Wrapping up the Year

It's hard to believe it's November 30th already.  I guess we're getting old because the years are just flying by now.  Sometimes it feels like we aren't getting much done especially looking at the slow rate of change around here.  But, looking back on 2011, we can see lots of progress. 

Several of the churches both here and on the coast have had great success in evangelism and baptisms and discipleship and training of future preachers.  We are really proud to be a part of the work in these communities especially when they comment that the clinic has opened doors and brought new contacts for teaching the gospel.  This next year we are looking at how to incorporate even more evangelism efforts into our clinic areas.

Sheri and I got together today to look at our education program.  This year Sheri was successful in kicking off the diabetic education program (classes and patient education materials), hygeine class and de-worming in several area schools, nutrition classes in our ABC churches, as well as some ladies' bible classes. We are putting together a plan for next year which includes starting our Prenatal/Early Childhood Nutrition Education, prenatal classes, Patient education on gastritis, and the most daunting of all--SEX ED classes for all of our ABC congregations here in the highlands.  Be praying for us all on that one!

Our ABC program has been a success this year as well.  Last year we had a congregation with a very high percentage of failing students.  So Kemmel set up a pilot tutoring program using some recently graduated scholarship recipients.  After tutoring, only one of the students who failed last year failed again--and some even had 80's averages!  Not only that, but they decreased the failure rate by half this year.  The overall GPA for the kids went from 65.7 to 71.6.  This has been a concern and special interest for Kemmel, spending time with the parents and coordinators and asking to turn in midterm grades and trying to pinpoint what the kids were lacking most.   What a blessing to see them succeed this way!

Our scholarship students are also special to us and it was great to see kids pass their classes or graduate.  The parents are always so thankful for the help as education often costs more than a family brings in.  Today, we were treated to lunch by the parents of one of our scholarship students, Marvin Calel Macario. They are a humble family but doing their best to get their younger kids through school and even encouraging their grandkids to stay in school.  We enjoyed a great lunch out and talked.  They told us how they had had an arranged marriage (they're only 63 and 52 years old) and how they had been blessed all these years together. Pedro said, "It wasn't like today where everyone is hugging and kissing before they got married.  Back then, your mom found you a wife and you said, 'alright'.  We all laughed a little and agreed that both methods have their advantages. 

So, we feel blessed to be in this work and ask God to open our eyes to new opportunities to share his salvation with others in 2012.

We are getting close to Thanksgiving--it's hard to believe it's 3 days away.  Here in Guatemala it's not a holiday of course so  we don't actually celebrate it the usual way.  But, our annual staff meeting is this Thursday and Friday, and for the third year now, we will be having a Thanksgiving meal together with our fellow coworkers (about 50+).  I think Carlos, our director at Clinica Ezell understands what a big holiday it is for us and always tries to have several traditional dishes for us. However, there is always a craving for the special things your family has at the table, like dresssing and creamed veggies, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, rolls, etc.  Since we don't have the time to fix a big meal just for our selves, I decided to fix a few things at time this week to get a small taste of home.  Tonight we are having baked chicken and broccoli rice casserole and pumpkin pie for dessert.  Maybe tomorrow I'll make some hot rolls to go with some left over chicken! Since Kemmel is not a turkey or traditional dressing fan, I'll be fixing some cornbread dressing next week with a southwest twist to have with some pork roast.  That should hold us over until Christmas!

Then There Was Light

The house we live in has been a real blessing to us.  For the most part it is a comfortable home in a peaceful neighborhood.  However, recently the little callejon (small side street) next to our house got new street lights.  Not just one, but three--in a row over about 50 yds distance.  Two of them shine directly into our yard and of course, our bedroom window. It looks like daytime in our backyard and our bedroom!  It reminds us of that episode from Seinfeld where Kenny Rogers Roasters moves in across the street from Kramer's apartment, giving his room an eerie red glow.  So yesterday while in the City, we stopped at Sears to look for some thicker curtains.  We were in luck!  They sell blackout curtains--hallelujah!  We were too tired to hang them last night so we'll see what it looks like tonight.  I just hope our trees and plants can survive the 24-7 light. 

PLEASE PRAY FOR SHERI AS SHE IS ON A TRIP TO THE ZONA REINA TO HELP ANOTHER GROUP WITH A CLINIC. 

