Quick Update

Well, the last few days have been without much incident and we enjoyed a couple of day where we could be at home and not have to travel anywhere.

On Friday we got the truck unstuck with the help of a tow truck. Our truck was located about 30 -45 minutes outside of Santa Cruz. The man started to help us and commented " Hay hombre, esto si esta travado!" Oh man, this is really stuck! So it made us feel better that we could not get it out ourselves. Q300 ($30) and 45 minutes later we were out of the mud. It was a dual winch job! He tried just one and it would not work, so he had to connect the second and a very large chain. We were stuck right next to a school, so we provided entertainment for the children as well.

On Sunday we went to worship at the Church of Christ in Chichicastenango and got to see some friends we had not seen in a few weeks due to all of the running around. There were 2 men who were reconciling with the church after not coming for over 3 years. This was a pretty exciting moment for the church as the families of these 2 men have been attending all throughout this time and they were well know by the members of the church. The sermon was mostly in kiche, so much of it was hard to understand and during class we talked about singing as the church is going to start to emphasize some more classes on how to worship through our voice.

Yesterday it was back to work. Lisa's professor/boss came by the clinic to spend some time with her and helped align some of the tasks she needs to do for her program. I think this helped Lisa feel a little better about things - there is just alot of busy work that needs to be done.

On Wednesday of this week, we host a medical / dental mobile team who will work in clinics Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Between the US team that is coming and our Guatemalan team we will have clinics in 3 communities both Thursday and Friday and then in 2 communities on Saturday. So yesterday after seeing patients in Lemoa we started to prepare for the week and will continue to do some these next couple of days as we only have one clinic a day for the next couple of days.

Please pray for safe travels for this team and that God will be glorified in the work we will be doing.

Also, this weekend is the final elections for Guatemala so please pray for a peaceful transition and for a leader that will uphold his promises and will hold to the christian virtues they profess to have.

God bless!

Cough or Avocado?

Yesterday we just finished up our marriage seminar. Everyone was so excited about having the new lesson to take back to their congregation. We want to thank Leo and Xiomara for their work and wish them well in the seminar they are giving in the Clinica Ezell area tomorrow and Saturday.

We ended the day with K'iche' lessons and a worship service with our American friends. We even enjoyed some acappella singing when the sound system went down! It was good to sing in English.

Our language class is pretty fun. Last night we focused on the alphabet and some medical words.

Interestingly enough, the word for cough is the same word for avocado (just different context). So when I ask my patients if they have a cough, I can follow that with "do you have an avocado, by chance?"

The weather here has been rainy until today, in fact one of our teams is stuck in the mud and after trying to get it out with one of the other trucks and also a large cargo truck, it is still stuck in the mud. We have ended up having to leave it overnight so that we can bring in a tow truck tomorrow morning to lift it out. The truck is pretty wedged into the mud now after trying to drag it out - most of the front tires are buried. Good times.... Kemmel's new rubber boots will come in handy the second time already!!

We were glad to have a dry day today, but it was really cold, so now we are warming up the house with a good fire in the fireplace. We felt a little bad that we were enjoying our fire while some of our team were trying to get the truck out of the mud; however, there would not have been much else we could have helped with and we are over 1 hour away from the location and no reason to have 3 trucks out there.

Hope everyone has a quiet night. Chat worok, John Boy. (Good night, John Boy.)

Marriage Seminar - 2nd post today!

Today was the first day of a marriage seminar we are hosting with Health Talents International in Chichicastenango. Through the support of a church in Nashville, TN we were able to bring in a husband and wife team from Venezuela with 12 years experience in marriage seminars for this presentation. This husband and wife team are Leo and Xiomara Rojas and through marriage seminars they have experienced increased church maturity, marital responsibility and church growth. It is very exciting to hear the stories they have of restored marriages and church growth while using marriage seminars as a tool for evangelism.

The seminar is being held at a local hotel called Hotel Casa del Rey which is a owned by a mission organization who helps promote different ministries such as this.

We invited 22 churches in the area to send representatives and ended up with representation from about 15 churches and 18 couples! There is much interest in the topic of marriage and many have expressed their gratitude for hosting this seminar as to their knowledge this is the first marriage seminar in the area.

Leo Rojas presenting.

Conference center and attendees.

This top picture and pictures below were an activity that got the group roaring in laughter. The husband had to identify his wife by only holding her hand. A few of the husbands did great identifying their spouses while others struggled - about 25% got it right.

It was a great day and we topped it off with some praises led by Martin from Choacaman.

Clinica Caris Updated Pictures

Here are some recent pictures of Clinica Caris. Clinica Caris is our central referral clinic which is open Monday and Thursday and then the other days the mobile teams are holding clinics in other remote villages about 45 minutes to 1 hour off the highways.

