Saturday, April 13- Monday, April 15: Travel and arrival at New Day Orphanage

**This is the first of day-by-day recap blog posts about PPIHN's Spring 2019 trip to Zambia. Each trip I do these day-by-day posts to give an in depth look at what PPIHN is all about--to see what amazing things God is doing through this ministry, to describe what we as team members cannot in just a conversation with you and to be accountable to those who donate to make these trips happen. 

This trip we saw 49 prosthetic patients, 5 orthotic patients and 25 ocular prosthetic patients---all in 12 working days. Our prayer is that all the people we were able to help saw the love of Christ through our work, our words and our actions. 

We are absolutely amazed at how much PPIHN has accomplished in just 8 trips to Zambia! This isn't "how much John, Chris and I have accomplished"....this is how amazing it is to look at what God has done to establish ongoing prosthetic care in rural Zambia through the monetary provisions to make each trip happen, through the donations enough to build a clinic, through the continual addition of new team members to go, through the addition of a paid Zambian team member who is being trained for sustainable and continual care, and through the continual growth of people who know, care for and pray for Prosthetic Promises. It's all of us together---the body of Christ---who make up the wonderful ministry called Prosthetic Promises. 

Saturday, April 13th three of the PPIHN team members left out from DFW airport for Prosthetic Promises' 8th trip to Zambia to provide prosthetic, orthotic and ocular prosthetic services. Team members included John Brinkley (ocularist), Katie Brinkley (prosthetist/orthotist) and Whitney Vandiver (volunteer going to assist the team). With less than usual checked baggage, we only had 11 checked bags this trip which all made it to Livingstone. 

(L to R): John, Whitney and Katie

Our journey was from DFW to London to Johannesburg to Livingstone, arriving on Monday afternoon in Livingstone where another team member, Protashow, (with Gaye who is a long term volunteer at New Day) picked us up and then a 3 hour ride to New Day Orphanage. We arrived after dark so we dropped off our trunks of supplies at the clinic and had a late dinner at the guesthouse before heading to bed as soon as we could since we would be getting an early start on Tuesday with seeing patients. 

We were supposed to meet up with another team member, Carolin Alius, who is from Germany, in Johannesburg but her flight from London to Johannesburg was delayed almost 3 hours so she missed the connection. Caro had to stay overnight in Johannesburg and fly to Livingstone on Tuesday, where Wes from New Day would pick her up from the airport. Caro worked with us during our April 2018 trip, so we were so excited to be able to see her again and work together!

Next post: Tuesday, April 16th: Macha area patients