To Chichi and Market

Yesterday we went for a walk to Chichi to purchase some items at market and to pick up some clothes we had left with a local tailor to have mended. It was a beautiful sunny day! This time of the year is the end of the rainy season, so everything is green and sunny. Definitely a plus to living here. We took a few pictures to share with you all.

The first is where we purchase our meat products which we have found to be fresher, believe it or not, than the supermarket in Guatemala City. The only problem is the meat is too lean and when trying to make a hamburger it does not stick together. :) You will notice that next door is where we get ice cream and you also may noticed the fresh cow skull up against the wall!

Since we were on food we got to enjoy a couple of things we do not get here much - one was catfish, we found some in the city and fried it up a week or so ago. Very good! They say they catch it on the pacific coast. Then we also had a pumpkin pie which was our taste of Thanksgiving this year.

These other photos are photos of the arch looking out towards the mountains. Beautiful views. By the way we live all the way at the end where you see no more highway and what looks like a big sign.

Have a great Lord's day!

Clinica Caris Dental Grand Opening

The cutting of the ribbon - which we did not have so we used a plastic bag.

As mentioned in the previous post Thanksgiving day marked the grand opening of the dental clinic at Clinica Caris with Marcos and Mauri, the new dental assistant. Mauri is from Chichicastenango and recently finished high school with a diploma as a bookkeeper. So, not exactly a background in dental; however, we will put her bookkeeping skills and computer skills to use as well.

The actual cut!

Our plastic bag bow.


In action with patient number 2, Everaldo Chan Tevelan.

Right now with our dental services we are working examining and providing treatments to all of the children in the ABC program and we are slowly opening up the clinic to other patients as well. Our process includes going to the community first to exam the children, provided teeth cleanings or extractions for those needing and then programming the children for extra care to be provided by Marcos at Clinica Caris. So far we have visited Xepocol and Paxot 2. We head to Paxot 2 again today to finish the children there and then next week we head to La Palma and the following week, Mactzul V. For Mactzul V we will have to visit the community 3 days to get to all of the children - around 60.

Gaspar and Tomas, our health promoters, have also started the service of providing teeth cleanings and Gaspar now has about 20-30 under his belt. Yesterday he had 10 patients in Panajchit which is a clinic in Josefina's rotation.

Here is a picture of all of our promoters now - from left to right Mauri, Juan, Tomas, Gaspar, and Manuel. This was during the dental clinic in Xepocol where Mauri and Tomas were dental assistants, Gaspar Dental Hygienist, Manuel Gaspar's assistant and Juan was the dental tech, cleaning instruments. That left me and Sheri with sign-in, vital signs and pharmacy and Josefina seeing medical patients. All in all a good day. We had over 20 patients medical and over 20 dental.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Today is a little sad for us as we are not able to be with our families; however, we have much to be thankful for including a wonderful device called a cell phone. As a result, we were able to talk to our families today and enjoy some long distance fellowship. More than anything we are thankful to God our father for providing us with loving families and friends and for giving us the oppurtunity to be where we are now. We continue to know that this is where God wants us and we never have any second thoughts of whether or not we should be here, well minus Lisa's fiasco with the licensure thing. :)


We are thankful for so many people, experiences and things. We have been blessed with a wonderful congregation back home that we consider family, with wonderful congregations here in Guatemala that support us and pray for us regularly and with an intelligent and strong faithed staff who are our partners in the work we do here in Chichicastenango. So we want to thank all of you who check the blog as you are all faithful supporters in prayer and thoughts.


We are also thankful for things like computers and internet as they have provided us a means of communication that was not available for many missionaries in the past. We kid alot about all of the luxuries we have these days that were not available before, so our hats go off to all of those who have lived in 3rd world countries who have not had internet, cell phone, running water, electricity, etc. While what we have may not be active or available 100% of the time, at least it is available much of the time! Just the other day was the first day we have not had both running water and electricy at the same time. Although inconvinient we are glad this was a first.



Today we actually had to work, Lisa in her government clinic and Kemmel at Clinica Caris. Today provided another thing to be thankful for as today marked out ribbon cutting and first dental patient treatment in Clinica Caris. The first patient in the chair today for the grand event was Juan Chan Tevelan, an ABC child from Xepocol whose father, Pedro, is Gaspar's brother. Juan and his brother, Everaldo had 2 fillings each and then Marcos, the dentist, had a few more patients as well.

Check back tomorrow for some more info and pictures. We actually have some pictures to load but our internet service is giving us problems at this moment.

We have been pretty busy lately with the starting of the dental clinic and the new employee, Mauri, also with some of the clinics inceasing in patient load and in planning for 2008. Good things are happening and we have plenty to be thankful for. We have a great God who provides for all we need and provides us with the contentment we need to live a fullfilling life. What more can you ask for? God bless!