In Everything, Give Thanks

We were invited to a thanksgiving worship service today in Xepocol to celebrate the graduation of two sons of our coworker Gaspar Chan.  This is the third of four sons who have graduated from high school--a very big accomplishment around here.  Their uncle Pedro brought the message about giving thanks in all situations.  He reminded us of the many sacrifices that these young men and their families made to get to this day, and how God was with them during the hard times and also today as we celebrate together.  As we sang beautiful new hymns together and looked around the cramped patio space overflowing with people from the church, I thought back a few years to when Gaspar and his dad and uncle were the only men working in the church, teaching, preaching, visiting, leading singing.  And how Gaspar would wonder outloud how much longer they could keep the church together as all they had was new converts and no one to lead.  Since then, they have even more new converts and some of the other men and the older teens have stepped up to help, resulting in 7 worship teams (preacher, song leader) that rotate week to week, leaving time for others to do evangelism and prayer home visits.  This church has struggled over the years but never failed to worship God and bring praise to his name and give thanks in all things.  They have a reputation in their community for serving others--including non-Christians.  We have learned a lot from this church--especially how to put "loving your neighbor" into practice.  So today we rejoice and give thanks to God for the way he has blessed this church with new Christians, maturing Christians and an educated youth.

In 2006 the church had 1 graduate from high school.  This year the church is blessed with 7 graduates from high school, 2 in high school, 2 entering high school and 3-5 in middle school.  10-15 years ago most of these children would not have finished elementary school. 

The church in Xepocol when we first moved here in 2006. Now it is probably 1.5 to 2 times more people.

Gaspar and Family in 2006 - Noe is in the white shirt and Manuel in the red shirt next to him.

Noe (left) and Manuel (right) - graduates 2011 

Noe in front and Manuel in back

We hope to have many many success stories as these as the years role by.  Both Noe and Manuel are leaders in their church and soon to be leaders in another community as teachers.  God is good to all of us!

Great Happenings

We have had a great couple of weeks.  Of the great happenings, one is an ABC child named Jose Yonathan, also know as Chepe, from Mactzul V.  Jose is a special needs child with some learning disabilities, behavior problems and motor skills issues, but thanks to another ministry in town named ASELSI, he has the ability to go to school and get physical therapy assistance.  As he hangs out with us quite often in 2 of our clinics, we can see a vast improvement in his abilities and behavior.  Chepe is in the Little Lambs school and here is a link to a video of him having fun with the morning song.

http://aselsi.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/jesus-little-lambs/

Also, of note is the men's leadership seminar that was held in Paxot II on I Timothy.  The seminar was lead by Goyo, a minister in North Carolina orginally from Venezuela.  We had 22 churches represented and 60 different ministers who participated in the seminar which included small group discussions.  We were pleased that some of our staff participated in the seminar while the rest of the team kept the clinics running. 

Goyo is the minister of a spanish church in North Carolina and we hope to make plans for a spanish speaking group to come and focus on teaching children's ministry methods to the local churches.  Many churches either do not have children's classes or they have one class for all children ages 5-12, and the teenagers attend general assembly.

A few of these men traveled from as far as 5 hours away via public transportation and dedicated 3 days to the seminar.  Guatemala is blessed with dedicated men who want to lead their churches.

Here are some of the pictures.

 Gettin warm by the fire!

 Small group discussion

The wonderful women dedicated to cooking for the group.

Around the House

Today was a good day to get cought up on some things.  Kemmel worked getting the trucks in for maintenance and on some last minute details for our visting team that gets in Wednesday. I washed and rehung all of our dusty curtains and sheers, folded about 4 loads of laundry that had reached the armchair's breaking point and made a lasagna for tonight's dinner.  I've been working on using up what's in the freezer and fridge as we will have about a week of eating out with the team and in the city.  Our local butcher always puts cilantro bundles in with the meat and if I don't remember, I end up freezing with the meat. Let's just say frozen cilantro isn't the most appetizing-looking.  But, it does work great in soup.
We have a little cat that is about 6-7 months old now and she is a real cutie.  We named her Fifi, which was our first cat's name--I know, not very original. But it just seems to fit.  She also has quite an ornery side.   We let her come in the house in the mornings and evenings to eat and sometimes to sleep if it's cold and we're feeling sorry for her, but she spends the rest of the time outside.  This morning Kemmel opened the front door to a mess of vomited-up chicken skin and furballs.  I'm assuming it was somebody's tossed-out processed chicken parts rather than a neighbor's chicken as there were not feathers mixed in. Let's hope!
Tomorrow is All Saint's Day--a pretty big deal around here.  We'll be driving to the city to pick up Dr. Ruben's sister Jessica (dentist) and his fiance Sandra (physician) who will be working with our visiting group.  Hopefully the traffic will be manageable and the movie theaters and restaurants will be open!

