Travel Day and Safe Arrival!

Well, so far today has been our typical long Saturday of travel—I got up just after Matt got home last night to drive to the airport (around 2:30 am) and have been going ever since. Leisa, a Nurse Practitioner from California who knows Tom Hoak from his previous days there, met us in Guatemala City and had us beat—she started at 6:30 am yesterday!! We’re all very tired but thankful to be here safely and planning to sleep well tonight.

Let me tell you a little bit more about who “we” are this trip—Most of you reading this know Dr. Chris (DeLuca) Schwering who is back on this trip with a new last name and her new husband in tow! We are very excited to have him share in the experience that we have come to love dearly here in Guate.

Kelly Cromer also came down with Chris and Tony—She is a scrub tech at the hospital where Chris practices and I’ve been hearing about her and how Chris wanted to bring her down here pretty much since she started working there! We are hoping that Alma (the Guatemalan scrub tech who has been in that position longer than anyone can remember) will let her give her a break during some of the cases this week. It would also give our brains a little bit of a break since we could ask for instruments in English again! I’m pretty sure that in English we won’t try to ask for “scissors with teeth” or anything like we tend to in Spanish.

Leisa, mentioned above, rounds out our team of five for the week. I am here with no children in tow this time, which will be a great disappointment to the nurses at the hospital but a whole lot easier for me! We are so blessed to have Matt’s parents, Mary Jean and Denzil, staying with him and the kids this week to help while I’m gone. Having the grandparents around definitely takes the sting out of missing Mommy, it seems! (At least that’s what I tell myself, since the alternative is to wonder whether they do miss me!…)

Tomorrow will be our typical very busy day—market, then church, then start the clinic and work until we’re done! That and Monday when we start operating AND trying to see patients in clinic are definitely the most stressful parts of the week, so feel free to pray extra hard for us then! We will do our best to keep you posted, and we'll try to get some pictures up soon, too!