Update

We've had a relatively quiet few days here, except for all the stuff going on.

Matt took his parents to Guatemala City on Tuesday morning for their flight back to the US. Continental gave them a nice reminder to not get too emotionally attached to any luggage you're going to check. One of their four pieces made it to Detroit when they did - with a leg missing from the suitcase. The other three pieces came in only four hours later than they promised (the next day) - also all damaged. You'd have hoped the damage on the first one was from them trying to hurry it along. Not so much. This is not very encouraging news to the family (us) who will be sending almost all of their earthly belongings back to the US via suitcases on airplanes in the next few months.

Yes, you read that right. For those of you who don't already know, our commitment here was for two years. Well, those two years have flown by and now we have some other things to do with our lives (like get Heidi board certified in OB/GYN). We (well, it's not really "we" anymore as much as it's "she") have accepted a faculty position at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. It's where Heidi went to med school and she is very excited about working there. Her main focus in medicine has always been in teaching and ECU is a TEACHING facility.

Dr. Louis de Pena and his wife Victoria will be coming down from the US in June to do some turnover with us and will be in full control here by the end of July when we return. Louis was raised here in Guatemala, went to medical school here, and worked in the Guatemalan health care system. His command of the language, understanding of the culture, and connections within the system far exceed our own and we are very excited to see where Agape heads from here.

Like Dr. Street told us when he left, if this is our mission, then there's no point in continuing it, but if it's God's mission, He will point it in the direction He wants it to go.

Anyway, when Matt went to Guate on Tuesday, our friend Toby rode along. He had some business to take care of in Antigua and after the drop-off at the airport, so did Matt. Then they rode home together.

Wednesday, we got several phone calls from patients who had some concerns we could help deal with. Also, we got a knock on the door from the husband of Laura Hernandez, the first woman we diagnosed with a molar pregnancy here. Remember that she got the COMPLETE Guatemalan Runaround with her situation, spending a week and a half in the hospital for a ten minute procedure. We had told you all that she was pregnant again - this time a viable pregnancy. Well, she came to the hospital for her c-section yesterday. We took her down a gift bag, but she was a little late getting out of surgery and we didn't get to see her. We'll go visit today.

Also today, we have a meeting with some folks in town who are really good at bringing in patients for teams that come in. We've worked with them in the past on other things, but this is the first time we've gone directly to them to help get out the word on a medical team of ours. We told them that the last two times we depended on the hospital to get the word out, no one came. They told us that they know that the people don't have any confidence in the hospital, but they do have confidence in the church. So they send volunteers out to churches in small villages to let them know about medical care that's available. The hope is that about half the world shows up for the Women's Team coming in from Houston in June. Then they can pick and choose the best cases to work on.

Tomorrow, Roy Simmons will come up to the house in the morning, then head over to Nueva Santa Catarina for a meeting with Matilde, the pastor there, and several of his parishoners about building them a new church. You may remember that this is, by far, the most... er... rustic facility that we work in. It has a dirt floor, clapboard walls, and plastic sheeting inside to keep the wind from whipping through. And it's at 10,000 ft altitude, so that wind is usually pretty cold! Matt will go along to help translate, then when Roy goes to Xela to look for lodging for his team for this summer, Matt will drive over to Rudy's house to check on him.

This weekend will start out more or less normal, then on Sunday afternoon, Duane will fly us up to Tikal to meet our friends Ken and Suzy for a few days of R&R up there, looking at the most famous Mayan ruins in the world. Then we'll fly/drive back to Antigua for a day there, come back to do a clinic in Chichi (Suzy is a pediatrician), then head back out to Canilla for another clinic there. It'll be a whirlwind week, but that's what we're used to!

This week they are finishing up the floors in the addition to the dorm. Next week will see them pouring some tie-in beams and then go up another level on the walls. We still don't have a firm estimated completion date, but we're making good progress. Remember that we've only been working for 79 days now and we have a wider, deeper driveway, a huge fence, foundations, half walls, and now floors. Most likely, within another two months we'll be all but done.