Catching Up

What's going on in Guatemala, you ask? Here's a rundown of the last couple of months!

Medical Evangelism Training

Our summer interns joined us a couple of weeks ago. They are enthusiastic and love the Lord. The students spent a week in language school with Centro Bilingue Amerindia in Quetzaltenango with our sweet friends Hugo Rosales and Elbia Rodas. They got to study 4 hours a day and have some tourist activities with their teachers in the afternoons. Then we had Medical Evangelism orientation weekend with classes on language and cultural learning, Animist, Western and Christian worldviews and Ethnomedical and Biomedical approaches to healing. Now they are in the throes of hands-on learning in the mission field, joining us in clinics, church activities, community health teaching and living with host families. Please pray for their time here.

"Esterling" and "Mateo" honing their vital sign skills.

Sterling Ross, Easton Faulkner, Maria Cua and Angie Wagle

Maria and Angie "all dressed up and their hair combed" as they say around here.

U.S. Medical and Surgical Teams

We have had several teams join us for mobile medical and surgical brigades. We visited some new areas in the Highlands in addition to our normal local communities. The drives were long and beautiful and the days were tiring, but provided some very needed services and exposure to the love of God. A church member from one of the communities served came to my clinic last week, excited about several home visits they were making from contacts they made at the medical brigade from Oklahoma Christian University. I was encouraged to hear this and know the OCU team will be too!

Iglesia de Cristo Chijtinimit

Enjoying working under the pine trees

Oklahoma Christian Univ. team enjoying a tourist day.

Landon getting patients ready.

Hiking to clinic in Chijtinimit

Surgery teams have gone well, providing General surgery, Gyn, Ophthalmology, Plastics, ENT procedures to hundreds of patients so far. We are grateful for the doctors and nurses and other visitors who make it possible to offer affordable surgery to our patients.

Dr. Wyatt and Dr. Doak on a tough gyn case.--photo by Nurse Shawn

Nurse Katie Ritter in PACU

Dr. Gross's team getting things done!

Lindsey Powell and Dr. Gross hamming it up.

Professional Staff Development

We are still down a full time doctor at the Ezell site which affects the number of patients we see in mobile clinics as well as those referred for surgery.  This year our medical school student on scholarship is graduating. David Riquiac just finished his thesis this month, which allows him to apply for a graduation date and start his licensing process. Be praying for this process so we can get him set up in clinics at Ezell to serve more communities. 

We also have a new hospital director, nurse Darling Ayerdis who was promoted after years of service and experience at Hospital Ezell. She has exceptional people and organizational skills in addition to clinical skills. She is also working on her English to help with communication between U.S. and Guatemalan staff during surgical week. We are excited to see how she leads the clinical staff there. 

Nurse Darling Ayerdis in the blue scrubs helping keep our equipment well maintained.

Evangelism

Our evangelism teams have been working to make new contacts with patients and start evangelism and discipleship classes with the ABC sponsorship kids and their families. In March we lost our longtime friend and brother and lead evangelist at Hospital Ezell, Baldemar Ruiz. This left a big hole in our team. But we are looking at ways to restructure our evangelism and counseling program in the next months. Here are some great shots of work in the area.

New sister Karla being baptized in Montellano by Kevin.

Jose, Cesar and Gaspar meeting with families on their trip in the North of Quiche

Hermano Gaspar checking blood pressures on a home visit.

Cesar, Gaspar, Jose and Wilder scouting out new areas to evangelize.

Milton helping with a baptism in Santa Lucia

Changing of the Guard

We will be saying "see you later" to  Sheri Kretschmar soon. Sheri has decided to officially retire from Health Talents after 20 years, which means her work as hospital/nursing director for Ezell come to an end. We will miss her calming spirit and love for people, but we do hope to see her in the future here in Guatemala, in other volunteer capacities and visits. Here are some fun pics of Sheri from way back!

Sheri and Katie seeing patients in a mobile clinic.

Sheri and Dr. Ruben Romano and me.

Sheri and MET student Phillip aka "Dirty Felipe" and Juan putting on a skit about hand washing for the school kids

We also say "see you later" to Susan Mellor and Brother Dave as Susan officially retires from Health Talents this month. We will miss their bubbly, encouraging presence with teams and wise counsel. But we know God has good things in store for them!

Some quality people right there!

We will miss you guys!

New Year Changes

Happy New Year! I love January and the reset it gives us like choosing a new Bible reading plan and making new health goals. This month we also moved to a different house after 20 years in the same place. We will miss the old one, but look forward to living on a different side of town. It's a faster walk to market so that will be easier. 

Hospital Ezell

We are in our first week of surgery teams this week. General and GYN surgery is up and going. It's a big team of 48 Americans, plus Guatemalan staff but most are repeat visitors and already into the swing of things. We frequently remind each other, "have you prayed about it?" when things get complicated. God is faithful to guide us and provide. Be praying for a good week, safe surgery and many lives touched by God's healing. 

Surgery list for today

Post op recovery

Clinica Caris and Ezell

We have been back at community and central clinics for a week now. Things are going well and we are seeing lots of respiratory infections. We were informed by the Ministry of Health that there is a Measles outbreak an hour from our Hospital Ezell. The 5 cases were all at church activity of over 2000 people in mid December.  All of our staff will be getting vaccine boosters sometime this week by the health department.

Staff waiting for measles shots

Health department nurses vaccinating our staff.

One of our clinic patients came in for routine diabetic check and we were talking about healthy habits. She mentioned that she is reading her bible and knows how to read in Kiche! She has an old, out of print Kiche bible that the original translators gave out at her church when she was young. They taught everyone how to read and she still uses hers. She offered to teach me sometime. I might take her up on it!

John 3:16 in K'iche

Here in Guatemala we have a high incidence of cervical cancer still. We are working with another organization, Faith in Practice to offer more screening tests by training nurses to work in our mobile clinics. Two more of our nurses were trained--Berta and Ada. And Faith in Practice provided the training and certification and gifted us a thermo-coagulator for treating low grade precancerous lesions at the time of diagnosis. We are excited to have a way to decrease the number of patients lost to follow-up and hopefully the number of cancer patients.

Our Director of Nursing, Darling Ayerdis receiving a thermo-coagulator for our clinic.

School Days

Our ABC and Scholarship kids are back to school soon. They are excited to get started. Jose one of our evangelists was asked to lead a youth group activity in Chuguxa. It was on the topic of Generosity. Be praying for these young people to draw closer to God and choose to walk with Christ.

Youth group outing, Guatemala style!