The Continuing Promise 2008 blog has been updated, and
it is worth a read. This part caught my attention.
We had the blessing and fortune to perform a special surgery on a three-year-old girl whose eyelids had been partially fused closed since birth and could barely see. As we were to understand, she had been taken around the country and outside the country to seek medical care and treatment to correct the birth defect, without success.
When she arrived on the ship, she was reserved, shy and obviously conscious of her condition. She rarely smiled and would not look you in the eye. Her father, clearly a man of faith and filled with hope, expressed his gratitude for our offer and thanked us regardless of the outcome. Two days later, after the operation, I visited the small girl in the medical ward and there, in place of the shy and reserved young child, was a vibrant, smiling, playful and confident child filled with a clear view of the world that awaited her.
Her Father, as you could imagine, was overwhelmed and overjoyed for what had been given to his precious gift…his child and as it was clearly evident….his world. Words can not express or explain the feelings of the moment; but I will try….happy, relieved, overjoyed, and blessed. As I scan Merriam-Webster, I am sure there are many more adjectives to choose from...However, I will leave it to you to fill in the blanks with your own words.
This is a view of the US Navy of today at work that doesn't get much attention, but this is a good example of how our nation is using our weapons of wars in new and innovative ways. The blog entry is written by Commodore Frank Ponds, who
I have previously spoken to here. I thought his latest update was very interesting, and gives insight into what a single stop on the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) Continuing Promise 2008 deployment is like.
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