Local News

One of the great perks of this job is you get to hear about all the local happenings--the good the bad and the ugly. As you can imagine, a lot of the stories are spiced up through the rumor mill before they get to us, but it's quite entertaining. We start out our day with a 30-60 minute car ride every morning and catch everyone up on the latest scoop. Then at lunch we compare stories with the volunteer promoters at clinics. It's kind of like reading the Nocona News complete with social columns, police blotter and special segments on small town achievements.
Here's a sampling of last week's news.

Sting-y Church Member Gets Taste of God's Wrath
In Mactzul V during a church meeting to discuss the upcoming construction of their new church building, the members began pledge their personal funding committments to the work. As they went around the room, each family would anounce how much they planned to give over the next year. They came to one brother (quite wealthy in livestock) who said he felt like nobody should be compelled to give, and that he was not going to do it. The church elders said that was fine, and that it was a free-will offering outside of normal giving. A few days later, a call for help came from the man and his family after they and their livestock had been severely attacked by a colmena--a swarm of honey bees! Two of their bulls had been killed and the whole family was suffering from the stings. Several of the church leaders ran over to help them and took up a collection of Q500 to help pay for their medicine. They family was humbled and ashamed of their prior behavior and immediately asked for forgiveness and offered money to the building fund.

Police (or rather, Posse) Blotter
A teenaged girl from the town of Chijtinnimit was kidnapped and left in one of the area garbage dumps one night, arousing fear in that town and surrounding communities. Shortly after midnight, townspeople gathered to decide what to do. The girl was found alive and after further questioning, it was discovered that she had been running around with a man--who was already married. It is hypothesized that the spurned wife ordered the kidnapping. Plans are being made to sort out the trouble between the two families.

Plans for Teachers' Protest Rally Strike Out
Friday morning was kicked off by an early-morning call from our physician Dr. Lux who was planning to travel to Clinica Ezell that day. There were reports of a teachers' strike on the first day of school--all of the main crossroads in the country were to be blocked in an effort to get their concerns addressed by the government. Among the complaints are the job cuts for thousand of teachers despite growing school censuses and lack of teachers in many communities. As the morning progressed no signs of traffic blockade were seen. Rumors of late-morning initiation began to fly--citing first-day-of-school duties to attend to. The day's activites went smoothly with no stops in traffic, or rioting. Local papers the following day showed photos of a few lonely maninfesters on the palace steps. Maybe they are afraid to loose their jobs too.

Multi-Specialty Clinic

We have been blessed this week to have Dr. Ricardo Alvillar and physical therapist Nathan Click working by our side. They helped numerous rheumatology patients with medications and exercise regimens. Our patients were so thankful for the specialty care right here in their own back yard. There are a fair number of people in this area with rheumatoid arthritis so it was good to have some expert opinion. The sobering thing is that we noticed that so many of them were older widowed ladies with no family to support them. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to take care of housework and preparing meals when you can barely get yourself dressed.

This week was also a good week for the area church, with 8 baptisms in Xepocol and 3 in Chichicastenango. Sheri made it out to the Xepocol service and got some great pictures here. Tomorrow we head out to our regular mobile clinics.

Week's Update

The new year always brings a few changes to our schedule--in an effort to improve our services or boost clinic numbers. We have tried to respect the fact that each community has certain days for market (buying and selling), pre-market travel or preparation and days for worship services during the week. Thankfully not everyone has the same schedule! We also acknowledge that there may be other issues that affect clinic turnout like lack of advertising, other health services in the area, poor church reputation in the community, or even poor clinic reputation in the community. We have been assured that the local town counsels are on board and that the churches still want clinic ministries so we have tweeked some of our approaches. This year we changed some of the clinic days to see if we have better responses.
At Mactzul V, one of our longest-running clinics, we changed from Saturday to Friday. Well, the response was great. We went from 5-6 patients to 19 and that was with very little announcing (one promoter later confessed). There were 26 dental patients as well. We did get the news that a 97 year old man in the Mactzul area will be putting on Christ in baptism today! He was evangelized by one of our volunteer promoters Sebastian Yacon who went to see him on a sick visit. Sebastian is also one of the Guatemalan Board members for our organization.

Kemmel and Sheri, and Glenn and Neva joined up with Josefina's team to go out to the Zacualpa area to the town of Chuchuca' about 3 hours away. They left bright and early at 0630 and then remembered (after Sheri called) that they forgot to pick Sheri up! But once back on the road they made it fine. The roads are notoriously bad there and have actually been closed due to road improvements the last two months. They took an alternative route that, as Agustin our volunteer promoter put it, "If it even sprinkles, I don't go down this road!" Thankfully they made it and were welcomed by 45 patients--just from the local church. There is a lot of need in that area, with much more poverty, inaccessability to medical care and illiteracy/lack of access to education than we see in the Chichicastenango area. They are however blessed with faithful members and growing churches. Health Talents' goal is to get more involved in that area in the future, and we are now in the process of making contacts and gaining information about the local churches and needs. We definitely see God working in those churches and look forward to joining in if that is His will.

