The El Salvador 2011 Mission Trip

From January 28 to February 4, 2011, I was part of a mission trip to El Salvador. This is a trip organized yearly by the Northridge Church in Marshfield, WI (http://northridgefamily.org/). I was excited to go. It was my second trip.

We left on schedule from the church building at about 5 pm on Friday, January 28, 2011, taking a chartered bus to Chicago, IL, from where we were to catch our TACA airlines flight later that night. There were 31 of us, including 5 MDs (a general pediatrician, 2 pediatric neurologists, a plastic surgeon, an ER physician and myself, a combined internal medicine and pediatrics physician) and 2 ER nurses.

When we reached Chicago’s O’Hare airport at about 11 pm, we discovered that there was something wrong with the plane and the only flight that could take all 31 of us was scheduled for Sunday morning, January 30! Oh well, the airline put us at a hotel near the airport until that time and paid for all our meals. It turned out quite nicely actually.


During the next day – Saturday, we got to know each other a little better and had a little R & R.

I think this was the Marriott hotel.
My colleague took a picture of some of our kids holding up their meal vouchers. Don’t they look happy?



On Sunday morning, well rested, we came back to the airport by the hotel’s shuttle bus. Here we are, once again, waiting with our bags in a line to check in to our TACA flight