Happy Holidays!

We are enjoying some time road-tripping to visit family. Is there anything more fun than road-tripping?!  We celebrated Christmas today in Phoenix, AZ with warm weather and family--a good time had by all.  Yesterday we saw St. Vincent at the movies (great movie!) and went hiking at Pinnacle Peak State Park to work off some of the extra cookies and nonsense we've been enjoying! The trails wind around a large hill of boulders and look out over the other surrounding desert mountains. Beautiful!  There were lots of folks enjoying the hike, including two brothers who travel around in "The Van with No Plan"  We were definitely intrigued and had to look them up on facebook.  Going to have to give that a try sometime!
Tomorrow we are off to Texas to continue the holiday celebrations and get to enjoy some yummy green chile along the way in Albuquerque! Merry Christmas, everyone.  May God bless you with peace this coming year.

October - November Acitvities in Photos

Beyond our normal clinic activities we are very blessed to be involved in many different activities with the local churches and families, including youth conferences, weddings, Thanksgiving services, area wide worship services, baptism services, anniversary celebrations and the list could go on.  Enjoy the photos...

Chichicastenango Youth Conference in October

Young men from Xepocol enjoying the youth conference

Each youth events now includes various acapella singing groups that have formed over the years, mostly in the last 2 years.  Recently, another youth conference held in Paxot III included around 10 different groups.  We were unable to attend but have heard great things.  Some of the young people below are in the ABC program and were in the ABC program and scholarship program.

Gaspar had the privilege of officiating 2 weddings of previous ABC yound people - one in La Palma and one in Las Cuevas - This is from Las Cuevas.

This is about as happy as people look for photos, but they really are happy.   :)

Area-wide  Worship Service in Mactzul VI.  Packed house!  They report this as a 3-bull conference which means they had to slaughter 3 bulls to feed everyone.

Graduation of Gaspar's youngest son - Josue.  He is off to the BICA Bible Institute this coming year.

Ladies from the community of San Jorge who once knew former missionaries Roger and MaryBeth, who Gaspar has been studying with and want to reconcile with the the church in San Jorge.  The church there continues to grow and mature.

7th Annivesary of the Children's Sunday School classes in Chuchipaca

 Parable of the Prodigal Son

 Parable of the Talents

Young people who have graduated from the Children's Bible Program

The two girls with their hands covering their mouths are twins.  Even some of their mannerisms are identical!

 Sunday School teachers honored

 Cesar from Chuchipaca who started the Sunday school vision

Gaspar and Manuel in Zacualpa for Baptisms of young people Gaspar has been teaching 

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  No picture here, but the church in Chichicastenango also had a baptism service for 5 people a couple of days before!

 Our coworker Tomas was also involved in baptism in Mactzul V - 2 ABC young people and another young man.  

Graduation and Thanksging service in Mactzul III for the Ricac family who had a son and daughter graduate from high school.

With waiters even!

Wedding of Josefina Lux and Randy Cole

Tiny bride's maid, niece of the bride--these weddings are long and sometimes you get hungry!

Dra. Aura Alvarez Osorio!  Our newly-minted dentist!  

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Diego getting his high school diploma with a dream to study to be an architect.

Giving Thanks

As November rolls to a close we start to feel a sense of excitement about getting back home and sharing time with family.  After being out of the country for a while you kind of forget about the building momentum of fall/winter holidays which has it's upside and down.  We don't have to put up with all of the commercialism that comes with this time of year and the worries about weather interrupting our travel plans.  But of course no one celebrates Thanksgiving here or even Christmas the way we do in the States, so we miss out on the holiday cheer and crisp weather and yummy treats. 

However, we do still think about the things we are thankful for, like our health and work and supportive family and church.  We are are grateful for our Spirit-filled life that brings us closer to God each day.  And we are blessed to hear about other people express their gratitude for gifts that God has brought to their lives.  

•    For instance a diabetic patient blind from cataracts in both eyes by 48 years of age, who had surgery last week after months of trying to get his blood sugar under control. He was so full of joy and thanksgiving on his followup appointment, thanking God, the surgeons who helped him and our staff for helping him get his sugars down. 
•   Parents of a scholarship students who watched their children graduate from high school or college or professional school, when they themselves had only finished 3-4th grade.  They were full of thanksgiving and praise for God's blessings on their familes.
•    Finally,  the lady Sheri saw today in cervical cancer screening clinic who has a precancerous lesion but was so thankful to have found it early, as her own mother died of some type of uterine cancer at a young age.  Rather than leaving clinic heavy-hearted with the diagnosis, she she left happy at the chance to avoid her mother's outcome.

So, Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and we wish you a wonderful and restful time with family and friends.  Don't eat too much turkey!

