Field Trip to Chocoya

Our days off are usually spent hanging at home, catching up on administrative work, or spending time with local churches. Today we planned to just relax around the house a little. However, when Kemmel went over to our landlord's house to pay rent today he told us about a great little swimming hole nearby. We had heard about it, and even checked it out on Google Earth! But also heard that it was a little dangerous to walk down there. Well, apparently, the local community has taken back the maintenance responsibilities of the road and the pool and things have gotten much better. Our landlord is a director of a junior high, and reported having a great time over the weekend (with about 100 other people!).

So, this morning we decided to pack some water bottles and swim wear and head on down. The road to the pool is about 45 minutes walk from our house. Once we got there, we realized that we were passing by one our church elder's family's house. So we stopped by to say hi, and they said it was a great pool, very safe and clean. They often head out at 0600 to go for a swim before the masses of people arrive. We had another 25 minutes walk ahead of us (a little over a mile maybe), down winding switchbacks through the pine forests until we started hearing laughing and splashing. Just before we got there, we heard school boys running/sliding down the steep trails trying to beat the rest of their schoolmates to the pool. But, they were nice enough to chat with us the rest of the way down.

It was a beautiful hike in and out of the canyon.


It the center of the picture you can see the pool sparkling through the trees.

Awsome!




This guy was trying to get the nerve up to take a dive.

Kemmel taking a mini lap (he couldn't swim the length of the pool due to a hot and heavy water volley ball game at the other end).

What a beautiful little paradise at the bottom of the barranco (ravine/canyon), tucked away from site. The 15-20 meter pool is filled with fresh spring water that continuously runs, keeping the water fresh and clear. It was cold, but not unbearable--just right on a hot sunny day! We had such great time hiking and then swimming and talking with the other swimmers. After enjoying about an hour, we headed back up the mountain--this time a 45 minute hike!

It was a great day, and we enjoyed getting to know a local treasure like that. If you come to see us sometime, maybe we'll take you down!

This week has been a good one so far. Sunday we had a visit from Gaspar and his wife Juana, and we enjoyed a good chat. We had some local honey that someone has gifted us, sitting on the counter in none other than a Johnny Walker Black Label Old Scotch Whiskey bottle. I saw them eyeing the bottle and decided to clear up the doubts. So Juana asked me what we eat with it, and I showed her some homemade flour tortillas we had left over from breakfast. She was fascinated that I could make such a thing and asked for the recipe. While writing and describing how, I decided it would be easier to show her, so we commenced to making a batch of flour tortillas on my gas stove. She was also excited to see how I work my stove and how quickly the pan heated up compared to her wood-burning stove. Anyway, we enjoyed eating tortillas with honey, and being a kindred spirit in the kitchen, she asked what it would be like if we added sugar to the dough or even an egg? We tried the sugar version--very tasty, but felt like it was too late to add the egg this time. We decided to schedule another visit soon to practice making french bread braids and try to figure out how to use her wood-burning stove as an oven........

"Keep Walking"

Yesterday and today we got some more rain, it must officially be the rainy season now. Our front-yard weather station (rain gauge) measured half an inch yesterday and already 3 tenths this afternoon. Yea! Just waiting for my green chile plants to germinate so I can get them in the ground.

My Junior Meteorologist Kit

Tomorrow is Caris clinic. Should be a big one. Seems like our Thursday clinics have been getting more and more popular. Thankfully we have Rebekah and Sheri helping out.

