New Medical and Dental Clinic in Town of Chajbal

Today we started a new clinic in the Church of Christ of Chajbal, Quiche.  Chajbal is located just north of Santa Cruz del Quiche on the highway and this church is a church plant from the Zone 4 Church of Christ in Santa Cruz del Quiche.  The church here opened within the last 5 years, but may have been meeting in a home for some time before that.  We came here for clinic the first time about 12 years ago when we were on a scouting trip with the HTI Board and Dr. Feliciano Lux.  During that time we only had clinic in the home of one of the local brethren.

We have wanted to try a clinic ministry here for quite some time and received a phone call from one of the elders about 4 months ago that they would be interested in starting a clinic in Chajbal.  They had not in the past as there were some other services being offered through another church and they did not want to be in competition.  Apparently these other services have stopped which provided an opportunity for the church to offer services to their community  We were not ready to start at the time, but since we have stayed in communication and met last month to set the date and here we are.  So far so good and there appears to be good interest in the clinic.  They had requested a once a month clinic which is pretty standard in this area.  If it works out and the need and want exists we pray that we can make this twice a month or even weekly as it would be a good location and central to a few larger communities including Santa Lucia La Reforma which is on the border of Quiche and Totonicapan.

Please join us in praying for this community, future patients and future people interested in hearing the gospel.  This clinic will be a primary clinic for Sheri and for Andrea and Lisa will fill in as needed when Sheri has other activities scheduled.

 Apparently no one wanted to stand to close to each other!

Action Bible Story Books

Recently we had some Action Bible Story books donated via a christian organization here in Guatemala.  We met with different churches to ask about the interest in using them for Bible Classes and most everyone was pretty interested.  So we created a small list of guidelines on how they should be used and asked all the churches to agree to use them in the same way.  Over the last 2 months we have distributed close to 800 of these story books to about 15 different churches here in the highlands, most with an ABC program and a couple that are not in ABC yet.  These story books will be used in Bible classes, reading assignments, dramas, etc.  Many of these classes are now taught by previous or current ABC students and/or scholarship students.  Please help us pray that this will be a successful program and will provide enthusiasm in the church to learn more about the life of Jesus.

Part of the program is that each church must submit a report and also photos on the program demonstrating progress.  We are currently entering the reporting period and hope to have more to share later.

Here are some photos from one of the congregations, Paxot II.

This is the picture with the Bible class teachers Tomas (white shirt - ABC 10th grade), Manuel (hidden in the back - ABC University) and Tomasa (back right - ABC 11th grade).

Another picture with teachers Hector (sitting in front - ABC 9th grade) and Heidi (ABC graduate).

In another news, this month we hope to start our first book box distributions to 4 churches.  This is another effort to improve the reading and language of children in ABC communities.  Each church will receive around 50 books with different selections for the age groups represented in their church.  This our answer to a book mobile since we cannot afford another truck (and we do not want another truck).  Each church will keep the book box for 4 months and then we will pass one to another church.

Thank you for your continued support and thanks to all of you who have helped donate books to the book box program.  Please keep sending books!

Picture of part of our staff - great group of people!

Hard working, Christ-centered and family oriented...Could not ask for a better team.