Busy Week!

This has been an exceptionally busy week. Of course, they all seem busy when you're coming off a month vacation!

Monday was our first "solo" clinic with the 4Runner. All of our clinic stuff, as well as Isaac's play stuff fit perfectly in the back. We figured it would, but you never REALLY know until you do it, right?

We were in Nueva Santa Catarina, our clinic up at 10,000 ft altitude. This was one tricky place for our old truck, since, at that altitude, we could barely climb the hill to the church. Sometimes we were reduced to putting it in 4Low and crawling. No such problems for the Toyota.

Anyway, enough about the truck (guess who's blogging???). It was wonderful to see all of our friends/patients there again. All the kids are growing so fast! And the pregnant women are progressing well. We did have one patient that Paul and Lindsey saw and (probably) correctly diagnosed with a bone infection that he's had for a few years following a nasty collision in a soccer game. We will do our best to treat that, including talking to our orthopedic surgeon friend here in Guatemala. (Picture 1).

Tuesday, Roy Simmons came in to visit. He'll be here a few days, then go to Antigua for a month of language school. We (Roy, Isaac, and Matt) went to Canilla today to consult with Duane Ficker about the building of Roy's apartment here in Quiche. We had talked with a local builder and we think we got a "special gringo price". Duane has built several buildings here and understands the process a lot better than we do. Plus, he knows the vocabulary and the culture.

Heidi had a morning off. No houseguests, no husband, no kid. Who knows what she did here this morning. Hopefully not much. This afternoon, she went to the Hospital Buen Samaritano and assisted on a lymphectomy of a little boy from San Andres, then had two of her own surgeries to do. She didn't even get started on her surgeries until after 4pm, so we will probably not see her until very late tonight.

Isaac turned 6 months old this week, so we took some 6 month pictures. Two of them are below. He has been such a good boy this week. He can now sit up and entertain himself with his toys for extended periods of time. He's eating soft foods and is a very, very happy boy. Today, he probably cried for a total of about 15 minutes all day. And he's getting accustomed to his bedtime routine. Tonight he was especially tired and cried for about 15 minutes after being laid down. The last two or three nights were much less. And about half the time he makes it through the night. The other half he will feed once - around midnight. Anyway, way too much information, but a proud daddy, so...

Tomorrow, Heidi and Isaac will be at ASELSI and Roy and Matt have some errands to run in Guatemala City, as well as picking up some special guests for the weekend.

Friday is another clinic at ASELSI. Since so many patients have been turned away from ASELSI lately, we have decided to add the occasional extra day to try to serve as many people as possible.

Please pray for Heidi's patients today as well as for wisdom and clarity with all of the decisions we are in the process of making. Also please pray for Roy's language school time. It's extremely difficult to learn a new language and even more so when you're in a hurry to do it!