It's been such a nice week weather-wise, since the sun came out.  The mornings have been quite cool for this time of year--50 degrees, but by mid-morning we are warmed up.  You forget how good sunlight is for your mental health! 
This week has been good with some interesting patients to share with our intern Allison Smith.  She got to see a good number of diabetics, and on the last day, we saw a man who had a bad diabetic foot, apparently not improving after amputating 3 toes.  We told him he would most likely have to amputate further up the leg and he was not keen on that idea.  He said the national hospital had told him the same thing.  He is a Christian, and we prayed for healing and for wisdom. 
Kemmel went to the doctor last week for his torn rotator cuff, and was advised to try physical therapy for 4-6 weeks, but also was restricted on driving and lifting.  We are grateful that he doen't have to have surgery yet, but bummed that he will be out of commission for  a while.  Thankfully, our local phyical therapist, Jennifer Hoines is here to help out--without her, we would be stuck with going to the capital for therapy.
We've also been busy with education this month.  Sheri has been traveling around talking in the schools about hygeine and de-worming the kids, hosting diabetic education classes and giving health talks to the ABC programs in local churches.  This next year we are looking to implement not only our child nutrition program, starting with the prenatal women, but also develop sex education classes for the ABC kids.  The challenge is always finding appropriate materials to put together and then to translate based on level of education.  But we are up to the challenge!
Next week we host a group that will be going out to clinics with us and giving a children's bible program.  We spent the day today packing supplies/medicines for a third clinic team and counted gobs of extra pills--we are ready! This is  a holiday weekend for us so we will get a good rest in before we hit the road running. Happy All Saint's Day everyone!

Despite the rainy, muddy days, we have had a productive week so far and busy clinics.  Monday Kemmel and I picked up Goyo Nieto, a preacher from the Brewer Road Church of Christ in North Carolina, and successfully made it to Chichicastenango after a night of rain and more mudslides.  Goyo is teaching our men's leadership seminar this week on I and II Timothy.  So far we have heard great comments.  We thought the rain would be over by now, but were wakened throughout the night by more rain.  It continued until about noon.  The drive was good practice for 4 -wheeling and Sheri and I got to help a 15 year-old get his truck unstuck from the mud.  Thankfully we didn't have any major mudslides in our path. 
On the downside, Kemmel slid and fell yesterday at clinic and we are pretty sure he tore his rotator cuff in his right shoulder (dominant arm).  He can't raise his arm up beyond what his elbow and neck can do, so showering and dressing and driving are proving to be a challenge.  We are going to the city on Saturday for an MRI.  Be praying for him and we will keep you updated. 

Rain rain go away....

Well, we have certainly had our fair share of rain this month--5inches in the last 3 days and 9 for the month.  And we got the light end of the precipitation compared to the rest of the country.  Rivers are out of their banks, bridges carried away, mudslides all along the highways cutting off access even to big cities like Quetzaltenango.  But, thankfully, here we are doing well, with minimal damage, just shivering a lot and tolerating the damp grey days.  The cold does give up a good excuse to have coffee in the afternoons after work (and cookies of course!). So far we have only had to cancel clinic in one town and classes at a local school that closed due to weather. 

Of course the extra moisture makes for moldy walls and beautiful flowers--we are currently getting a show from the local poinsettias which are trees here in their native Guatemala.  I also have an orchid in the back yard that is blooming right now! We just learn to live with the mold.

Clinic has been understandably light but with some good patients to share with our intern Allison Smith. Today we had a couple in because the wife was having very heavy menstrual bleeding this month.  I ordered a pregnancy test and the husband looked surprised and said it would be impossible as she had had her tubes tied.   I gently informed him of the 1:1000 failure rate and he agreed we needed to rule out that possibility.  I told him the only 100% method of birth control involved not sleeping together, he and his wife started laughing and we all agreed that was not a very fun or warm option. Especially on these cold nights!

Cold and Rainy

It's a cold and rainy October day here, perfect for an education day, except that we kept getting splashed-on on our covered porch/class room.  But, everyone was a good sport and we had a great day learning about the eye, how it works and some common ophthalmologic illnesses in our patients. 

