Holy Week

This year for Holy Week, we are actually working clinics and taking a different week off, in an effort to avoid high prices and crowds. Usually we take the week off and hang out around here with nothing to do because of the millions of people (nationals and foreigners)who descend upon the usual tourist spot around the county. So, we are having the normal clinics and have had a decent turnout. Today was San Jorge--our biggest diabetic population. Everyone but two ladies was way way out of control (300 blood sugar was starting to look normal). We asked one lady if she was watching her diet and avoiding all the bread and honey that is tradional for Easter week, she said, "well tomorrow I'm having some!"

It was a long drive out to San Jorge, and a hot one. They are in a valley about 2500-3000 feet below Chichicastenango--and the temp goes up at least 20 degrees. Needless to say we all enjoyed the cool fresh air as we climbed back up to our home in the clouds!

Tomorrow is Holy Thursday and should be full of processiones and traffic jams. Thankfully we are only going out to Caris and back and will avoid the throngs followers. We barely made it through Chichi today before the big traffic jam started. Good times!

Fruitful Labors

When we have teams come down to work with us we usually add in extra communities to our regular clinic schedule. This is always makes us a little anxious, that things go well and the church and their neighbors are satisfied with the service they've been provided. Well, thanks to the hard work that our spring break teams put in, we have three new churches wanting to offer regular clinic ministry to their towns. This was a surprise as all three of these clinics had mediocre numbers of patient turnout. But all them were very happy with the professional, compassionate care they received and signed on as permanent ministry partners.

Thanks to our visiting teams from Pepperdine, Harding, and Abilene Christian Universities and especially to Brian Cress, MD, Gary Hill, P.A., Margarita Garcia, DDS, Jeffrey Webb, DDS, Martin Johnson, MD ,Gladys Lazo, DDS and Ellen Little, MD for helping us out these last three weeks.

Anybody out there?

So, we are back to normal again after three weeks of keeping up with college crowds. We were quite proud of ourselves to see how well we held up even when several of the "kids" would tell us how tired they were! Our last group was from Abilene Christian University--Kemmel's alma mater. It was also special because my good friend Dr. Ellen Little was leading the group this year. Ellen and I went to medical school together at Texas Tech and she also went in the mission field--returning last year from Uganda after serving for 8 years. It was so good to catch up and work together in clinic.

After dropping off our last team we made a run to the border to stay in Tapachula, Mexico for a couple of nights, renewing our visas. As we got close to the border crossing we came upon a caravan of maybe 20 RVs from the states. Kemmel's one thought was "we have got to get ahead of them, or we will be sitting at that migration station for hours!" So he passed them all--luckily there wasn't much other traffic, and they were cruising at a comfortable 40 miles an hour! We made it fine and enjoyed a couple of days relaxing and eating mexican food. We even saw a movie--The Book of Eli--very good. There is a new Walmart in Tapachula, and I was very excited to check it out. But to our surprise, they had mostly all U.S. products but at about twice the price (Kraft macaroni and cheese for $2 a box!). Even the clothes were basic Walmart brands but without the "everyday low price". Kind of a let down--but we saved money in the end by not buying as much!

So after 6 hours on the road on Saturday to go around 170 miles and another 6 hours today, we are back home, enjoying our cool Chichi weather and thankful to God for our visiting teams and save travels all month.

Pepperdine, Harding and New clinics

This past week we finished up a great week with the crew from Pepperdine University. We are always impressed with the young people that come work with us as they bring us new energy and great attitudes.





During the Pepperdine week we traveled to existing clinics with special interest given to the clinic in San Jorge, Sacapulas. We are not sure why but this is our diabetes clinic with over 80% of the patients with diabetes. We always wonder where the metformin goes and now we really know! As this clinic continues to grow we look forward to speaking with the community to see if we can expand to more than once a month. The prinicipal promoter that supports this clinic is Jose Martin, also with diabetes, continues to have many health problems so please join us in praying for him and his family.



This week we have been working with a group from Harding University Physician Assistant and Pharmacy programs. We started the week by going to Chuchipaca which is a standard clinic when we have groups as there is much need and little access to healthcare in the area. We have also had some new clinics in towns (Patzite, Chinique and Zacualpa) that we hope to start a more long term relationship. We have worked in Chinique before and have struggled with the clinic there; however, the church is still very much willing to continue and we have some new interest with people from some of the neighboring villages as well, so please pray that this clinic will begin to take hold. This is more of an urban area and we find that we must be patient and wait for patients to trickle in throughout the day. Yesterday we ended the day with 26 medical patients, 23 dental patients and 14 patients for teeth cleanings. Good day!



The days are long and we have started with the dry heat of March; however, we continue to be blessed by the people we work with, both from the US and our local Guatemalan ministry team.



Today we are off to Zacualpa to try a new clinic in the church which is located just outside town.

As Sheri says, new day, new adventure! Be sure to keep up with Sheri's blog as well - http://sheriinguate.blogspot.com/.