Meet the team!

Today was, as usual, a long travel day for the team—which is kind of nice since it gives us a chance to start getting to know each other a little bit!  This trip there are two people that I met for the first time at the airport in Raleigh this morning, so it has been an exciting day already.   We are all ready to crash tonight after a long trip to Guatemala via Miami, then up the mountain to Chichicastenango.

Many who have talked to me over the past few weeks know how excited I am about the cool group of people I have on this trip, so let me tell you more about them:

Hale Stephenson is a private OB/GYN in Greenville who I have known since I started with ECU in 2008.  He is a fantastic vaginal surgeon, and I am really excited that he is willing to help with a particular repair for a patient by the name of Tomasa.  I have been trying to find help for for almost a year now!  She needs an abdominal sacrocolpopexy for you GYN types that are reading, but the rest of you will just have to take my word that she needs his help ;-)

I walked up to Hale a few months ago after he gave a lecture to our department about urogynecology, and told him I had a couple of patients I would love for him to see.  He was a little surprised when I admitted that they happened to be in Guatemala, but it didn’t throw him off for long!  Before I knew it, he was signed up for the trip, and brought his daughter along too.

Elizabeth Stephenson, his daughter, is in her last year at Carolina, set to graduate in May.  She is planning to do a fellowship next year that combines some real world work experience with some seminary classes and church leadership in Charlottesville, VA (The Trinity Fellowship for those of you who are familiar).  She is considering applying to medical school after that, so prayers that this week will help her to sort that out would be appreciated!  We weren’t sure we were going to get her down here since she is missing a week of classes, but it turns out her professor adopted her little girl from Guatemala so she had no problem excusing her!  I love when God works things out like that.

Kimberly Newton is a fourth year medical student at Carolina, and the daughter of Ed Newton who I work with at ECU.  I am thrilled to be working with her also, and flattered that Ed has always been excited enough about the work I do down here in Guatemala to get his daughter set up to go with me!  She is actually planning to go in to Family Practice with some further training in obstetrics.  From what I hear, her Spanish is pretty good, too.  I don’t even know what I’m going to do with myself on this team with all of this help—both with Spanish and medical training.  I think Hale is the only one who doesn’t speak a lot of Spanish, but he will more than make up for it in the OR.  I can’t remember the last time I was on a trip with both medical and Spanish-speaking help at the same time!

Nichelle Barbari is a third year medical student with us at ECU, who also goes to Integrity Church with Matt and I.  She is going in to OB, and managed to talk the school in to letting her spend her third year elective rotation time with me.  It makes perfect sense, since she definitely has a heart for missions as well as OB/GYN, but I was still pleasantly surprised that it worked out.  She has actually served as a medical translator in Peru before—talk about a serious talent set! 

We met Al Jones, an anesthesiologist from Wyoming, at the airport and traveled up to Chichi with him today.  He has been down several times helping Tom and is back for a long week this time!  We are always excited to have anesthesia help, as many of you know.  We will look forward to getting to know him better this week also.  The picture below is of Al, Hale, Elizabeth, Kim, Nichelle, and I in that order...

As I said, I am really looking forward to the chance to get to know everyone better as we serve together in Chichi this week.  We will keep you posted.  Please pray that Hale both recovers quickly from his cold and doesn’t pass it along to all of us, and for safe travels, patient spirits, and patients that we can truly bless this week.