The year is winding down and I informed the class that we only had one class left before the end of the year, so they needed to turn in all of their monthly reading assignments/summaries if they wanted to get their special prize.  Of course I only have a handful of students (all women) who diligently turn in their homework every month, so everyone else started bellyaching that they didn't know which ones they lacked and since they hadn't come to class on a couple of months, didn't know what the assignments were either.  I listed out the chapters for the year, and told them as I had at the beginning, that if they turn in 8/10 summaries they qualify for the prize.  We'll see who gets busy reading!  I think I'll have a separate prize for my consistent students too. 

I'll leave you with some pictures from the last month.

Walking to clinic in Xepocol - Should be a good corn year here

Clinic in Macztul VI

PA Intern Elaine learning some dental in Mactzul VI with Marcos

These 2 sweet girls are come Mactzul VI and are both deaf; however, the older one is going to school and doing better than some of the other students!  They are the daughters of one of the young leader families in Mactzul VI. 

PA Intern Elaine and Lisa photo op

Our new place to get some great breakfast from time to time. 

Highway obstacles - These guys were in the lead of a bike race up the mountain.

ABC girls from Mactzul II entertaining themselves while waiting of dental services at Caris.  Here they are making little nests with little seeds representing bird eggs.  See below.  Pretty cute!

Passing the time.

Promoter Class small group presentations

Enrique and Manuel having some fun.

Teresa explaining the results of their investigation.

Volunteer promoter and ABC Coordinator Tomas and his children Dora (Dori) and William

ABC Moms and grandma (middle) paciently waiting while the children are seen by Marcos

Julisa Lux Alvarez

Please pray for Julisa Lux Alvarez.  This is the child that started leukemia treatments a few years back.  She was doing great and recently had a relapse of leukemia and has to start her treatments again.  She has been in the hospital in the city now for the last month and she will probably be there for at least one more month.  Please pray for Julisa and her family as this is a very stressful process.  

Busy day

Well today was crazy busy at clinic.  Thankfully we had our PA intern Elaine Brown with us and also Jennifer Hoines a local missionary PT.  We had the usual diabetic followups and aches and pains and acute illnesses, but then saw a man with probable kidney failure and severe anemia. I think we finally convinced him to go to the hospital for a work up and a blood transfusion.  Then one of our prenatal patients a 45 year old lady in the last month of her 10th pregnancy came in pre-eclamptic with severe headache and a blood pressure of 190/100.  I tried and tried to get her to go in to the ER today, but she insisted that she needed to wait for her husband to return from the capital tonight and would go in tomorrow.  I even talked to the husband, but they felt like they could wait a little longer despite the risk of seizures and death. So, we'll see.  She said she would bring the baby next time for a visit.....On the sunnier side,  Elaine saw an asthma kid with an exacerbation probably from the RSV virus going around, and he responded very nicely to his breathing treatments--that was a happy customer when he left. 
Right now I'm waiting for Kemmel to come home from his meeting with the church at Mactzul VI.  They are changing coordinators for their ABC program due to some complaints against the current ones.  We always leave this up to the church to choose their own coordinators, but they asked Kemmel to come sit in on the meeting.  Kemmel decided it would be wise to take Manuel Sut with him since he is the coordinator in the church in Paxot II. Manuel decided it would be good to take Juan Riquiac the other ABC coordinator in Paxot for backup as well! So hopefully things are going peacefully!
Always exciting!

Kemmel and I have had a good week knocking out some administrative duties.  Kemmel's has been working away on the pharmacy order for the quarter (and beyond) and also the budget for next year and got those taken care of.  We also received a grant recently that enables us to add on some new construction to our Clinica Caris building, so Kemmel got started talking with our building contractor about plans and costs of materials this week.  The plan is to add more storage space, freeing up rooms for dental and for medical exam rooms.  We also have scholarship applicant interviews coming up soon, so he has been contacting all the students to schedule their appointments--every year we have more interest from kids wanting to continue on to high school and even college.  This is at the same time exciting, but also worrysome due to limited funding for scholarships.  We pray that God will give wisdom to the Board as they select the winners o scholarships.
I have been working on continuing education for my board certification maintenance (fun!) as well as class material for our volunteer promoters' class--this month we study the eye and its function and diseases.  I've also been working on putting together our flipcharts for a nutrition program we are starting.  We found good pictures from the World Health Organization to add to the flipcharts and had one of our scholarship students "change wardrobes"  on people in the pictures to better represent ladies from this area. They turned out not too bad. The program will be offered to first-time moms starting during pregnacy, teaching them about proper prenatal nutrition, prenatal care, and the importance breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months. After the baby is born, we will continue with education about breastfeeding, child nutrition and illnesses and routine care.  The fun part, is we a looking to have female volunteers from the target communities to train to do one-on-one education during home visits as well.  These ladies will be older moms who have experiene rainsing children and now, training in nutrition.  Our goal is to involve the young mothers, their mother, their mother-in-law and the community volunteer in all of the education encounters so that we are all on the same page.  We will try to encourage open dialog and exchange of ideas so that familes/in-laws can better support the young mother.  It's a small program, but it should begin to address  the chronic malnutrition in the area on a community and family level.
Tomorrow back to clinic!

