Beth is Here!

Friday afternoon, Roy Simmons came up to the house for the last time for the next few weeks. He has one more week of class in Antigua, then has some business to attend to in the US before he comes back, hopefully in March or April. Construction on his addition to the dorm could begin as soon as Monday morning.

There is a new pizza place in town and they have 2 for 1 days on Wednesday and Friday, so Roy treated us to pizza on Friday night. It's even better than the previous pizza place we had used, and with the 2 x 1 deal, you get a whole lot more pizza for only a little more money. Woo hoo!

Saturday was Annie's first time off-road with us. She got bounced a little but didn't complain on the trip to Canilla. Clinic was relatively routine. Annie got to do some prenatal ultrasound screening and also some general patient consults. Her Spanish is much better than advertised and she has basically hit the ground running. We are very excited about how much help she will be this month and we're sure it'll be a great learning experience for her.

Sunday started out rather routine, but an unexpected turn of events had Matt and Isaac leave Canilla right after the girls left for clinic. A few hours later, they turned up at home in Quiche, but the girls were still in San Andres. Duane was flying down to Guatemala City to pick up Beth (our family practice resident for this month) and just made a side trip to Canilla to pick up Heidi and Annie, too, and save Matt four hours on the road.

God's hand was in the whole thing, though, as Martin stopped by the house around noon (when Matt would have still been in Canilla) to bring by a potential contractor. It looks like the driveway project could start tomorrow. The goal will be to double the width and length of the driveway, making it possible for buses to pull up. At the moment, unless you've got plenty of power and traction, climbing the driveway isn't too easy. (We've had to do it in 4-low before.)

Anyway, tomorrow morning is our monthly clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina. Our regular readers will remember that this is a clapboard shack of a church at 10,000ft altitude. It has a dirt floor and cardboard boxes lining the walls to keep some of the wind out. One of Roy's first projects (after making a place to rest his head) will be to help build a new church at this location - concrete block construction, electricity, and everything!! In the meantime, we do our best.

The first picture is of Annie and a patient in San Andres. We'll try to actually get her face in a picture tomorrow. ;)

The second picture is an aerial photograph of our house and the hospital, shot by Heidi on the way in this afternoon. The large building at the top of the picture is the hospital, the smaller one at the bottom is our house.

And the third pic is what Santa Cruz del Quiche looks like from the air on the way in. The airplane has been such a blessing to all of us here. It turns a two hour drive (from Canilla to Quiche) into about a 12 minute flight. And it's a drastic reduction on wear and tear on both vehicles and passengers. Thank you God for a safe airplane and a talented pilot!