Latest News
February 22, 2010 - Donations from Canadian Tire!
Shown here is Thunder Centre's Canadian Tire general manager James Iannetti on the left and Chris Cameron, Store manager.
on the right donating hundreds of dollars of tool kits to MEMO on February 17th 2010. The tool kits became available as a result of damage to the packaging.
MEMO attempts to keep donated hospital equipment running in Cuba. This is hampered by the fact that hospital maintenance personnel often lack even simple tools. This donation of sets of wrenches, screwdrivers, and other tools will go a long way to making possible proper maintenance of hospital equipment in the seven Cuban hospitals MEMO works with in Villa Clara province of Cuba. The laundry maintenance man at Placetas hospital keeps what tools he has locked up in a no longer used commercial dryer to make sure they don't go missing. MEMO believes if we give them the tools they will do the job. Our thanks to the Thunder Centre Canadian Tire Management for their generous donation to a needy far away part of our global village.
February 21, 2010 - Packing Day huge Success!
On Saturday, February 20th, volunteers showed up to help pack the 38th container for Cuba. The packing went well with about 2/5ths of the container holding beds and wheel chairs from the LPH storage.
35 stacking chairs for the hospital for severely incapacitated children were also sent, along with 676
other pieces. A huge thank you to all who helped. As you can see from the picture (right) it is not all about moving boxes!!
Please note, on February 28th, five of us leave for 9 days to motivate painting of the sooty Placetas kitchen and check on arrivals of equipment and current needs we can help with.
Please remember the team in your prayers as we seek to show God's love for the people we serve in Cuba.
Also we appreciate your prayers for a successful voyage through customs with our 22 bags of medical equipment.
Jerome
February 11, 2010 - Next Packing day confirmed for February 20th!
Looking for an opportunity to volunteer with MEMO? We will be packing our 39th container all day on February 20th at 9am at the MEMO warehouse located on 258 Van Horne St. Read Dr. Harvey's email below with details of the day's packing strategy. Be sure to wear warm clothes and bring a lunch. Coffee and tea will be supplied. Please contact us by phone (346-8170) or by filling in a form here to let us know that you are coming and for how many hours you are able to stay. Any help would be greatly appreciated. We look forward to seeing you there!!
Email from Dr. Harvey, sent on February 10th, 2010:
"Our plans are to ship a container Saturday Feb. 20th beginning at 9 a.m. at the warehouse. This will be a bit more complicated than usual. First we will pack several pallets of computers, wheelchairs and boxes, etc. from our main warehouse. Then we will move the container to one of the highway storage trailers in the back yard to load three rooms of equipment from a retired Thunder Bay Dentist. Then we will move the container to the Lakehead Psychiatric hospital (LPH) where we have a lot of stuff stored. We will have two teams. One will be at the LPH early to move equipment from the ward where it is stored down a very long hallway to an elevator to be parked in the basement hallway waiting for the arrival of the container hopefully around noon. The other team will work at loading the container at our warehouse as above. If you live in Thunder Bay and are free to help please let me know at 346 8170.
Sincerely, Jerome"
December 22, 2009 - Final Update of 2009
Updated provided by Dr. Jerome Harvey
You may remember that this fall when we moved our two highway warehouse trailers into the back of the warehouse property,
the trucks pulling them bogged down in the muck so we had to leave them helter skelter until 
the ground froze.
So this last week, thanks to a 30 tonne crane donated by GC rentals here in Thunder Bay, we were able to lift them into place fitting tightly
in a corner of the property to maximize the Sunday parking available to Grace Church, the owner of the property.
That's the good news!
The bad news:
As the last trailer was being lowered into place, Dave March was steadying the swinging 10 tonne trailer with his hand when it suddenly dropped onto his
upright arm trapping it on the top of a fence post. His arm was no match for the trailer and his wrist bones were crushed into his forearm bones.
The pain was so severe that he went into shock and had to be transported to hospital by ambulance.
A temporary reduction and cast was applied at the hospital and today (Tuesday 22nd) he had open surgery to screw things back into place.
We are thankful to God it was not more serious but this reminds us to be careful as we move a lot of heavy equipment from time to time.
We wish Dave a speedy recovery from this and his previous MEMO knee sprain from June. I appreciate Dave's positive attitude to these set backs.
This year saw teams in February, April, and November, evaluate our collaborative efforts in Cancer Care, laboratory, xray, maintenance and ambulance services.
We were very grateful to receive pictures of the insertion of 3 PICC lines (For painless chemotherapy) by Cuban oncologists after we left in November. Also, breast cancer screening is progressing.
To date, we have shipped 37 40-foot ocean containers of hospital supplies including 6 this year alone! This has made a huge impact on the level of care provided in Villa Clara province. At the moment, Dr Aurora will most likely be coming to study mammography in Thunder Bay in the early summer.
OUR NEXT TEAM MINISTRY TRIP IS FEBRUARY 28 TO MARCH 9. The main thrust will be working with our Cuban Colleagues in painting the Placetas Hospital kitchen and cafeteria. There are only six places available. I know some of you have expressed interest in this outreach, so contact me soon for details if you want to go. This is not a holiday or for sightseeing, but will be a life changing event as you enter into the lives of our Cuban friends.
We hope that Steve Neufeld will tell us in the New Year that we received enough money in donations over Christmas to ship a container in early spring.
On this last trip, the Cuban hospital officials pleaded with us to send furnishings to replace totally worn out desks, chairs etc.
In the Hospital for physically and mentally Incapacitated children, we have promised to send simple chairs we now have in our warehouse.
It is hard for us to imagine what it will mean to these special children to have a chair to sit on!
As I read over the BCC list of all your names my heart swells with thankfulness for each one of you as you remember MEMO in your prayers and contribute in so many different but necessary ways to what God is doing in this corner of Cuba. May you have a contented Christmas and New Year of good health and ministry to others. Jerome