We started our morning by jumping a neighbor's car, and then one of our work trucks as well so we could get Sheri off to work (covering for Dr. Josefina after her appendetomy--thanks Sheri!) Then we spent our day off today with our usual walk up to town, stopping in market to look for some basil and tomato paste for some spaghetti sauce. We made our tour around town and ran into lots of friends from Paxot and Mactzul. While knocking out the shopping, Kemmel headed over to Buen Samaritano hosptial to pick up some lab results for me, but turns out they weren't in because Dr. Hoak the surgeon, who was bringing them from the Capital, was stuck in traffic on the highway due to a mudslide. So we headed on home to get to get a jump on the yard work and relaxing.


As I didn't find any fresh basil, we decided to check out the local Natural Medicine shop to see what kinds of herbs he sells(they use a lot of common culinary herbs here for their medicinal effect as well) . We were greeted by a 10-year-old counter clerk who seemed to know his herbs pretty well. I asked for some basil and got handed a bag of dried stems, leaf litter and flower pods. When I said I didn't think it was basil (even though it was clearly labeled so on the shelf) he smelled it and said yeah, it is. I went ahead and bought a Q10 bag of it for kicks and also a bag of rosemary. The rosemary actually looks like rosemary and is stem free.

After Kemmel set out to sculpt our lawn, I got to work on my spagetti sauce. To my surprise, one of the little pouches of tomato paste turned out to be ketchup, so I had to quickly spoon that out and rinse off the tomatos and find a (almost identically packaged) tomato paste pouch. It turned out pretty good despite the trace amounts of ketchup still cliniging to my sauted onions. We decided against the dried basil addition to the sauce due to the high twig and stem content, but I did manage to harvest 6 fresh basil leaves from my tiny potted plants.

About 2:00 in the afternoon, all the buses that must have been stuck in traffic earlier came racing by, one after another, making up for lost time. It sounded like a speedway in the backyard. Now we are hanging out listening to the rain and the local marching band practice their monotonous salsa-style parade ditties. I'm pretty sure our Nocona High School band practices had to have sounded much better!

We'll be coming around the mountain

On Friday of this last week we traveled to visit a new church in the area of Cubulco, Baja Verapaz, in a town called Pachajop.  The title is "coming around the mountain" as we literally had to drive to the far end of the mountain range and then come back to be able to get to the community of Pachajop.  Manuel and I(Kemmel) traveled with a group of others from Chichicastenango, Patzite, and Xesic to join this church in celebrating its formation 1 year ago.   Lisa and I visited this church in September of 2009 or somewhere around that time.  This church has a great story as people from Santa Cruz del Quiche started evangelizing this area over 6 years ago, and a man from the church in Zacualpa has been continuing the efforts for a number of years as well.  Over time a man by the name of Tomas was baptized and discipled to be the christian he is today.  Over this last year 30 other people have been baptized and a church has formed.  What an excellent example of how God can work and bring so many christians together to grow his kingdom.  In the last year, Cruz and his family has continued to visit the area often with the support from the churches of Zacualpa, Xejox and Chuchuca and also through the support of the Bible Institute in Guatemala City, BICA. 

The people here are very vibrant, hospitable and willing to serve one another which is always a lesson for us and inspires us to want to be better. 

Here are some pictures from the trip.

I do not have a picture of Cruz by himself, but he is in this picture of the group of church members who come to Clinica Caris for health education classes.  Cruz is in the back row far right with beige or yellow shirt.  This is a great group of people representing around 15 communities. 

Here is a pitcure of Tomas and the new members of the local church in Pachajop.  Tomas is the man with the microphone and the church members are too his left with his son and granddaughter closest to him.  The picture is red as everyone is under a red tarp with the sun shining through. 

Here is a picture of the crowd who came in support of these christians to worship with them, to pray for them and to show their support.  The dedication to each other is awesome as no one just gets in a car and travels individually, it is a community event, having to plan, hire a bus, pay for the bus, and travel 2-4 hours to get there and most likely deal with bus trouble on the way - we passed one community, Xejox, whose bus had a flat tire.

On other news we celebrated Sheri's birthday on Monday - here is a pictire of her enjoying her cheesecake.

On Saturday Lisa made us some apple fritters!  Yummmm!

