Happy Birthday, Zach!

Happy birthday to our nephew Zachary. He is turning 18 today. Have a great one! We love you.

Reading Writing and 'Rithmatic"

Yesterday we went out to Mactzul III for the second time since starting the ministry out there. We had a pretty modest turnout, but several new patients from outside the church, so not a complete bust. Sheri says she saw one lady listening in on a conversation between one of the promoters and a patient while discussing some spiritual issues and she later pulled him aside with some questions and requests for prayer. So, that was encouraging.

After clinic, Kemmel and I were invited out to Mactzul V to talk to the parents in the ABC program to introduce a tutoring program that will be started using the skills of a young woman who graduated from high school last year. This sounds great, but there is one of her (volunteering 2 hours a week) for 75 students. We sat around throwing around ideas for a while and listening to people's concerns. One of the comments that kept coming up, was the frustration that parents feel when their kids surpass their own education level, and they cannot help them with their homework. Another concern is the large student-to-teacher ratio and perceived lack of interest of the teachers in whether or not the children are learning. They lamented that many children "pass" 6th grade with very poor reading and math skills.

Arnoldo, Mynor and Diego Yacon-- 3 brothers in the ABC program

So, we are excited about being able to get our graduating scholarship students involved, but there are so few of them and so much need. We ask for your prayers for these kids, especially those of you who are child sponsors. Lets pray that God guides them and blesses them in their learning process.

Happy Birthday, Lori

Today is our niece, Lori's birthday. Have a great one. We love you.

Tioxlaj Wuj--Sacred Book

New Bible translated into the Quiche of Joyobaj!
2 Timothy 3:16
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

On Sunday, the 22nd of February we had the priviledge of attending a worship service in Joyabaj to dedicate the newly completed translation of the Bible into the Quiche language of the Joyabaj region. This has been a work in progress by Bill Vassey who came to Guatemala in the late 1960s. His family were friends of Kemmel's family when they lived here and share many fond memories. We really admire his dedication and drive to finish the work and task. This family endured much perscution during their time living in the area and thanks be to God that they were blessed to be able to dedicate this Bible to the people of Joyobaj to be able to read in their own mother language. During the service, held in the central park full of people, he spoke in Quiche and dedicated the work to the people.

Bill is now also living in Chichicastenago for the purpose of taking the Joyobaj Bible to translate it into the dialect of Chichicastenango. Here are a few pictures of the event. Bill is in the traditional red jacke of the Joyobaj people.

A local singer / songwriter created this CD in dedication to Bill and the finishing of the translation.

Wedded Bliss

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:24

Today we were invited to the wedding of a young man from the church in Chichicastenango. It was held in the home of the groom and several family and friends arrived to celebrate. I will try to give you a play by play (maybe they'll offer me a job writing for the social page of the Nocona News!). Some may recognize this young man, Roberto, as he is a waiter at the Santo Tomas Hotel. Roberto is the brother of a good friend of ours who attends the Chichicastenango Church of Christ.

After a 15 minute drive into the country and winding our way through the orchards and fields, we arrived at a house with the common patio area decorated with streamers and balloons and fresh pine needles on the ground. There were already some guests seated and we were led to the front of the grounds where the bride and groom were standing receiving greetings and gifts. Behind them were the elders from the church cataloging the gifts. In this culture, the groom's family pays for the wedding and for the courtship. After giving our good wishes, we sat down and waited for others to pass through the reception line. The couple appeared very serious and the bride crying, seemingly more out of sadness than joy. If we hadn't talked to other newlyweds, we would have thought that maybe it was an arranged marriage by the looks on their faces. But everyone says that the bride is sad because she is leaving her family.

Next we had a worship service of singing, prayer and a talk by a local preacher about he importance and sacredness of marriage. There was no exchange of vows and no signing of certificates. The civil part is usually completed before or after the religious ceremony. There were more tears and congratulations, and we wrapped it up with a nice dinner of beef pepian.

