New Word

We learned a new word today: atrancado. We'll get to what that means in a minute. (Those of you who speak Spanish are already laughing, aren't you?)

Today was clinic in Chicabracan. There was a fiesta in town, so not too many patients were waiting for us. Besides, we'd given all of our chronic patients enough meds for a month the last time we were there (two weeks ago), so we had kinda hoped for a quiet day.

Paul and Lindsey were with us, which is also a huge help, especially since Isaac has not been a very good boy the last few days. It might be because some bugs tried to eat him alive in Zona Reyna. He's probably itching like crazy. We're doing what we can with hydrocortisone cream, but he doesn't really understand that. Oh well. Being a missionary (even a 4-month-old one) sometimes has its price.

We only had about 25 patients today and they were mostly quite easy. There were some good teachable moments - like the woman who gets a pain in her lower abdomen about once a month - between periods. Some months it's on one side, some months it's on the other side. Lindsey did a good job of diagnosing the problem and the patient felt a lot better when we told her that this was nothing serious or dangerous.

We had one 14-year-old girl who has had some very heavy first periods - so heavy that she got pretty pale and couldn't leave the house for a week each time. It's probably normal, but we'll send her for a blood test to make sure she doesn't have Von Willebrand's disease (the docs will know what that is - for the rest of you, it's rare enough not to clutter your brain with it).

We also had a patient who was complaining of chest pain. We're treating for that, but more importantly, we wanted to know the status of her soul. She told us that her husband left her 20 years ago, which was kind of a blessing, she says, because he used to beat her and he has kids with 8 other women. So she's had a hard life. It's a long road for single moms here. In any case, she attends church but hasn't really picked up on the key learnings. She knows that Jesus died for our sins but isn't sure what that means in relation to where she'll go when she dies. We got to spend some time explaining to her that His sacrifice was both necessary and sufficient for salvation. Accepting His gift is all we have to do. It's pretty ridiculous to believe that we can do anything to earn favor in His sight, especially considering that the Bible says that our good works are like dirty rags to Him. Clearly, works are a fruit of a saved soul, but don't ever believe that anything you do is earning you brownie points in heaven.

Anyway, we were lucky enough to leave clinic an hour or so before lunch. The fiesta at the school on top of the hill left a bunch of trash in the driveway we usually use to get out, so we had to turn the wrong way down the road to leave. We drove about 100 yards and saw a big grassy yard to turn around in. Instead of simply driving in and backing out, we just pulled a U-turn using the yard. I mean, it looked completely dry to us. It hasn't rained here in a few weeks. However, we soon got to learn that "atrancado" means "stuck". Not all 4 wheel drive systems are equal. Since we don't have full lockers, we were spinning one tire on each axle, effectively digging ourselves a pretty nice hole.

First, Paul, Lindsey, and Heidi tried to push. No luck. Then we flagged down a 2-wheel drive truck. We ran to the local tienda and bought some ropes (the truck was so full of meds we didn't bring our emergency box that has a really nice tow strap in it). All the 2-wheel drive truck could do was spin his tires and almost get stuck himself.

Then we flagged down a dump truck. He broke two ropes and nearly pulled our bumper guard off. We'll be without that bumper guard from now on. You know you can actually twist those???

So what's left to do when a DUMP TRUCK can't pull you out? You call Martin, of course. He's Paul's uncle, too - don't know if ya'll knew that. So 30 minutes later, he and Geronimo showed up and winched us out quite easily. For future reference, just because grass looks dry and it hasn't rained in nearly a month, don't assume you can just drive somewhere.

Yes, we're still praying for a Toyota!