Stateside

We made it to the US without any problems and are currently in San Antonio, Texas. The weather has been good to us as it is really fairly cool - we were expecting 95+ and it is in the 80's.

Today we leave for Saltillo, Mexico with our home church in Colorado Springs - Eastside Church of Christ. We have a group of about 30 teenagers and 19 adults and we are heading south to help in the construction of churches. This venture is organized by a man named Rick Owens and is also known as Team Mexico. The program is structured to put ownership in the Mexican churches as they must own and have title to the land, the must assist and they must also share a little bit of the burden of expense. Our church has been doing this for many years and it has always been a great oppurtunity for the teens to see another culture and be a part of something that is different from their normal lives. Please pray for our travels, for a good week of communing with our brothers and sisters in Mexico and that there will be no accidents while working or any other time.

Sorry no pictures again, hopefully we will have pictures on the next one. For pictures and a great God story please see Sheri's blog at http://www.sheriinguate.blogspot.com/.

So far we have enjoyed some variety un US food, inlcuding some good mexican food. One of the luxuries of living here is the many different types of food. In Chichicastenango, we have 4-5 "nice" restaurants and the food is good, it is just all exactly the same. Sooo, enjoy the variety here as we will as well! The other luxury we enjoyed was a long hot shower with plenty of water pressure. Nice!!!

Have a good week and thanks for checking in with us.

.....And we're off......

Today marks our last day in Chichicastenago for little over a month. This month has been filled with excitement, great experiences and a chance to get to know our brothers in Christ much more. We have enjoyed staying with families in Paxot and look forward to doing this some more in the future - if we could just get some new drinks for them, it would be that much more pleasant. :) For those who have visited and know the drinks are thick, rich and not chocolate! Anyway, we have learned some more Kiche but have a looong way to go. However, we can understand more and spurt out some more inteligible responses.

The MET students will continue on with our team until Wednesday when they will take a break an visit Panajchel and Antigua before they head home. We never had much time to get pictures or to post them as we were without a camera for awhile, so eventhough there are no pictures please be sure to mention Blake, Daniel, Tara, Abby, Alicia and Theo in your prayers. They have been a great group and we and they have had some great discussions. They could be considered our philosophers of the month!

On the clinic ministry front, all is well and thank God we have not had many bad cases in the last couple of weeks. We continue to work with Tomasa Chicoj and she appears to be making progress. Matt and Heidi Bell, another married team here in the area, have had some pretty tough clinics lately with some pretty complicated patients, so please keep them in your prayers as well. They also have a blog - http://agapeenaccion.blogspot.com/. Our clinics continue to grow as we become more known in the areas. Of note, 2 elder ladies were recently baptized in the area of Mactzul who were in their 80's - Praise God! Also, our clinic in Mactzul 6 wants to reach out to their community more and feels that having the clinic in the church building hinders that oppurtunity, so they asked if we had a problem having the clinic in the Catholic church. Of course not! We welcome the oppurtunity to be able to serve the communities better!

Also of note we continue to see some of the churches mature, not because of us, but we see God working in the leadership of the churches and that they continue to show responsibility in making decisions on their own and funding projects within the congregations. Mactzul V recently purchased more land and have now cleared the land and are preparing to build a bigger church as they have out grown the old! The mayor of Chichi helped them clear the land because "he has heard about the good works of the churches of christ"! This would have costed the church $2000. Chuchipaca has also demolished their church and started building a new one as they have outgrown. Then Xepocol, a small church, with many people in need, have decided to fund the building of their own kicthen / class rooms and have started making financial commitments to build in 2 years. This is exciting news to us as the memberships are not seeking outside help to do these projects and to expand in their areas.

Also, many churches are now starting to sponsor evangelists to go out in their communities to spread the word and minister to their neighbors. We think this has been going on for some time, but it seems to be more of a priority for the churches now.

Well, sorry we do not have any pictures. We will try to post some soon!! For our friends and families in Arizona, Colorado Springs, Texas and Mississippi, we will see you all soon!

God bless - Dios catewechinik! Chabej chick (see you soon)!

Mountain Folks

Hey all you city folks, you don't know what you're missing! We and our students just have a few days left in our tiny town of Paxot II and Xepocol. Life has been interesting, but fun. Dinner is always a family affair, and in our case, at least 18 people and up to 25 all sitting around the room with a little table at your knees to set your bowl on. We have eaten 2-3 eggs a day in varieties we didn't know exisited (scrambled, scrambled with tomatoes, fried, torta (like an egg patty), boiled, poached in soup, scrambled in soup). This would be a good time to test the whole egg/high cholesterol theory, Dr. Dickerson! We have also had tortillas and tamales too numerous to count (we actually had a MET student (go Jared!) do a tortilla total for his month 2 years ago and topped 300).