This is the front view with our newly grown grass. We have a ways to go but it appears to be filling in pretty good.

This is the view if you could see it from the highway. It is not all visible because of a small hill. Right now we are not visible at all because of the corn. We are still experiencing our sign saga, although right now it could be ready but I have not had the time to pick it up so have not called for a couple of weeks.

This is a picture of the new bodega that we have added since the opening of the clinic. We discovered we needed a place for a dental compressor, so we took advantage and made the room a little larger for storage.

This is a view of our rain water collection system. We have this above ground storage and also one below ground. The cost was pretty low so we thought it may be useful in the future.

Last but not least, these are our latrines. These were some expensive latrines as it was one of those do as we go projects and the worker tended to create work for himself. Anyway we did gainfully employee someone for awhile and ended up with some well built latrines. The pits are 10 meters deep and because of all of the rain we have had the ground is saturated and each of the pits have filled up with water up to about 2 meters from the top! We pray that they do not overflow!

Hope you enjoy!

Puro Montaña (Pure Mountain)

This is a picture of the area around Chuchuca and Xejox.

As mentioned in the previous post we have a medical team here with us from SouthFork Church of Christ in North Carolina. This is the sponsoring church of a nurse, Sheri, who works with us here in the area of Quiche. Sheri has actually taken over Lisa's clinics during the time she will be working in the government clinic.



On Wednesday and Thursday of this week we headed to the mountains above Zacualpa (2 hours one way) to work with 2 churches in hosting some clinics in their areas. These 2 churches are in the towns of Xejox and Chuchuca which are about a 1 hour trip up the mountain from the highway. Now, since there are some roads up to this area and the roads have been improved with more gravel and sand we were able to head up there for clinic. In the past these 2 locations have been rather difficult to get to due to the conditions of the roads during the rainy season. There is a main road that crosses the mountain which can normally be fine, but once you branch off to these 2 communities the roads would get substantially worse. Thank God this time the roads were pretty good; however, there were some deep mud areas that were plastered with rocks in the holes to help us get through and on the last day it was a little slick since it had started to rain before we left. We had one rental Mazda truck which had a little difficulty compared to the Mitsubishi's we normally use. So we have learned to not purchase a Mazda for this area. It was great for most situations but once it was steep and slick it struggled more than we would want it to. It was fast on the highway though - like that turbo action!

These churches have some great history and were started about 10-15 years ago in a time when the evangelists would have to hike to get to these villages - about a 5-6 hour hike for a Guatemalan. So for us gringos, except for those of you who are hikers, would be a much longer hike. These 2 churches are a couple of the biggest churches in the area with between 250-300 members between the 2.

This brings up an interesting topic to understand a little difference in our cultures. We have many groups or young people who come and want to go for a "hike". Well, in this culture going for a "hike" is not a normal event as a "hike" to them is walking home or walking to the nearest spot to catch a truck or a bus to get to their destination. So, when we first were bringing this idea up to our local promoters and friends to ask where it would be safe and if someone would join them for the "hike", the question was always "why?", "why do they want to walk to the top of that mountain?" They just do not understand... Their lives are much more physical, so to perform another physical task is pretty much futile and makes no sense, unless it is to play soccer.

OK, back on track... The week with Southfork was great and we attended to around 200 medical patients and 80 dental patients and 80 reading glasses patients. Each day averaged a good number for each caretaker, allowing us to also minister to the spiritual needs of patients as well. Most patients had simple symptoms which we would normally go to the pharmacy for and others were more serious illnesses such as blindness, malnutrition, cataracts, healed-up dislocations, eye infections, etc.

Also this week, I had the honor of meeting up with a good friend, Amy Vasey (well now married so a different last name), that I went to school with here in Guatemala many years ago. We are both now 40 and going on 41 and it was a great time to reminisce on the good old days of growing up in Guatemala. Amy was my brother Gary's (Gary has since passed away) first girlfriend so we were all pretty close during that time. We were able to catch up with each others lives and also find out about other friends we lost track of many years before. Amy's dad also now lives here in Chichicastenango as he is translating the Old Testament into the Kiche dialect of Chichicastenango. Amy's dad, Bill, has worked as a translator here in Guatemala for more than 30 or so years! He is great and is teaching us gringos some kiche as well! Hopefully we will catch on!

In Lisa's world of social medicine, she had a interesting day on Friday. Friday was the day for all of the midwives of her area to come together for an education session and a festival of sorts for the service they provide to the community throughout the year. Lisa had a lesson planned, but the day became mostly a time of celebration, and much to her surprise and discontent, included a traditional Mayan blessing on the women and the health post. This Mayan blessing /prayer service consisted of much fire and smoke while the local priests offer up sacrifices of sugar, candles, incense, etc. on behalf of the midwives. So health clinic became a mayan temple for a day, all filled with smoke, but at least there is not a smoke alarm - probably would not meet OSHA standards. She was also able to get to know the midwifes a little better while attending to their medical needs as well as there families.

