the parents. The women were from Banias, Homs, Hama and Damasacus. This was a group therapy session and then the social worker got their numbers and names and gave some suggestions, but told them that they should call her if they need anything and she will go to them or next week to come to the office to
talk. The women were very afraid and you could see from their body language that they were not comfortable, but they did feel that it had to be done – talking to someone about their problems. They are more afraid for their kids then anything else.
The social worker did the best that she could in a small space with people coming in and out of the room.
The doctors that arrived went directly to the hospital to do some surgeries.
Starting out early tomrrow on the 28th at 700am going for a meeting and then everyonew will be going to their different places for surgeries. We will give you another report and also more footage of what we are seeing and doing.
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