Today, Sunday after heading to market we are resting a bit and enjoying the day, finishing off the day with worship services tonight.   We are really getting excited about our visit to the states to see family and our supporting churches in September--won't be long until we are "coming around the mountain"!

Peer pressure is a funny thing, and is present in every society, and we should harness it's power for Good when possible.  Today in San Jorge, our very large diabetic clinic, we saw 26 patients for dental extractions and 36 people for medical visits, which is not bad with two docs working.  In addition to that, we had 11 dental cleanings, which was a huge surprise.  We are alway recommending cleanings, especially for our diabetic crowd, but no one really ever takes advantage of the services.  Today we started out with 4 scheduled for cleaning, but by the end of the afternoon, 11 had stayed for the extra dental attention.  The only thing I can attribute it to is the fact that we are alway mentioning it, and today the first 4 got the ball rolling, encouraging others to step on up and try.  It has been a long uphill struggle to get people interesting in dental cleanings.  Kemmel's hard work in setting up exceptionally good mobile equipment, and getting two of our health promoter staff trained is finally starting to pay off.  Sure we still have towns that have very little interest, but after today's showing in San Jorge, I think we are turning a corner! Now if we can just keep all of the diabetics away from the Fair this week!  Poco a poco.....

We spent the weekend in the city, enjoying a movie and a little shopping.  Yesterday was Sheri's birthday, so we picked up some ribs and cheesecake to celebrate.  Despite keeping the ribs in our thermal bag, we smelled them the whole way back, together with the several pounds of coffee we bought to take back to the States next month.  Despite the continued road hazards from the mudslides in May, we made it in good time and enjoyed a great dessert and dinner together (in that order).  The cheesecake was begging for some coffee company, so we decided for the dessert-first route to avoid insomnia.  (Although the obvious alternative would be to drink decaf coffee at night, there are really no good options here--so we go for the fully caffeinated variety--before 6:00 pm).  We savored our meal while listening to 2 inches of rain falling and catching up on Sheri's week with the plastic surgery team.  It was a good night.
Happy Birthday, Sheri.  You are a blessing to the work here and to us!

It was a good week of clinics with pretty good turnout in most places.  The fair has come to town in several places, so just as in the States, we expect to see a lot of our patients opting to spend extra funds at the fair rather than at the clinic!  But all in all, not too bad.  Some friends of ours (Tomas and Tomasa) from Mactzul III came to clinic on Thursday, a little worried because Tomasa had missed a period last month despite using birth control.  Sure enough, the pregnancy test came out positive.  The problem is she is diabetic and they have had 5 children already.  Well, thankfully she is pretty careful about her diet, and has actually been diet-controlled for a few months, not needing medicine.  I showed them how to use a glucometer and sent them home with a box of strips and lots of prayer. 

Today we rounded out the week with a great clinic in Chuchipaca.  One of my favorite regular patients, an older lady with a bad congenital hip dysplasia and arthritis, brought in her young neighbor who had been sick all week with an ear infection.  After the visit, she hugged me and looked proud to have helped out her friend.

We finished early enough to be able to drive out to Mactzul III to check out the work on the letrine project for the church. It looked good and only lacked a couple of small details.  Thanks to the Donelson Church of Christ for your contribution of time, sweat and funds on this project.  Before we left, we saw our friend Tomas and asked him how his wife was doing with the glucometer.  He said, "well, sister, we were pretty happy yesterday with the fasting blood sugar at 103, but today after eating it shot way up to 125(still normal actually), so I guess she's not doing too well."  I quickly reminded him that we could expect a higher blood sugar after eating, and that I was very impressed with her tight diet control.  That lifted his spirits.  He gifted us some apples, and we headed on our way, greeting all of our friends along the road and waving back at little kids shouting out, "Hermano Kem-mol!" and "Doctora Alicia!"

How about some donuts?

