Back in Chichi

We arrived back in Guatemala Monday night and arrived in Chichi on Tuesday.  We are glad to be back home and excited about what the new year will bring. During the past 2 weeks we were able to visit both of our families in Arizona and Texas.  We had some good food, got to eat out at some of our favorite places, were spoiled by family and best of all got to share some time with everyone.

While we were traveling on Monday, Josefina, Marcos, Martina, Mauri, Manuel and Tomas started the year with the first clinic at Clinica Caris. 

We started the week strong with Lisa heading out to clinic in San Jorge on Wednesday with Josefina, Marcos and the team.  This is primarily a diabetes clinic with normally more than 35 patients, so we send 2 physicians which allows us to provide more diabetes education and spend more time with each of the patients.  They saw 39 medical patients, around 20 dental patients and did 10 teeth cleanings.  The family at this clinic lost their father last year which has been pretty hard on the family but they seem to be making it alright.  Sheri headed out to Xepol and saw more than 10 patients which is exciting as this location is a located in a more remote area and a fairly long walk for people.  We always think it is close to the highway, but really 10-15 minutes driving through some not so good roads, so worse if walking.

On Thursday we had our second clinic at Clinica Caris for the year and also had a good clinic with returning patients and a couple of patients with more severe medical issues that we will be praying for.  One patient is a yound man with severe diabetes and who is already blind due to cataracts, so we are sending him to a local surgery team that will be here in February and the second is a lady who has lost her sight in the last week and we are not sure why, so we referred her to some eye specialists about an hour away at a private indigent care hospital.  During our devotional time, Marcos challenged us as a group to read the at least half of the Bible this year and to focus more on our prayer life and everyone is willing to accept the challenge.

The upper respiratory crud seems to be making it through all of us, so please pray for good health for everyone. 

We finished the week with caring for around a total of 175-200 patients between all of the teams.