As Lisa mentioned we are back in Chichi and took off on full force. Since returning we have been able to attend a few clinics and visit some of the communities we have been involved with for the last few years. It feels good to be back and to have the opportunity to serve with these brothers and sisters.
On Tuesday, we had our education day where we have volunteers come from around the area (up to 1.5 hours away) to spend some time together worshiping, learning about health issues and to catch up on each other. We have been doing this since the beginning of the year and we started out kind of slow. However, the last couple of months we have had 25-30 volunteers come for the classes. The volunteers are coming from 15-20 different communities, most from the communities where we hold clinic which means we have more than a 50% participation. From these promoters we have 2 now seeing patients in their communities and we hope to start many more during 2009. Josefina and Marcos have been teaching the classes this year and have done an excellent job. The promoters take a test each month so that we can monitor how they are doing. At the end of the class the staff had a cake of welcome for Lisa and finished the day with a meeting to review all that is going on.
Today we headed to the clinic in Las Trampas with Sheri, Gaspar and Juan, praying for patients all the way there; however, God had other plans for us today. We arrived to no patients, but had some good conversations with the church member that was present. The volunteer in Las Trampas is man by the name of Diego Tol who used to be an alchohilic who eventually came to the Lord at another church in the area, converted his family, started a church in his community and today is a growing church of more than 60 adults plus children with 2 buildings built with only local funds. This is a very outreaching church but it does not seem that a clinic ministry is a need in the area. There are a few other organizations who host clinics in the area and this may be part of the issue. They announce and normally some people show but not many. So we agreed to finish out the year so that both HTI and the church can fulfill their commitments and then we will probably cease this clinic in 2009. We hope to find other ways to maintain contact and work with this church as they are active in their area.
After waiting for patients, visiting and listening to Gaspar and Diego talk about the Bible, we headed off to visit the home of Tomasa Chicoj Salvador. This is the young girl who had an eye tumor and has been receiving treatment. Notice I mentioned had! She has received glowing reports and now just must present every 2 months to watch for a recurrence. The family has been trying to invite us to visit for a number of months so the opportunity finally presented itself as they live in the community next to Las Trampas called Chujulimul, meaning rabbits and caverns. We arrived to a great welcome in a very humble home and got to spend about 3 hours with the family. They prepared us a meal and we had plenty of time to sit and talk and teach the kids bad habits (just kidding). They are currently looking for a church home so we took the time to invite them to the church in Las Trampas and will see if we can get Diego Tol to visit them. They seem to be a very happy and content family.
Afterwards we met up with Josefina and headed down to Montellano where we will be in some management meetings for the next couple of days.
As always, thanks for checking in and we hope to see you again soon.
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