A Year in the Life...

Wow! Can anyone believe that it's really been a whole year since many of us were waiting out Tropical Storm Tammie to see if we would actually finally get to go through with our crazy re-arranged wedding plans?! It seems like yesterday in so many ways, yet so much has happened since then! We are thrilled to have the opportunity to take a few days off to reflect upon a lot of that down at Lake Atitlan. We are told we will truly be surrounded by God's (and Guatemala's!) beauty there, and are looking forward to the R and R...

One thing that we feel quite compelled to reflect upon as we celebrate our year together is, once again, just how blessed we are in so many ways to be living the lives we are living. We are so fortunate just to be born in to the country, families, and education and health care systems that we were born in to! Some follow-up on recent patients may help you all put our lives in to perspective a little more, as it has for us...

Many of you remember and have been praying for Juana, the 3 month old, less than 6-lb baby with severe malnutrition that we had brought here to the hospital in Quiche. (If not, this is an excellent opportunity to re-read the story about our chicken!... still one of our all-time favorites) She had been doing well according to the doctors here, and had been moved on to a "malnutrition recovery" ward last week. From what we were told, they were expecting a long process (likely up to two months in the hospital!), but they were expecting the baby to live and continue to grow. Saturday morning, however, I received a cell phone call from one of the patients in the same ward with Rosa, Juana's mom. She did Rosa the favor of calling to inform me that her baby passed away overnight, since Rosa does not speak Spanish nor does she even know a telephone number for any of her family members! Can you even imagine being stuck at a hospital, with a dead baby that they will not let you take out of the hospital unless you provide a casket for it, not being able to communicate with anyone very well at all, and not even being able to get in touch with your family?! Again, we are blessed to live in a very different world than many of our patients do.

Anyway, Matt once again stepped up to help this family, by driving seven of them in the truck to the hospital to pick up Rosa and take care of funeral arrangements. This drive is over two hours one-way, and very tiring. It was once again raining, but at least this time there was no chicken to worry about. The saddest part of this whole story is that they came to clinic today and told us that the husband/baby's father had gotten drunk again last night, and that the family is considering taking out a restraining order against him. This breaks our hearts, because it seems that all the progress we thought we might have been making with him towards his salvation is lost. We know our God is stronger and smarter than that, though, and hope that you all will continue to pray with us for this lost young man. His name is Andres.

On a lighter note, we did finally hear from the husband of our lady with the second molar pregnancy we diagnosed again. He finally got her here to the hospital yesterday, and now she will hopefully get her surgery as soon as the family can come up with three blood donors for her. In the meantime, though, at least they can operate emergently if she starts to bleed heavily, which was our concern as she sat at home and waited for the last several weeks!

Other prayer requests include a young four-year old boy who likely has juvenile-onset diabetes (he will come in for a formal diagnostic test next week, and we will begin the very difficult process of family education and acquisition of insulin, etc...) He lives in the middle of nowhere outside of Canilla, and this will be a very difficult situation for all involved. Also, I'm not sure if we've mentioned we're now up to FOUR cleft palate patients who we will try to get down to Antigua in November for evaluation for surgery. The oldest is only about six months old, and the prayer is that these babies receive enough nutrition through their malformed mouths to keep them alive and healthy long enough to get their surgery done! We may try to take the little boy with the facial tumor on this adventure also... Wish us luck.

Sorry this is such a long entry, but that's what happens when Matt leaves Heidi unsupervised at the computer! Thank you all for your well-wishes, cards, emails, and letters especially around our anniversary. We will likely be "incommunicado" for the next few days (we hope!) as we celebrate...