    

Time Away

We recently spent some time in the States visiting our supporting congregations Eastside Church of Christ in Colorado Springs, CO and Meadowbrook Church of Christ in Jackson, MS.  We were treated like royalty in both places, much more so than we deserve. We felt like we had not even been gone, jumping back into fellowship just like before. But on the other hand we could see and feel little differences in the atmospheres of the churches--for the good.  We felt a warmth and welcoming spirit that extended to all who were there, and a growing diversity of membership that must be a beautiful thing for God to see.

Our time away also included a brief but great visit with some of our family in the States and with Kemmel's dad and brother in Chile. Chile was a relaxing break from the road tripping we did in the States, and we enjoyed the change of culture and scenery and outstanding bread and empanadas!. It's funny how experiencing different cultures allows you to appreciate your own in a new light--the good, the bad and the ugly.  And it makes us think about how God must really get a kick out of watching how many different ways we humans figure out how to live life!

We made it back to Guatemala after just 5 weeks away and we could already see changes and newness from when we left.  Graduation season swooped in and all of a sudden we had 9 kids just from the ABC program graduating from high school.  That is a giant leap from when we first stared here and knew of one kid in high school from the area churches.  We also got word of several baptisms in the area and one in particular of a patient contact from our clinic--always joyful news.

Our team did a great job running things and we are grateful to Dr. Mike and Julie Kelly for filling in at clinic and house/cat sitting for us!  We really enjoyed talking to them after our return to get their view of how things had changed in Guatemala since their time here in the '80s and '90s.

Time away is blessing in may ways but we especially love the change of view that it gives you on reentry! So here we are, back in the swing of things and thankful for our work, our supportive families and church families.  Thank you, Lord!

Mobile Medical Brigade with Memorial Road Church of Christ

We have a great group of friends in the Memorial Road Church of Christ!  Every year this group along with some faithful extras from Texas and Tennessee and Georgia come down to work with us and visit.  This year we changed up their schedule from November to September and they were so flexible!  Our goal was to get most of our ABC kids through their well child checkups to finish the year and we were very successful.  Also we had several scholarship kids and applicants come by for their board member interviews with Mike Duncan and Dr. Robert Lamb.
Here are some photos from the week.  Thanks to Susan Mellor for putting together all the team pics! And check out Sheri's blog for more  www.sheriinguate.blogspot.com

Jordan waitin' in line with the kiddos

Babystter's club

Terry, Tomas and Enrique pondering how we will get everything in the trucks.

Dr. Haller and Julie ready to roll!

Dave and Jaime hauling the mobile dental compressor

4-wheelin' for Jesus!

Alyx showing off her professional skills

Jessica, Dave, Susan, Lisa, Barb, Dr. Haller, and Donna--up and at 'em early!

"Hey, if we have to have clean hands, we might as well have fun!"

Our star team!

Yummy!  They know gringos will eat fried chicken!   Dr. Mike Kelly:  I hadn't had fried chicken in years, and now I've had it 4 times in the last 3 days!

Mike Duncan--pharmacist extrordanaire!

Gettin' Ready

This month is flying by as we get ready for our visiting mobile medical/dental team and look forward to heading to the States to visit supporting congregations and to Chile to visit Kemmel's dad.  These last couple of days we've also been meeting with our director Rick Harper to make plans for 2015 and review our operations in general. Please be praying for us at Health Talents to be good stewards of what God has given us and to reflect God's love as we serve.

Our team coming down will be helping us do well child check ups on the ABC kids.  We offer two checkups a year in this program to help monitor nutrition and growth and also get a chance to give some health education to the families.  We'll pick up our team today and head on up to Chichicastenango, starting clinics tomorrow.  There will be 4 teams going out on Thursday--that's a lot of meds and equipment to prepare--but our staff has been working hard to get ready!

We are also excited to host Dr. Mike and Julie Kelly this month.  They were missionaries here in Guatemala when Kemmel and I came down as MET mission interns in 1990!  I must say, we all really looked up to them and now feel so honored to work with them this week.  Dr. Kelly will be covering my clinics in October while we go to the States.

So this morning, we are relaxing a little--Kemmel taking advantage of a swim in the olympic-sized pool down in Zone 4 here in Guatemala City, and I sipping coffee and cruising the web.  Then it's off to pick up ice, drinks, lunch and the team!  We'll post some pics later this week.

Men's and Ladies' Seminars

A couple of times a year we get the honor of co-hosting Bible seminars for the leaders of the area churches.  This time we enjoyed the teaching of Alexander and Silvia Castellanos from El Salvador.  They are also the parents of our Dra. Sara Castellanos, so it's been extra special.  They taught on James for the men and Esther for the women. Thank you Brentwood Hills Church of Christ and Paxot II Iglesia de Cristo for your faithful support of this work.  Everyone enjoyed the time of fellowship and spiritual growth.

Silvia, Alexander and Sara Castellanos in Paxot II

The brothers selected by their churches to attend the seminar.

The area's women in leadership.  There were several young ladies this time which is always encouraging.