Motivated by Fear

Preventive medicine is a hard sell, no matter where you are in the world.  Now, I know there are some very health-conscious people out there who will disagree with me, but most people don't like to go to the doctor, especially when there is nothing obviously wrong.  This is especially true in Guatemala.  Here, the name of the game is sypmtom relief. If the patient can only afford one medication and had to choose between cough syrup and antibiotics the syrup wins every time.  Encouraging vaccines and healthy lifestyle choices and regular checkups is hard work.  Take for instance the Pap smear.  We have finally gotten to the point where where we do 10-15 pap smears a month.  That doesn't sound like many, but it's up from 0. However, being the prevalent cancer that it is, cervical cancer rears it's ugly head in one of our communities at least 2-3 times a year that we know of.  And this usually gets people motivated to come in for the dreaded exam.  We even get husbands bringing in their wives to be checked.  Last month, a lady from the church in Santa Cruz passed away from advanced cervical cancer. She was 50 years old and still had children at home.  The news made it around the churches quickly and the ladies started asking for appointments to come in.  In the last two weeks we sent in 10 specimens already.  We usually do these on a special pap smear day because it takes longer.  But two weeks ago, two sisters came in on a regular clinic day and, of course, were the last patients of the day, wanting their pap smears.  They were scared to death of having an undiagnosed cervical cancer and begged me to do their paps right there.  So, I did (but not without some inward grumbling!).  They were grateful to say the least and went home knowing they had been proactive in their healthcare.  Thankfully all of the paps have come back negative so far.   We hope the interest continues, but we'll see.....

Happy 15th of September!

It's Independence Day here in Guatemala and people are serious about their parades! Everything got started last weekend actually, with various school groups making their processions down the main streets of town. We have high schools, junior highs, elementaries, kindergarten and all of the adult education and weekend secondary school classes. So that makes for lots of parades! We got out yesterday and snapped some pictures of the kinder and pre-K kids--pretty cute. Today we went up to town for our walk and forgot the camera--but I'm sure it was like all the other parades! Last night we had dinner with our intern Elaine Brown and Sheri and got to see the running of the torches throughout town proclaiming independence. The runners would go by so fast, it was hard to capture them on the camera.  

So here are some shots for you to enjoy.  Happy Birthday Guatemala! 

 "Ce-le-brate good times!" Evidence of recent fireworks announcing the start of the parade.

Mayor Jose Turquiz and local crowned beauties leading the parade.

 So cute!

Independence Day Girls

"Solidarity and Tolerance"

Las Torchas--teams running through downtown and sometimes from one city to the next announcing independence.

Okay, we are still here, despite the deafening silence on the blog. We have had a blogger's block lately.  Sometimes there are plenty of things to report on or comment on but you just don't feel that creative.  We have been feeling mentally draggy lately and realized we were just getting a little burned out.  So when it came time to leave the county to renew our visa, we decided to take advantage of some cheap tickets to Ft. Lauderdale and just recharge for a few days in the English-speaking world.  We just vegged in an old hotel on the most beautiful beach/boardwalk.  The hotel was close to everything we needed, so there was no need to rent a car.  (Time shares are a pain, but they come in handy sometimes!) We got back into our walking/jogging program and enjoyed  luxrious dips in the ocean afterward to cool off.  It's a good thing the real estate in coastal Florida is cost prohibitive for us or we would be tempted to buy retirement property! We got day passes for the city bus and set out to discover what the area had to offer (it had Olive Garden and PF Chang's and several malls full of foreign visitors from all over the world, taking advantage of good prices and unbelievable selection-just to name a few places). 
Well, armed with great tans and decluttered minds, we are back and feeling very refreshed and glad to be back in our own cozy home.  God is good to give us respite  as  well as renewed desire to serve.