Marcos Lux Graduation from Dental School

On Wednesday of this week we headed to Marco's graduation from Dental School. Lisa was unable to make it due to the government work but I joined up with the Lux family to celebrate the day. The graduation service was a little different than the US but had some like events. At the end of the service they signed an Act which registers them as a dentist in Guatemala. This was a great day and a very proud day for their family. I was talking to their mom, Maria Juana and this was one of the best days of her life as she had all of her children together and the last was graduating in a professional career. All of their children now have professional degrees, something not often obtained by all the children in the area they are from. Beyond that they are a very strong christian family with all of the children very involved in their walk with Christ.

Marcos giving his short speech.

These are the "padrinos" (godfathers) of Marcos. It is customary to have at least 2 godfathers. They presented him with his toga and hat indicating his profession of dentistry. The far left is a family friend, the next is Dr. Feliciano Lux his uncle, and the last person is Dr. David Lux is his brother.


Here Marcos is signing the Act that makes him a registered Dentist in Guatemala.

Final group picture. The top row are some of the faculty of the school.

Proud parents.

Happy and content family! May God continue to bless them as they serve Him in the various ministries they are involved in. Josefina, David and Marcos now serve with HTI. Moises is an attorney and frequently donates his time to churches to assist with legal work and Juan Diego is a preacher and evangelist who used to teach at the Baxter Institute in Honduras. Diego and Maria Juana continue to work with the church and they were instrumental in building up the church in this area.

God bless!

Good times!

We have had some good times these last few weeks hosting a couple of medical groups and a marraige seminar.

In this last group we had about 50 people total when counting the american and guatemalan staff. Most of the americans were from Edmond, Oklahoma with a few others scattered about. In the group was our brother in law, Charlie and his mom, Sandy. We had clinics for 3 days in 2 locations each day, and we cared for about 600 patients, both medical and dental. Most of the patients were dental as we have found the medical clinics are not so large since we have more of a presence in the communties on a regular basis. Also, this last group was here during the All Saints holiday which affected some of the clinic turn outs.

We continue to see a huge need for dental assistance in the communities and thanks to the blessings that God provides, Health Talents and supporters we have a dentist who has now started with us and we are in the process of arranging his schedule. The dentist is Marcos Lux and he is Josefina's brother. Marcos was a scholarship recipient of the HTI Bates Scholarship program. He will be in the central clinic, Clinica Caris, in Lemoa 2 days a week and mobile the other days. Going mobile with dentistry is a little more difficult but we are up for the challenge!
Marcos has his official graduation this Monday. Here is an interesting fact - out of around 100 students who started dental school with him 6 years ago, less than 10 will graduate this year. The others may take 2 to 4 more years to graduate.

This last week was also the start of us providing teeth cleanings through 2 of our health promoters, Gaspar and Tomas. We are extremely grateful to have men such as these who are leaders in their churches, communities, and are willing to learn and serve in any manner that they can. To see a picture of Gaspar, see Sheri's blog at http://www.sheriinguate.blogspot.com/.
We are still not very good at getting pictures! Anyway, we know have the equipment to be able to perform teeth cleanings each day we are clinic provided we have enough volunteers from the churches, which we do not see as a problem! To our surprise we have many people interested in this service.

This week we also received a replacement laptop for Lisa (got a great deal on a Gateway) so today has been computer day - you forget what a pain it is to set up a new computer with all of the data, etc. Things were going well until my pc lost it's screen, so now we are having fun with that as well. The Dell rep from India gave me some things to try and if no luck we will see if we can have it worked on in the US. Right now we will just use it as a desktop with a monitor!

Thanks for checking in with us and we will work on getting some photos. In the meantime check out Sheri's blog - she is much better at photos that I am!

Friday Night

Good Friday evening to everyone. We are home unpacking some goodies that Kemmel got in the Capital today--nothing like full scale grocery shopping! Fresh veggies are nice, but frozen are a whole lot easier. He went to the city to get one of the trucks serviced and took the family of the little girl with leukemia (Julisa) with him for their chemotherapy visit. Unfortunately, her blood count was a little too low following an illness, and they have to wait until next week to start up treatments again. But, she is doing well and cute as ever and always has a little smile on her face. This time her mom took her to the hospital by herself (without dad), so it's nice to see that the family is getting more comfortable with the routine and the hospital staff must be treating them well.

The reason Julissa's family went with Kemmel is because there is a strike under way by the bus drivers in our area, because the gangs in the city are requiring a $2000/month "security payment" from the owners of the buses. Well, several companies said no, and now 3
bus drivers have been shot and killed. Needless to say, the number of buses running has declined and those who are, are charging more and carrying armed guards with them. Makes for a fun ride, I'm sure.

We also have a new president. Alvaro Colom who is of the UNE party won 52% to 46% over Otto Perez. Colom is referred to as a social democrat "left of center" with plans to end poverty and Perez "the strong arm" is an ex military officer who planned to end crime. Both problems are complicated in nature, and probably are interrelated and won't be fixed anytime soon. Be praying for God to use the new president in good ways for this country.

Other than this excitement, things are pretty tranquil here. School is going fine and the clinics are doing well, too. This week, Marcos Lux, our new dentist has been setting up his office and Kemmel and Carlos have been helping get the new equipment set up. This will be such a blessing to have a full time dentist with us!

Well, everyone have a good evening, and may your favorite home town football team win!