Adobe Roads

Although we are nearing the end of the rainy season, we seem to be getting a last big rally of storms. It has rained almost every day and sometimes in the mornings as well. This is great for dust control, but it makes for interesting back-roading. This week we have a moblile medical/dental team in (SouthFork Church of Christ from Winston-Salem). On Monday all went well. After a healthy hike to the clinic site in Xatinap (Shotinop), they saw 53 medical and 15 dental patients and several for reading glasses. Yesterday they headed out to Chuchipaca. There, the roads were "pure adobe" as Kemmel puts it, and they got stuck twice. Thankfully they got out quickly and got to work, seeing 55 medical and 25 dental. The church did a good job and several members were present to welcome the patients as well.

Today, everyone is up early for a two hour drive to Chuchuca'. This is a very remote area were there are two congregations that have been asking for clinic ministries for a while. These brethren are humble and gracious and often bring neighbors and friends to our clinic in Lemoa for consults (3hour ride for them--one way). Yesterday, Kemmel called them for a road report and the brother said "Are you bringing 4x4? Good, you should be able to make it." The roads there are notoriously bad during the rains, but gracias a Dios, there isn't any roading along the cliff edges!

So, keep the team in prayer. They plan to go there tomorrow as well. I (Lisa) will be trekking up to my Puesto as usual. We are getting ready for a roundup of kids delinquint in their immunizations--should be a hoot! We will have a small group of nursing students with us to help--nothing like trial by fire.

Everyone have a good day!

Surgical Week

This past week I (Kemmel) was in Montellano at Clinica Ezell working in the sterilization room. The surgical team was very diverse with people from multiple locations in the US (Missouri, Texas, Tennessee, California, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Maryland, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado) and various backgrounds. This week was focused on general and GYN surgery, a total of 68 procedures and around 63 patients, some with double procedures. The cases ranges from minor skin surgery to hernia repairs to gall bladder removal to hysterectomies. All of the surgeries were successful with one gall bladder case being rather complicated due to some abnormal anatomy of the patient. I was not told of any crazy post-op infections, so we must of done a good job sterilizing the instruments. :) We did 7 Lap Choles this week which is the most we have done all year, so thank God we had some experienced surgical techs/nurses and surgeons to allow these procedures to be performed.

We continue to see patients in the advance stages of cervical cancer and this week during a pap smear clinic we had 3 out of 12 ladies testing positive for cervical cancer. This encouraged some of the physicians to help us with the possibility of donating a colposcope in attempts to start a larger effort of providing a better way of screening for cervical cancer.


We also had 3 missionaries from Guatemala join us for the week to assist with translation, sterilization, nursing and whatever came up. These two ladies were an excellent addition to the group, helping demonstrate the love of Christ to our patients.


In these surgical teams many times we are short on recovery room nursing staff, so if you are reading this and you are a nurse, please check out http://www.healthtalents.org/ to see about coming and serving with us for a week. We could use your help!

The surgical week ended on Friday morning and I was able to get back to Guatemala City to get our visas renewed with no problems this time. I tried to do this a week or so ago and I was not able to finish the process as the credit card I had did not have Lisa's name on it (which has never been a problem before).

Also this week Lisa made a trip to Antigua to meet with her fellow students and her professor from the University. She had her first test in this process and passed! She did not get the best grade of the class, nor did she get the worst, but for Spanish being her second language she did great and was only a few points short of another cuban physician going through the same process and Spanish is her primary language. Please continue to keep Lisa in your prayers as the language barrier can be difficult when working with people in a professional environment.

Since Lisa was in Antigua and the group went to Antigua on Friday, we were able to hook up and spend Friday and Saturday together. Saturday afternoon we picked up a group from Sheri's church in North Carolina - Southfork Church of Christ. They will be helping us with some clinics this following week. Today we will get some rest this morning, and then this afternoon, join the group for lunch and an afternoon worship service in Santa Cruz del Quiche.

Monday

We had a busy day at the Puesto de Salud (health post) today. Several new patients and an impressive hand laceration on an 11 year old kid. One patient, a man in his 60s came in and asked me if I am a doctor. I said yes, and he said, " well maybe you have some experience with illnesses." He showed me a skin problem that is probably a fungal infection, and then asked if his drinking was causing the rash. I didn't think so, but it gave me a good opportunity to talk to him about his drinking problem. We talked about ways to avoid tempation and strategies to help get him out when he found himself with friends/family who are drinking. I also talked to him about asking God to help him with this problem and he thought that was a good idea. He thanked me and gave me a sack of apples from his trees. He will come back in a few weeks and let me know how he is doing. Keep him in your prayers that he will begin to put his faith in God and that I will have words to guide him.

