Dia de Pavo (Turkey Day!)

As we mentioned before, Thanksgiving is not exactly a holiday here in Guatemala. So we were in clinic. But, since there are lots of gringos around, we decided to celebrate anyway. And we have plenty to be thankful for!

Clinic was interesting, again. Our lady with the unintended pregnancy (she's not married) came in and we had a chance to minister to her some.

We had a six month old who is having seizures. Thank goodness we know a good Family Practice doctor (Lisa Dunham) who has a clinic in this baby's village. We're referring the family to her. (Dad has epilepsy and is occasionally medicated for it.)

We saw our possible breast cancer patient again and have scheduled her for a visit with Dr. Hoak on Monday and a mastectomy on Tuesday if the pathology comes back indicating that she needs one. Heidi will be doing a hysterectomy that day already, so it should be easy to schedule, if needed.

We also saw a woman whose baby has not grown in utero in about six weeks. It still has a heartbeat, but is not growing. Add to that that another doctor who saw her at ASELSI thought he spotted a cleft lip on ultrasound. The patient told us that she was going to come to the hospital today. We'll go check on her in a few minutes.

And, since these things tend to come in bunches, we had another woman come in with a breast mass. Thank God it looks like hers is just an abscess and not a tumor, but we'll check her again next week and see what else we need to do for her.

Also, we got to see one of our cleft palate babies again. Osni is still not gaining weight. Mom says she's feeding him more, but still not as much as the hospital in Antigua suggested. We are giving her the entire amount of milk she needs (normally, milk program babies only get a portion and the families have to buy the rest). We're not entirely sure that Mom is feeding him correctly, so we had a lesson (the first pic is of Sharon Harvey feeding a VERY hungry Osni).

If he hasn't picked up any weight by next week, we're going to suggest that she bring him to the hospital here in Quiche to try to fatten him up some.

Anyway, after clinic, Heidi went shopping at the local market and Matt went to Shawn and Bob's house (other missionaries) where they have satellite TV and we could watch football.

Later in the day, lots more missionaries showed up and we had a wonderful turkey dinner. (See picture #2).

This morning, we got up and went on a housecall with Pastor Eliseo from San Pedro. One of his church members has been struck with Bell's Palsy. We drove about 30 minutes off-road and then walked another 15 or so straight up a mountain. She is in her 30s and single, which is very hard for women here. Her house is made of logs and planks she's gathered and has about a 5'6" ceiling (between the beams). Therefore, Matt got to stand outside.

We gave her some meds and prayed with her and assured her that this does not mean she's dying or that there's anything life threatening here. She's still trying to carry on with her life - when we got there, we had to wait a few minutes because she had climbed the mountain to fetch water from somewhere.

After that, we went out and checked on the school that NBRI (our funding group) is helping to build. Lots more work going on there. They are in the step now known as "repello", which involves slinging mortar onto the ceiling and smoothing it out, giving it a finished look. It takes four men about a week to do each room.

Oh, and when we got home, a green truck was in our driveway. OUR green truck! We had left it with a mechanic friend, Martin, a few days ago and it magically arrived back and fixed! The starter needed a bit of work and the battery cables were pretty well shot. So he cleaned up the starter, replaced the battery cables, and installed a better bracket to keep the battery from bouncing around on these roads. Total bill: $8.

And, since this is how things work here, our friend Pastor Roy Espinosa called and said that he had a teenage girl from his church who was badly burned yesterday when a pot of boiling milk spilled on her face. So he brought her over and he was right. The entire left side of her face is black and burned. Luckily, it doesn't look extremely deep, but we gave her some cream to keep on it, some meds for pain, and the advice not to pick at the scabs. Hopefully things will heal up nicely (and before her school starts again in January - she's at the age where a facial burn would not be beneficial to her social life!)

Well, that's it for now. We are reminded every day how thankful we are to be for the blessings God has sent us.