JULY 29 / From East Stone Gap to Northern Moldova

 

MY FRIENDS, JIM AND ELAINE Hamilton, travel four times a year to northern Moldova to provide medical care to three orphanages and one institution for mentally and physically handicapped adults. You can help.

By visiting the same institutions again and again, the Hamiltons have developed close relationships with the staff, children, and institutionalized adults. If a patient needs a special pharmaceutical drug, the Hamiltons can bring it with them each time. They have had special success with meds that curb bedwetting, a big problem for orphans in dormitories.

Jim and Elaine live in the East Stone Gap community in the hills of western Virginia, near the legendary Big Stone Gap. One of Elaine's claims to fame is that she was on duty at the local hospital the night Elizabeth Taylor came in with a chicken bone stuck in her throat.

To help, send a check to East Stone Gap Baptist Church, c/o Jim and Elaine Hamilton, 4100 Tate Springs Road, Big Stone Gap, Virginia, 24219, Memo: "Hamilton Mission."

Unca D's images here are from a March 1999 trip to Moldova. Most are from a different adult institution, but they give a flavor of the place served by the Hamiltons.