The 11 year old had a laceration extending from palm at the base of the fingers to past the wrist. He was play-fighting with his friend at school and got pushed against a nail sticking out of a board. Luckily it wasn't terribly deep, and I had just enough lidocaine to inject the length of the wound. He took it like an 11 year old and screamed the whole time. Meanwhile his two younger sisters sat in the waiting room and cried for him. I'm glad I saved him for last! We finally got him stitched up and vaccinated and packed off with a note to his teacher excusing him from missing his final exams today. Everybody loves an excuse note!

Kemmel is hanging out in the sterilization room in the OR at Clinica Ezell. They were pretty busy the first day, but things went smoothly. No word yet today, which means they are busy still. Surgery week is such a busy and exhausting time, but we always get such nice comments from patients about how much they appreciate the care they receive. We pray with all of the patients before they go into the OR and many times as they are recovering. Last month during surgery week, we saw a patient praying with another patient waiting to go back for surgery! What a good feeling to see people caring for each other as they have been cared for.

God bless, and have a good night.

Weekend

We started off the weekend with a little work around the house. It was a beautiful sunny morning yesterday so we walked up to town to get some things in market and get a little exercise. Saturday is kind of a nice time to shop, because a lot of the vendors have fresh produce in preparation for the big market day Sunday, but there aren't nearly as many people. And you run into folks you know and can stop and talk without getting mobbed. I even got a call from my mom and dad while I was strolling around the stalls of veggies. Very nice morning!

After we got home, we took a trip out to Clinica Caris to check out the new dental cabinetry that went in Friday. Kemmel was helping to install them on Friday, but had to get back for our Quiche lessons before they could finish. They turned out great, and the workmanship is excellent. Now if we could just get that sign! "It should be ready next week........."

Kemmel in our Suzuki stealth vehicle (so small it fits in any parking spot, and blends in with all the other guatemalan cars!).

All we need is a dentist! Coming soon......

For lunch we decided to have a best-of-both-worlds cookout--fresh mixed veggies on the grill and Johnsonville Brats found at the Pricemart frozen section in Guatemala City--yea!


We finished out the day with general cleaning and straightening and hired our next door neighbors' son Brandon to do a job for us that would have qualified for that show "Dirty Jobs" . Our long-abandoned cistern project (of the owner) is nothing more than a huge hole in our front yard that fills with water and grass clippings. After the rains stop, we are going to dig a new cistern, but in a different area, and fill this one in. Well, Brandon stepped up the plate and did a great job and in about 2 hours had it drained and most of the slime layer out. It is definitely nice to have teenagers around!

Any crawdads in there?

Brandon Helwer--swamp digger.

Well, today, Kemmel and Tomas and Gaspar head to Clinica Ezell to work with a surgical team. I, unfortuneately have to stay back. I will be studying for a quiz (of all things) this week and try to get some of my other scholastic projects done.

Hope everyone has a good Lord's Day.

This Day in History

Due to technical difficulties, we have had a lapse in postings. But, hopefully things will be getting better soon. Our internet carrier is switching out equipment and has to shut the system down from time to time.

Anyway, we have had a good week at work, getting lots of patients seen. Rugal and Connie Sowell finished up their time with us and we are very grateful for their work. Sheri is getting more comfortable seeing patients. At the health post, I am seeing a small outbreak of pnuemonia and what is probably flu. We sent a 6 week old baby boy to the hospital today after his mom brought him in because he wouldn't wake up to feed. He has pneumonia and she agreed to take him directly to the national hospital.

Last night we started a new class in Quiche lessons. According to the teacher, a veteran missionary fluent in the language, this was the first ever class of Quiche taught in English. There were about 15 of us local missionaries last night, and will meet again on Friday night. Should be fun and a big help for us. Pray for us to be able to advance in our abilities to communicate in this language.

In the cultural differences department, we are struggling with patience in regards to completing a few projects. A sign for Clinica Caris that we began discussing with a local sign company in October 2006, and ordered in February, is still getting the "definitely tomorrow" answer. The good thing is, the corn harvest is coming up in January, so people will be able to see our clinic from the road again, soon.

Some cabinets for the new dental clinic are cruising down the same highway it seems. And a propane gas tank for the government clinic (ordered 2 months ago) is in limbo. We ran out over a week ago, and when we asked how we are going to sterilize our instruments, the head nurse said, "Don't you have an autoclave?" Well, yeah....but its a stove top unit (silly)......... She said , "Oh, yeah. I'm not sure when we will be able to get that for you. "

Little by little, as they say!
Have a good night, and thanks for checking in with us.