Lazy Weekend

We started our weekend yesterday having lunch at some friends' house. Ana Maria and Jose Xirum are members at the church in Xepocol. Ana Maria obtained her high school career on a scholarship from Health Talents last year and wanted to show her appreciation. So she had us and Gaspar and Juana over for Sunday lunch and then we headed to services together. It was a good Sunday afternoon.

This morning we lazed around a little and had breakfast before heading up to town for our market run. Before we left the house we felt a pretty big earthquake that didn't last too long, thankfully. Things looked pretty quiet around Chichi. Broccoli is cheap at about $0.40 a head, cabbages super cheap at $0.30 each (bigger than my head) and tomatoes are expensive at $0.70 a pound. Chicken was pretty high too at $1.60 a pound for breast meat without wings. But, despite the rise in prices, it's still quite a bit less than the grocery store prices in the city. Don't get me wrong; I like (love) strolling up and down the aisles of the grocery stores, but really enjoy scouting out the best price in market and stopping by my favorite vegetable stands or even buying my avocados and from the poorest-looking old woman I can find.

After market, we hit the yard work which had been saving itself up for us since our trip to the States. Kemmel really transformed the yard into quite the park. I moved some flowers around and transplanted some poinsettias. After cleaning up we enjoyed a fish taco feast for lunch/supper. Now we are just enjoying a little internet and Cold Case Files re-runs. Tomorrow I head to clinic and Kemmel and Manuel go to deliver some smokeless stoves.

Week in Review

Our week was a good one with a surprise visit from one of our friends from our church in Colorado Springs. They flew into the airstrip in Santa Cruz and Kemmel went to pick them up to bring them out to clinic with us. Pat is a pilot for a private corporation and he and his group were here in Guatemala visiting different minsitries and evaluating how they can help out. It was a great visit even if it was brief.
Clinics were busy with ABC kids getting their checkups in Mactzul VI and Xepocol. After clinic in Xepocol, I was asked to go see a lady who had been beat up by her sister-in-law the night before. This lady has been studying the bible with Gaspar and Juana and has been talking about wanting to be baptized. Although they belonged to another church in town, they had not studied the Word before and wanted to know more. When their other church found out (including her sister-in-law) there was a lot of upset people gossiping about them. But she was determined to learn more about God. She told me that she had come to clinic one day very sick, and had trusted God to heal her after we prayed for her. He did heal her and she had been faithfully searching ever since. We were worried that the attack would set her back, but after examining her and leaving some medicines for the bruises, she said she was more determined to become a Christian; her husband also decided to accept Christ and they are planning to be baptized soon. Pray for Jose and Marta and also for their family that God will continue working in their lives and bring peace unity in the Spirit.

Paxot 2 Conference

Check out Sheri's post at http://sheriinguate.blogspot.com for the Paxot 2 conference.

Week's Re-cap

Our first week back has gone by fast. We have been busy with clinics starting up, getting ABC kids their checkups and working on community education strategies. Thurdsay was a long day at central clinic and it ended up being one of those days with "just one more patient". Our last two patients were actually pretty serious--one with a suspicious eye lesion (probably cancerous) and a little girl from church with neumonia. Friday we saw 84 people in Paxot II for general medical and dental consult and ABC clinic. We were pretty tired after that and were hoping for a low key Saturday pap smear clinic--and it was.

Sheri is beginning our education program that will focus on getting our full-time staff, our volunteers and eventually patient groups well informed on various health topics. We kicked around schedules and class ideas today after pap smear clinic and we can see our education program is finally starting to take form. We see a lot of diabetes in this area, with some community clinics attending mostly diabetics. So our goal is to get some diabetes education classes started in some of our high-incidence towns. This is crucial in an area where there is little access to health infomation via Prevention or Reader's Digest or T.V. or internet. Trying to explain a reduced-carbohydrate diet to someone who doesn't know what proteins and carbohyrates and fats are, is a challenge. But people impress us all the time with their desire to understand their illnesses and be healthier.

We also have goals to get the mothers of the cleft lip and palate babies together and to start prenatal classes for education and bible study. The opportunities are plentiful as we look for ways to get women's groups organized and informed on their families' health and spiritual well-being. Being women in the medical profession has its advantages for sure, and we are thankful that God is using us in his kingdom.

Fresh Start and Update on the Water Feud

Today was our first day of work (we work Tuesday-Saturday) and headed up to the high country to Chutzerob. Now, it's normally a little cooler there as it's at around 8000 feet, but today it was just plain cold. We shivered around until we got the patients seen and then headed over to the church kitchen building to sit around the fire and drink coffee and chat. It was good to see everyone and catch up on family news. We made a home visit ("just up the hill") about 15 minutes straight up the hill. The lady seems to have an abdominal mass and has the look of cancer about her, but everything started with a febrile illness last month, so maybe something infectious. We prayed with her and the family and left some medications and orders for ultrasound. It was good to get back into this work.
While driving, we asked Gaspar what the news was on the water fued. (See Law and Order Segment) He said the young men involved paid the fine and the offended party allowed them to come and repair the water main--losing only 3 days of water. I said the man must have had compassion on them, and he said, " no, not really. He got his money, and that was all he wanted." Well, not exactly love thy neighbor, but better than all out revenge against the whole town.