Patient Satisfaction

Everyone knows that you can't please all the people all the time, but you can please some of the people some of the time.
Thursday is fun for us because we share the clinic with our dentist partner, Marcos Lux. Today one of his patient's family members came for a dental cleaning with Gaspar and said he was so grateful for the care his mother had received from Dr. Marcos. She had had a fibroma (soft tissue tumor) growing on her gum from irritation and had grown to the point that she couldn't close her mouth well or eat. She had consulted with other doctors and said they were going to charge 5-10 times as much and she couldn't afford to get it done. So, he removed the tumor and repaired the defect and pathology came back benign. She will be coming back soon to be fitted for dentures.

One of my patients, a 30 year old guy, came in limping, and I assumed he had injured himself. But he quickly showed me that the problem was in a more delicate area. He was afraid he had a hernia, but it turned out to be an impressive case of epididymitis (look it up). He was relieved to know that he wouldn't need surgery, but hoping for a quick cure. We set him up with antibiotics and pain meds and will see Josefina on Monday. He was also grateful for the prayer and was a happy camper as he limped out of the office today.

Kemmel also had a patient come in for new glasses. We offer eye exam with a focometer and glasses for low cost, and she asked to try them. After he measured the prescription and fitted the lenses to the frames she gave them a try and immediately said, "Wow, that's much better!" (in spanish of course). Since she is a young woman, we were afraid she might not like the style of frames we have, but she was grateful for the glasses and her husband liked them too!

Homework

We (Kemmel, Sheri and I) have been spending time the last few weeks working on a proposal for a community development and patient education program for our area. We could really use your prayers in this, as we are not trained educators. There are a lot of really good approaches to this that we have seen done by other groups around the world(http://www.jamkhed.org/ http://www.lifewind.org/ ), and we are busy examining and putting together ideas that are suited to our population. Our tactic is centered around reproducible, simple lessons to teach our staff, our volunteer health promoters and eventually lay people in the towns about basic preventive medicine. Our thought has been to target the women in the communities, because the vast majority of women still work in the home and would have time to get out and check on other women in the area or team up to do home visits. The advantage is that there are so many opportunities to teach about prenatal care, infant care, nutrition and so on, including evangelistic opportunities. And women are already the caregivers and the ones you go to for healing. The disadvantage is that these same capable, hard working women are for the most part all illiterate. This really limits a lot of the pre-printed/pre-translated material we have come across and will be a hurdle for us to have to jump. But, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, and we have faith that God will guide us in this work as he has to this point. There are so many doors opening and people asking for educational talks for churches, women's groups, youth groups, and the ABC programs in the churches. So, we are really excited about this and will be busy doing our homework as you keep us in prayer.

Happy Birthday, Valentine!

The good thing about having a birthday on a popular holiday is your day is celebrated around the world. The downside is no one really knows its your special day!

Happy Birthday, Kemmel! I love you very much. And thank you Roberta for sharing your Valentine with me!

Our Baby's Growing Up!

We can only imagine what it's like to see your kids grow up and be productive citizens with skills and gifts of their own. But we see our work here as our family, and we got little taste of that pride today while talking to Gaspar Chan, one of our health promoters. He was telling us about a health talk (more like seminar) he gave at the church on Saturday over preventive dental care. He was so excited because this something he programmed on his own and devised all of the props himself. He said there was a full house and everyone was very interested in the topic and asked questions and participated willingly. They even asked to have a special day set up just to do dental cleanings (can you imagine?). So the we scheduled a big teeth-cleaning day for March 10--call for your appointment now! Then today in clinic in the same town, one of the volunteers helping me translate made a comment to a mother about her child's cavities and how she should cut down on the amount of candies she lets him have in order to prevent more cavities! What a great day to see other team members getting excited and involved in patient education and preventive health!!!!!
We are in the midst of developing an in-depth community education program with the eventual goal of training volunteers in the towns to carry the lessons to their neighbors. We are starting to see groups of people asking for information and health talks for their churches and towns, so we see doors opening wide for this type of program. Be in prayer for us all as we begin to develop educational materials and lessons.

