Final days and closing Celebration

Well Bjorn and I made it back to California but we are not quite recovered from our trip yet. It takes awhile to get back into the swing of things after being in a different culture so long. Not to mention the time difference. Thailand was 15 hours ahead of California time. All that aside, the last week was so busy in Chiang Mai that I did not get a chance to update all of you on all the activities. I plan on catching up on my Blog posts and doing some summary reports over the next few days. There were some notable events and thoughts that should be shared.

In the last week I had a chance to teach the Barefoot Drs. about low Back pain. This is a big problem all around the world and a very popular subject for the students. In a class this size there is usually someone with actual back pain so once again we used a real life patient to do the training. Fortunately, the patient responded well to treatment and was the perfect example for this condensed P.T. course. Thanks to Bob Bowling for getting a picture of me teaching.

Of course, there is always a celebration when the Medical portion is completed. This involves, food, singing, lectures, and sometimes theatrics. Between Pastor David Tucker from England

and Dr. Bjorn Nilson there was no shortage of drama in the speeches this year. In this slide you can see Dr. Nilson demonstrating how last year the students had commented that the Barefoot Drs training had “Opened the door” for them. Dr. Nilson went on to say this year the second door had been opened.

The Barefoot Dr. students themselves sang some great songs and had some very powerful speeches and testimonies. I will point out that the Barefoot Drs students singing in this picture were barefoot.

One of the students named Peram gave his testimony. I asked him to write it down so I can share it accurately with all of you. He tells an amazing history of how the Barefoot Dr. program transformed the health of his remote village back in the 1990’s and how important this program is today. In just his village the Barefoot Drs cut the death rate from around 35 people to around 10 people per year. This progression happened over about 7 to 10 years but has maintained this improvement since the 90’s. He did make a point to say that they need to have medicine to do their jobs. I believe this was intended for the western medical and mission leaders present because the funds were short last year and they received very little medicine from the mission. This year things are looking much better but the Barefoot Drs in the field need to be resupplied due to the shortfall of last year. I know we have enough funds to get them all some medicine but we are still underfunded to meet our goal and cover all the costs of the training program itself. If you intended to donate and have not done it yet, it is not too late and any amount goes a long way in this program. You can send donations to:

Frontier Labourers for Christ

Barefoot Drs program

P.O. Box 630382Highlands Ranch, CO 80163

There are still a few more Blog entries to come. I am waiting to get back our student survey forms to get some good statistics for you all. So stay tuned and May God Bless you all.

Thank you again for all of your prayers, encouragement, and financial support. It takes all parts of this body working together to have it function properly.

Rick Astone, PT