ABC - Looking for Sponsors

For those who have thought about sponsoring an ABC child with Health Talents International, now is a great time to make the pledge.  This year we added around 70 children to the program from various communities but within the 70 we also added 2 new communities of Mactzul III and Mactzul II.  For those who have come to clinics with us in the past some may have visited the village of Mactzul II. 

We have approximately 25+ children that could use a sponsor in the ABC program.  For those new to the program, the ABC program is a child sponsorship program managed by Health Talents International in partnership with the local churches.  The most important aspect of the program is the partnership that is created with the local church.  Through the local church they identify families in need and recommend children to the program to receive some supplemental assistance.  The goal of the program is to provide the child a better opportunity  to become a leader in their church and in their community.  We do this by setting responsibilities in activities such as Bible classes, attendance in school, attendance in educational meetings and providing some small supplemental support in the means of nutritional protein products such as milk and beans, a set of clothes for school, basic school supplies and primary medical and dental care.

We try to balance the creation of dependence by only providing for a maximum number of children per family and by only providing a percentage of the needs of protein, etc.  Each family is encouraged to keep all the children in Bible classes and in school by using the supplemetal support they receive to use their own funds to support the needs of the other children.  Of course we would never say this a perfect system, but we have seen and continue to experience many postive outcomes through this program.

Most parents that are between the ages of 35 and 50 only have a 1st or 2nd grade education and through this program, children are receiving more oppurtunity to finish 6th grade and many will continue to middle school and some will continue to high school.  Imagine the possibilities this provides the families, churches and communities.  Young people will be better prepared to teach others Bible, community development, literacy, etc.  Of the communities that have been in the program longer we have see students creating Bible classes for the children, women's Bible classes have started, and recently graduates from high school are starting tutoring classes for children who need help since the parents do not understand everything their children are learning.

This year in the highlands of Guatemala where we work, we expect to have 46 children out of 386 children finish 6th grade, we have 29 children in middle school of which 9 will graduate from middle school this year and we have 11 in high school.  The retention rate through 6th grade is very high (compared to a 50% drop out rate average in a community) while the other levels of school tend to drop because of extra expenses of travel, uniforms, and books.  For example to go to high school the student is traveling 1-1.5 hours in most cases and spends around $5 a day or more.  Does not sound like much until you realize that a days wage is not much more than that.  The program has over 650 children in total with many churches that have been in the program 10+ years, so some of the children are now teachers, financial assistants, evangelists, and some are in medical school, nursing school and dental school or are pursuing other professions in college.  The beauty is since this is a family oriented society most will stay in the areas they grew up in.  In one community once this year finishes they will have more than 6 or 7 high school graduates and many more who have finished 6th grade and middle school.

Please consider making a pledge of $30 per month to support a child through the ABC program and join us in our prayer that this will provide a future change in the church and the communities in the areas we serve and beyond.  If you are not able to make a pledge, then please join us in our prayer for this program and it's success to bring honor to our Lord.  And... it does not have to stop there, if you want to meet the family it is always a posibility by joining one of the medical evangelism teams that come to Guatemala in support of the ministry.

If you are interested please email the Health Talents International ABC coordinator Barbara Barnes at bybarnht@aol.com.  You can also find more information about Health Talents International at our website which is http://www.healthtalents.org/  or you may contact us with any questions that you may have.  Our email address is kemmelandlisa@aol.com.

Here are some pictures of kids that need sponsors.

Gabriela 

Carolina

Rosa

Tomas (started high school this year)

Esvin

 Elias

David

This is David's family and his sister Juana (with her hand raised) is also needing a sponsor.  Dad works in agriculture as a day laborer and mom weaves and both are active in the local church of Mactzul II.

Thanks for visiting our blog!

Suzuki hard at work in Santa Cruz parade

Here is a picture of the 1987 Suzuki (still runs like a champ) hard at work in the Santa Cruz parade.  A family from Pacaja Xesic where the Voces Acapella singing group is from opened up a flower shop in Santa Cruz and were advertising.  The cart was built by Salome Alvarez and the store is run by his sister Marta.  Very nice cart - hopefully he will have an oppurtunity to rent it out and also maybe make some to sell. 

Great photos from ABC Program in Xejox

Here are some great photos taken of the ABC program in Xejox by Jeff - Thanks Jeff!

This is the coordinator Pedro

This is the other coordinator Benito and his family

Isaias

Juliana

Marvin - son of Pedro

 De la Cruz Hernandez Family

 Hugo Leonel

Group of kids

Pabla