Chinique Clinic

Today was our monthly clinic in Chinique. Paul and Lindsey (the Guatemalan medical students Agape is helping to support) are on their two-month vacation and came along to help. It's a good thing, too! Isaac must not be feeling well today because he was a little monster all morning. Matt actually had to step out and stay out through basically the entire clinic because all Isaac would do was cry. This would ordinarily have left Heidi all by herself with the patients, the meds, and the computer, but Paul and Lindsey were a huge help.

We saw around 40 patients today and are continuing our discussions with them about the status of their souls. Since this clinic is mostly chronic patients, we see the same people every month. Instead of just reviewing their blood sugars, blood pressures, and muscle ache complaints, we're also making sure they have a solid understanding of why we're here and how much we'd like to spend more time with them after we've worn out these tired bodies! (At least then we'll be able to understand each other a little better - our Spanish is really coming along nicely, but we're a long way from fluent - and so are many of them!)

Abraham, our friend with the REALLY bad psoriasis, came back today. Thanks to some help we got from Dr. Sugarman in North Carolina and some prayers, he is looking a whole lot better. He's a relatively young man and has really been suffering with this skin condition, so it's great to see some improvement in his case. (First pic was from June - the second from today.)

Tomorrow and Wednesday, Heidi will be operating pretty much all day in Chichi. Like we mentioned, there is an anesthesiologist here for the week and our "surgical fund" can save a lot of money. Anesthesia runs around $100 per surgery. And when the average surgery costs less than $1,000, it's a pretty big percentage of the total cost. (Any of you anesthesiologists out there, if you'd like to come down and volunteer for a week, we can hook you up with some very nice accomodations and we'll be eternally grateful!!!)

In your prayers this week, please pray for God to reveal His plans to those who are seeking them. We are starting our search for a job for Heidi in the United States and we are starting to look for replacements for ourselves here. Also, we have some good friends in other missions who are searching for some direction themselves. Whatever God's plan is, we're happy to follow it - we just need some guidance from Him on exactly what it is we're supposed to do!!!

By the way, please check out the link on the right hand side of the page for "Agape in Action". This, if you didn't know, is the name of our group. Bethany Leatherman has done a fabulous job of re-working this site, so it's all new and fabulous!