A Request and Some Good News (Maybe)

Okay, it's official. For the first time, we are asking for money.

There are seven babies we are working with right now who have cleft palates. In about two weeks, we are taking a trip with these babies to Antigua for evaluation for surgery, hopefully in January.

For both trips (November and January), we will be putting momma, daddy, and the baby on a bus to Antigua and following them in our truck. (Usually, Mom does not speak Spanish and Dad does.) In addition to the surgery and the transportation, they will need food, diapers (they normally just use a rag here and that won't do on the bus!), lodging in the city, and other assorted supplies.

The cost for each child is between $500-$700. You may be thinking that this is pretty cheap for surgery. It is. We are working with the Hospital Hermano Pedro, which is a mission hospital. However, this figure multiplied by seven is a rather significant number.

We have offered to help these families, trusting that God will provide funding for us as we go. We are coming to you, our families and friends, asking you to prayerfully consider sponsoring one of these children. Below are pictures of two of them. With the sponsorship, we will provide you with the full name and information for "your" child and lots of pictures from the trip and some Before and After shots.

The first child here is Osni. Osni is about 6 weeks old. When we first met him, he was placed into the milk program at ASELSI, a mission we work with in Chichicastenango. (Cleft palate babies cannot take breastmilk because they can't suck.) ASELSI provides the mothers with formula and special bottles for them. After a few visits, Osni started losing weight. When the workers started asking Mom some questions, she said that she didn't want to get too attached to him because everyone in her village told her that he was going to die. The workers showed her some pictures (before and after) of other babies that they've worked with and she got encouraged. He has since put on 2 1/2 pounds (including half a pound in the last week!).

The second child here is Ricardo. Ricardo is less than a week old and has a double cleft. He is a twin. His mother took the "good" twin and abandoned him. The woman holding him here is a local woman who offered to take him in. We don't know how permanent that situation is, but she is a very sweet lady and we're going to help as much as we can.

So if you feel like you're being led to sponsor one of these children, please let us know and we'll help work out the details of how and where to send the support. Again, please pray about this. We don't like to ask for money unless it's really needed for certain specific situations, but here are seven of them.

In other news, some of you may remember the two women we had with molar pregnancies. We saw them both today. Jacinta, the second one, came to our clinic today for a follow-up visit. We are going to work with her in the following weeks to ensure that everything is going well with her. Laura, the first one (who spent 10 days in the hospital here for a 10 minute surgery), has not been coming to our clinic. So we went to her. Cecy, our translator at ASELSI, knew where Laura lived and took us there. Ambush medicine at its finest!

We brought our ultrasound (which gets quite heavy when you lug it far enough up a mountain) and checked her right there in her one room house. We then convinced them to ride into Quiche with us to get her Beta-HCG test to ensure that all of the mole is gone. We paid for the test, since they are obviously a little resource-limited, and should get the results in a day or two. Pray for her results to come back ZERO!

The third pic is Cecy and Heidi walking towards the house (which was up a pretty significant incline, then across a field, through a cornfield, and down a little hill).

The last pic is Heidi and Matt next to Laura's house. This was Cecy's first time taking a picture, we think, since she initially pointed the camera at herself... Not bad, huh?