It has rained a little bit for the last couple of afternoons/evenings, which is a welcome sound to us. These sweltering 80 degree days are wearing thin! Actually its just nice to get some relief from all of the dust hanging around. I mentioned the rain to Gaspar today and he said, "Man, I'm not ready for winter (rainy season) yet--I still have to plant my corn and get busy cutting firewood!
We have been hosting an physician's assistant intern this week, Rebekah Daggett. She is settled in and getting the hang of doing the bilingual consult! She is keeping me on my toes (making me look stuff up--before I rattle off any pearls of wisdom!) Today after seeing patients we checked out her Pan-Optic ophthalmoscope--definitely a nifty instrument to have. Maybe Santa will bring me one this year!
Tomorrow we head to Clinica Caris--should be interesting. We have a 60 year old lady coming back with blood work that might help us diagnose her chronic fever and sweats (she admitted that she grew up on a sugar cane finca as a young woman and has had fevers every three days for more than 30 years--possibly untreated malaria).
Kemmel has been getting things ready to assign our summer interns with host families. We have several families offering up their homes, which is encouraging.
I'll post some pictures soon.

Happy Easter!

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:42-44,54-58

Holy Week

This year for Holy Week, we are actually working clinics and taking a different week off, in an effort to avoid high prices and crowds. Usually we take the week off and hang out around here with nothing to do because of the millions of people (nationals and foreigners)who descend upon the usual tourist spot around the county. So, we are having the normal clinics and have had a decent turnout. Today was San Jorge--our biggest diabetic population. Everyone but two ladies was way way out of control (300 blood sugar was starting to look normal). We asked one lady if she was watching her diet and avoiding all the bread and honey that is tradional for Easter week, she said, "well tomorrow I'm having some!"

It was a long drive out to San Jorge, and a hot one. They are in a valley about 2500-3000 feet below Chichicastenango--and the temp goes up at least 20 degrees. Needless to say we all enjoyed the cool fresh air as we climbed back up to our home in the clouds!

Tomorrow is Holy Thursday and should be full of processiones and traffic jams. Thankfully we are only going out to Caris and back and will avoid the throngs followers. We barely made it through Chichi today before the big traffic jam started. Good times!

Fruitful Labors

When we have teams come down to work with us we usually add in extra communities to our regular clinic schedule. This is always makes us a little anxious, that things go well and the church and their neighbors are satisfied with the service they've been provided. Well, thanks to the hard work that our spring break teams put in, we have three new churches wanting to offer regular clinic ministry to their towns. This was a surprise as all three of these clinics had mediocre numbers of patient turnout. But all them were very happy with the professional, compassionate care they received and signed on as permanent ministry partners.

Thanks to our visiting teams from Pepperdine, Harding, and Abilene Christian Universities and especially to Brian Cress, MD, Gary Hill, P.A., Margarita Garcia, DDS, Jeffrey Webb, DDS, Martin Johnson, MD ,Gladys Lazo, DDS and Ellen Little, MD for helping us out these last three weeks.

Anybody out there?

So, we are back to normal again after three weeks of keeping up with college crowds. We were quite proud of ourselves to see how well we held up even when several of the "kids" would tell us how tired they were! Our last group was from Abilene Christian University--Kemmel's alma mater. It was also special because my good friend Dr. Ellen Little was leading the group this year. Ellen and I went to medical school together at Texas Tech and she also went in the mission field--returning last year from Uganda after serving for 8 years. It was so good to catch up and work together in clinic.

After dropping off our last team we made a run to the border to stay in Tapachula, Mexico for a couple of nights, renewing our visas. As we got close to the border crossing we came upon a caravan of maybe 20 RVs from the states. Kemmel's one thought was "we have got to get ahead of them, or we will be sitting at that migration station for hours!" So he passed them all--luckily there wasn't much other traffic, and they were cruising at a comfortable 40 miles an hour! We made it fine and enjoyed a couple of days relaxing and eating mexican food. We even saw a movie--The Book of Eli--very good. There is a new Walmart in Tapachula, and I was very excited to check it out. But to our surprise, they had mostly all U.S. products but at about twice the price (Kraft macaroni and cheese for $2 a box!). Even the clothes were basic Walmart brands but without the "everyday low price". Kind of a let down--but we saved money in the end by not buying as much!

So after 6 hours on the road on Saturday to go around 170 miles and another 6 hours today, we are back home, enjoying our cool Chichi weather and thankful to God for our visiting teams and save travels all month.