Weekly Update

We really are still alive. It's been a run-around week, so we fell off the blog wagon for a few days. Tuesday we went back to the University to take my letter from the Regent's office to the diploma printing office. Supposedly, in one month I will have a diploma!

Here is a great picture of one of our patients who has been coming to see us for catheter placement due to his prostate problem. He is 94 years old and probably not strong enough to handle surgery, so we are prescribing medicine and using a catheter to keep his bladder emptying well. The only problem is it gets stopped up from time to time and has to go to the hospital in the middle of the night to get it irrigated or changed. So....we showed the family how to do in-and-out catheterization at home. They were so thankful and felt confident they could maintain clean technique. I took his picture with his son, and showed it to him. He obviously still has great eyesight, because he immediately started laughing and said it was a good picture.

It's been really cold here, although our trusty thermometer swears it's only 50. But jumping into 50 degree sheets at night is still a shock! Today in clinic the ladies from church kept up filled up with hot cereal drinks and a great chicken soup with tamalitos. We crowded around the kitchen fire to keep warm--good times! Kemmel went out with the team of agriculture professors from the University of Tennessee (the other UT). The did some follow-up investigation into their chicken program in Xepocol and also out to La Estancia to check out dry season crops and possibilities for raising cattle. In talking with the women in the chicken project, apparently some of the chickens had bitten the dust after coming in contact with some neighboring infected chickens. The ladies here are really reluctant to quarantine and "eliminate" the sick ones. So, they all had a good chat and went over some of the guidelines for maintaining healthy birds. They also found out that there has been a little price gouging and pressure sales of the wrong product going on at the vaccine store. So maybe we can help them sort that out. Three of the ladies were interested in going to another community to teach a class on raising chickens--"see one, do one, teach one".

Happy Birthday, Groundhog!

Today is our favorite Groundhog's birthday. Happy birthday to our nephew Zane. Congratulations on completing your first decade! We love you!

Four-wheeling for Jesus

Yesterday was clinic in Chuchipaca. It was short and sweet--only 10 patients. Sheri and I saw some good cases and prayed with people in need and people rejoicing for their improved health. We were all dragging a little as we came to the end of a really busy week, so it was good to get home early.

Friday was a great opportunity to go out with some friends/elders from two local churches who are part of an organization of leaders interested in building up new or struggling churches. Tomas Panjoj and Francisco Aware invited us to go with them to the town of Chuisiquel for a bible study and clinic day. It was a 3 hour drive to this town high up in the mountains. We saw volcanos and other mountains and deep valleys on the drive up.
The iglesia de Cristo there has been around for about 12 years and has 30 members. Unfortunately (or fortunately according to them), many of their men are in the States working which leaves the congregation a little on the weak side. The women speak a little Spanish but don't read. But, we met several faithful and extremely hospitable members who welcomed us in and served us coffee and rolls before we got started.
After Tomas and Francisco presented a good lesson on the Church as the body of Christ and the members living stones, we got started with clinic. There were lots of young moms (married at 13). One 30 year old woman from the church has been sick for 7-8 months with cough, fever and weight loss (HIV negative thank goodness), but suspicious for TB. Her husband is in the States and "has changed and probably won't be coming back". Another 40 year old lady was 43 weeks pregnant with her 11th child, with high blood pressure and baby in breech presentation--they wanted to know if they should go to the hospital. I tried several different ways to tell them she was in grave danger and should go "TODAY, RIGHT NOW, WITHOUT DELAY". But they said they would appreciate a note to take with them tomorrow. They didn't want to upset the activity of the day. And yes they had a son with a pickup to take them. You can be their doctor, but you can't be their mom!
Anyway, it was a great day, very long, and tiring having left at 5:30 and arriving home at 7:00, but we felt blessed to be a part of God's work with our brothers and sisters in Christ.