New Year's Eve

I'm sitting here on the couch at my parents' house waiting to ring in 1-1-11.  We started with 20 people and are down to me and my 14 year old nephew watching Pawn Stars on the History Channel.  We did make a toast to the new year earlier and  thanked God for the blessings of the past year as well as ask him to protect our nephew Zach who was deployed to Afganistan 2 days ago.  We are trying to get our Skype connection to work well enough to call each other. 
Happy New Year to everyone.  Don't forget your resolutions!

ABC Water Filters

We have been focusing on nutritional education with the children in the ABC Sponsorship program this year with some great classes in the month of November (see Sheri's post on education http://sheriinguate.blogspot.com/2010/11/abc-nutritional-class-in-paxot-ii.html).  Also, this year we started offering water filters for our patients and others who are interested at cost.  Since we have been so impressed with the water filters and we are very interested in providing clean sources of water to the children in the program, we are promoting a program to provide water filters to the ABC families. 

Water is accessible, just not necessarily clean of all bacteria and most importantly amoebas, so these water filters provide a very cost effective, pratical and quick way to provide clean drinking water to families.

These water filters are made available by Helps International (http://www.helpsintl.org/), a development aide organization in Guatemala who has also developed a smokeless stove and made them available for other organizations and individuals at affordable prices.  Prior to offering the filters we have tried it for around a year now and have not gotten sick, so if a north american with a weaker stomach can make it with no sickness, then we know it is good.  :)  These filters use a ceramic purification element that only has to be replaced every year as long as it is maintained correctly. 

Here is a brochure regarding the program.  For more information about the ABC Child sponsorship program, please see http://www.healthtalents.org/index.php?page=programs#anchor6146 or feel free to contact us as we see first hand the success of the program.

Please watch for more information regarding the positive results of the ABC program in the area of keeping kids in school and furthering their education.

Paseando

We have finished up most of our ministry duties for the year and are just wrapping up some loose ends before heading to the States for a holiday visit.  Today we headed up to town, paseando (walking around) and running some errands.  The fair starts today and aready the streets are jam-packed with vendors and snake oil salesmen. We saw three smooth talkers demonstrating their natural remedies, two of them with snakes as side kicks to spice up the presentation.  One guy was praising the intelligence of the Chinese and their knowledge of natural medicine, and looked up and saw us and said, "See, even the gringos want to learn about it!"  Then he went on to show pictures of surgical specimens,diabetic wounds, tumors and diseased livers--all of which could have benefited from his products.  The last guy had a similar sales presentation, but it was hard to understand his message.  When he got out his knife and started holding up his pet snake, we decided we didn't want to see how that ended.  We kept walking down the endless row of roscas (dry, toasty bread/cookie-type snack to eat with coffee), sacks of peanuts and chiles and barbecue grills and hair barrettes and shoes and snack bars and roscas and pirated movies (4 random movies on one DVD!) and roscas and tortilla baskets and crazy pizza and roscas and ..............You get the picture.  Thankfully, tomorrow we head out of town before traffic becomes impossible! 

Scholarship Student Spotlight- Sebastian Chan Sen

Sorry, we have not written in awhile.  We have had a busy couple of weeks, but good weeks with one day hosting the ABC Celebration which we will blog about later (you can also see Sheri's blog for more ABC Celebration information and pictures - http://sheriinguate.blogspot.com/). 

Today is our last day of clinics for 2010.  Some of our staff finished up on Friday and we are hosting one more clinic with Marcos to finish up some dental patients and to get in another clinic before we close. 

Originally we were going to stay in Guatemala over the holidays: however, plans have changed and we are excited to be leaving to spend some time with family on the 18th of December.

This year we only had one student graduate from the Sherman Scholarship program here in Chichicastenango - Sebastian Chan Sen from Xepocol.  We have a another graduate Juan Rafael Leon who is a pre-medicine student who graduated from a school in Santa Cruz del Quiche.   Sebastian is the third student to graduate from the Sherman Scholarship program in this community.  The first was Gaspar's son (HTI Health Promoter), Tomas, who is now working part-time as a teacher and part-time as a data manager in a local health department.  The second is Ana Maria Canil who graduated as a bookkeeper and is a mom of 2.  She is currently seeking employment.  We are very appreciative of the scholarship program sponsored by Health Talents International and it's donors as it is making a difference in the communities. 

Sebastian with his parents, Juan and Maria.

Sebastian's father, Juan, has only a 1st grade education, barely speaks any spanish and only works as a day laborer and farmer in their community of Xepocol.  Mom only has a 4th grade education.  Through the scholarship program, Sebastian has graduated as a teacher and has aspirations of heading to dental school in the future. 

Sebastian has 4 brothers, of which 2, Tomas and Julio, will start high school this year.  Tomas will be starting high school this year as a Sherman Scholarship recipient and Julio is sponsored through the ABC program.  Julio looks like he is about 13 years old, but he is 16.  Mom and dad wanted to keep him from starting high school since he is so small, but he would have none of that idea and is ready to start along with Tomas.  The other 2 sons, Esteban and Emilio are both in middle school, also with aspirations of continuing to high school.  Julio, Esteban and Emilio all excel in school with averages in the 80's which is very good for Chichicastenango where an average in the 70's would normally be the norm for high grades.  Imagine, how this can change the environment and oppurtunities for this family, their community and their church.

Julio is on the left and Tomas on the right

Many have heard us speak highly of the story of the church in Xepocol.  It is because of families like this who are looking for oppurtunities for their children and then see the importance of applying their gifts to the service of the local community and the church that will help the churches grow and the communities develop.  The church of Christ in Xepocol currently has more than 10 students either in high school or entering high school.  5 years ago they had 1 student in high school and with no other candidates thinking it would be possible.  Not all of these students are on a scholarship, nor in the ABC program, so that could mean that the families in the church are dedicated to helping others also finish school.  God is good....

Please continue to pray for this family as they continue to work in the church and in their community.

Our week has been flying by.  We started with an end-of-the-year meeting and family get together with our staff here at our house on Tuesday.  Thankfully we had lots of sun as we enjoyed the backyard.  Our choice of cookout fare was hamburgers and corndogs with pasta salad, pineapple (good one, Sheri!) and chips and followed up with ice cream cones that the Lux family brought us.  We thought the corndogs would be a hit, especially given the love affair in this country with the hot dog and all things corn.  Let's just say that it was a little too foreign a flavor sensation for most taste buds present.  But a good time was had by all we think.

Wednesday Sheri, Gaspar, Juan, Marcos and Martina and I (Lisa) went to Xeabaj, a new site for us. This is a town where one of our cleft lip patients lives, and they had been wanting us to have clinic there for some time.  This is a great town to start a regular clinic, if we can get some collaboration from a nearby church to do evangelism.  The area is not as evangelised as the other areas we serve, and we saw many patients that did not claim any church fellowship. So, we are praying about moving ahead in that direction, and hope to get some interest from nearby churches to help out.

Today, we did some pick up and delivery of several furniture items as gifts for the ABC kids who have earned prizes this year.  We drove around the capital ending up in Zone 3 which is apparently the unfinished furniture district evidenced by undending display of curbside furniture for about 4 square blocks.  We drove around the block from where the "showroom" was to pick up our 10 dressers and 2 bookshelves at another house. As we waited for the young kid to bring out our merchandise, we were serenaded by Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, Mus-ac style, streaming from the neighbor's place--a drug rehabilitation service called "The Carpenter's Son".  

We made it back and are now chilling and about to have meaball soup and sourdough bread for dinner--yum!  It's been a good week.