Probably the thing that gets the most dicussion each morning among the students is the letrine issue. For unsure reasons, we all report more nighttime trips to the bathroom than at home. Our theories are possible diuretic effect of the corn drinks or late dinner hours. Anyway, it is generally agreed upon that the night time trip outside is scary. Student Blake says he has to shine a flash light down into the latrine before using it due to the rural myth floating around about bats coming up out of them when you sit down! Daniel has an experiment going utilizing physics basics to calculate the depth of the hole based on the time it takes a deposit to make it from point A to point B. Good stuff.

Aside from all this, it has been a good time with our brothers and sisters in Christ in these towns--getting to know their families and their good sense of humor. They are so patient with us and seem to enjoy teaching us new words. There is an 18 month old in our house that seems to be at about the same linguistic level as we are! We are hoping to beat her with a little on-the-side notes review.

Our students have been fantastic, eager to learn and good sports about their food adventures and creepy crawlies sharing their living space. They seem to be mature young adults with desires to serve God with their talents wherever they are. We all came over to our house today for some good American burgers and chips and guacamole--yum! They cut our grass and cleaned the car and put up book shelves. Between them and our other team painting and car washing, we are in pretty good shape for our trip to the States.



Thanks for checking in with us and have a good week.

Little internet access / Lesson learned

Just a quick reminder that we are living in a rural community this month so we will have limited posting ability. Please check back once every week, especially after Monday's as we will try to post some on Sunday or Monday.

We continue to attempt to improve our kiche skills - we are probably learning some but not as much as we had hoped since we are normally not back until late from clinic and dropping off students. We have about 1-2 hours a day we can try to work on language and some days we are just wiped out. So, we are having a great time experiencing new friends and culture and learning some kiche. We also eat a lot of hot drinks and bread!

We tried something new last night - ceviche - but not the ceviche you have heard about with fish and shrimp... We asked if it was fish or shrimp and they said no it was beef... So we got he ceviche and it did not look like beef, so we made the mistake of asking what kind of beef - bull testicles... Ouch!! Anyway, we chugged it down pretending it was some kind of squirrly fish. Yummy! Really, it was not that bad as all you taste is the pico de gallo type sauce, it is just the thought of eating testicles.....

Next time we will not ask.... Lesson learned.

God bless - keep praying for us and all of the students as they continue to live with families the rest of this month.

Finally Continued.....

We have multiple posts today, so please be sure to read beginning with June 4.

More photos of students, etc.





This is Megan with her host family of Manuel Sut Gonzales. The students that were here in Chichi went to Chicacao (in the coastal area) yesterday and we moved in with the Sut family for the next couple of weeks.

This is Dylan in his short door and he is more Guatemalan size than anyone.

These are the 12 MET students for 2007 at Clinica Ezell in Montellano.

This is a picture of us with Pedro and Josefa Salvador at the waterfall in Chuchipaca. Pedro is an elder and leader at the church. We finished patients early that day and had enough time for the 30 minute hike to the waterfall. Very beautiful.....

Rural Living - Finally!!

Between living in the sticks and having problems each time we get to the internet, we have not been able to post this blog. We created this post on Monday June 4 so it appears older but we posted it today June 12.

So, finally we may be able to get caught up. We will start with us and a picture with our host family from Paxot 2. This is the family of Tomas and Manuela Quino. Juan Quino, green shirt, is one of our health promoters.

Well, we are back in town (Chichi) for the weekend after living in Paxot II for the week. Tomorrow we head back there after clinic to stay another week with our friends the Quino Bernardo family. They are taking great care of us and we are learning a few words and phrases each night. We have noticed, though, that our brains don't absorb as much as we thought they would! But, little by little we hope to improve our vocabulary. We have gotten to visit around with the neighbors and have been invited to drop by other peoples house this coming week. We have a modest but clean and tranquil room to ourselves and they even have a hot water shower! We are surrounded with avocado trees, peach trees and corn fields; chickens, ducks and turkeys. The only problem is, they are feeding us too much! Oh, well. It is quite the little hike from the house up to where we are parked.

We have really enjoyed our time there and have appreciated their good care. Lisa got to take a bath in the sauna house (and adobe dome with an adjoining fireplace. Kemmel couldn't quite get up the nerve!

Next week we do a student interchange

We also got our students into their homes. For two weeks we have six students with us. Amanda Royse, Dylan Carey and Michael Patterson are in Xepocol. Jeff Muszynski, Megan Kite and Sara Manley are in Paxot II. It was fun making the rounds to each house. As we dropped off bags and luggage at one house, everyone would accompany us to the next house to drop off the next student, until we get to the last one. Despite the rain, it was fun and we were all well received.

This is Sara on entry into her host home.

This is Jeff with is host family, the homes are not built for american height.

This is Amanda with Pedro and Ana and 2 of their boys, Tomas and Everardo

This is Michael at his host home.

So far, clinic has been good with resonable numbers despite the heavy rains. The students are learning to take vital signs and interview patients. We even got to go on a hike to a waterfall in Chuchipaca after clinic on Saturday. It was a good time of fellowship with our health promoters and some of their family as well.

Sorry for the delay in reporting, we are trying to figure out how to start internet service out in Paxot!!!