If you have lived in Guatemala very long you have realized that there are no good donuts to be had.  Even in the capital, Dunkin Donuts went under.  We are forever daydreaming about running out to get donuts on the weekend.  Now, some of you will say, "I've seen lots of donut shops around and even fast food restaurants with donuts on the dessert menu."  We've been fooled too--very disappointing.  Not only are they less than mediocre when they are fresh, the product is left on the tray until all are sold--apparently up to 4-5 days later.  Now thankfully, we have visitors from time to time from the States, and they have felt pity for us and brought us really good donuts to enjoy!  (Thanks, Rick, Robert and Donna and Jim and Barbara!)  But, those moments are few and far between. Well, we finally decided that we needed to try making some at home.  I've always been a little intimidated by the thought, but figured we had nothing to lose.  So, I went online and checked out lots of recipes.  I got pretty lucky the first time.  These yeast donuts are great, easy and soft and doughy just like we like.  Hallelujah!  Here is the recipe website if you would like to try them.  Enjoy! 
http://www.secretdonutrecipe.com/index.html

Adventures everywhere today

We have had quite a bit of rain again and has rained about 5 inches over the last 3 days mainly just in the evenings and through the night.  This made for an interesting day today for all of our teams.  

It started out with thinking about how to get to Mactzul 5, as we quickly discovered that 2 roads leading to Mactzul 5 were out due to damage, which meant we have to change plans on how to get there and call Gaspar and Juan to come to Chichi instead of picking them up on the way.  So Lisa, Gaspar and Juan got to take the long way around.  Would have been quicker for Juan to walk from his house to Mactzul 5.     

Josefina, Marcos, Sheri, Manuel, Tomas, Martina, and Mauri headed out for Chuchuca in the mountains over Zacualpa. Manuel made it from Paxot to Chichi early to pick up Sheri, but then about 30 minutes after he passed through a mud slide closed the pass leaving Gaspar and Juan only be able to travel about 90% of the way to Chichi and then walking to an spot Lisa could pick them up.  For the Chuchuca team we thought the trip up the mountain would not be a problem but actually getting to the church would be , so not that bad.  Well, the road up was covered in mud with 6 areas about 20 meters long with 2 feet of mud.  The team was tough and trudged through having to get out an play in the mud a few times to make it all of the way through.  They eventually made it to Chuchuca to hold an ABC clinic and a community clinic.  We decided to skip lunch and get out of dodge before rain came back, which they were able to do.  All are home and safe now and it is raining in Chuchuca again.  Tomorrow we were scheduled for an ABC clinic in Xejox in the same area but cancelled as with more rain it will just get worse.

I (Kemmel) headed to Mactzul 3 on the only open road--sufice to say a normally 45 minute drive turned into 1.5 hour drive in the Suzuki Jeep.  I ran into more mud slides along the way and unfortunatey landed in a mud pit and had a hard time getting out, but after 30 minutes of digging out I made it through and to the Mactzul 3 Church of Christ where we are helping finish up the latrines. 

On other news more great news from the local churches which are continuing to see growth with Chuchipaca celebrating 9 baptisms of a family and a few young people, Paxot II with 3 new families, Choacaman with 2 new families, Chichi with 1 new member and I am sure others we have not heard about.  Please continue to pray that God will continue to use the ministry and the church to grow His kingdom and that we will be willing and will find oppurtunities to help people meet their needs.  

Unfortunately no pics but maybe Sheri will have some on her blog later.

We are enjoying our day off today just taking care of stuff around the house.  Kemmel actually had some errands to run out in Mactzul III on a construction project, as well as meeting with one of our scholarship students.  But he got in a good swim before the rain started. I have been playing chef, whipping up fresh bread and veggies to go with our leftover lasagna and a coffee cake for our afternoon rainy day coffee.  Yum!

Things are pretty quiet around here.  But there have been some recent baptisms in Paxot and Choacaman and one planned for Wednesday at the Chichicastenango church making a total of 11 for June and July.  Yesterday's sermon was a good one about the great commission.  Luis Suy made a great point about not just preaching the word, but also preparing the "soil" by praying specifically for the person you intend to evangelize.  He encouraged us to develop the relationship first and pray for God to remove obstacles from their lives and prepare their hearts to receive the gospel.  Good advice.

Tomorrow we get back to work, but for now we just enjoy some quiet time at home. 

Chuchipaca Church Before and After

Here are some pictures of the church of Christ in Chuchipaca.  This congregation demolished the old church to build a new church, all with local funding.  We had a group help paint the front of the building in July.  Since then the congregation finished painting the inside of the church and put on a second coating in the outside.

Of course, we all know the church is the people which is also exciting here as we hear of new christians and families frequently and within the last 6 months or so they have probably had 10-15 baptisms of new community members.  The church has over 150 people attending and an active children's program.

Old church builing

During Construction - you can see old building in the new building

Before painting

After painting