Wrapping Up… Already?!

Well, this has been a strange and short week, but we did find out that the "feria" (Fair or celebration) for one of the Saints is in Quiché just up the road this week.  That is the reason no one is coming in to be seen!  Even the hospital waiting room, which usually looks like a kicked-over ant hill, was empty before 9:30 this morning when all of the consults (maybe ten total, five were ours…) were done!

So that means tomorrow we will go ahead and go out to one of the happiest places on Earth for me-- Canillá with the Fickers!  Can't wait to see them again and catch up; God has truly blessed us with amazing friends and Godly counsel through them for years now.  Can't wait, also, to see the broken ground for the new hospital with my own eyes!!  Melissa and Jared are looking forward to getting back to their own sleeping quarters there, too, I'm pretty sure.

Tomorrow we will, of course, round on our patients and likely send them both home.  They looked fantastic this morning!  I am convinced anew every time I come down and operate here that the fresh AIR here in the hospital courtyard where patients recover is just good and healthy for them.  No, my academic friends, I of course do not have any data to support this.  Might be an interesting study to try to figure out though!  It warms my heart each time I see a patient of ours sitting out in the sun with her friends and family as she recovers.

Thursday will be a long and busy clinic day with the Fickers-- it's a clinic they do once a month in a rural area (the one just outside of Cruz Chich that I can't remember the name of for those of you who know the area…).  It will be nice to feel useful there, I hope!  I'm hoping I'll get to do some prenatal ultrasounds with Flor in pseudo-teaching mode ("pseudo" because she is pretty much at least as good as I am with them by now…)  Then maybe I'll do some "translating" for Jared and Melissa and learn a little something more about primary care from them surreptitiously through that ;-)

Today's pictures are random but fun… and oh-so-Guatemala!  The first one is a sweet patient of ours today who was just as enamored with David as everyone else who sees him… I love how this culture loves and cherishes children even more than ours, and how no one is ever concerned about us having a small child running around or even making some noise during their consult.  They really live out the "village" concept of raising children (since typically enough people to fill a small village may live inside the walls of single home anyway here!) as well as caring for the sick, widowed, or poor (-er than themselves).

The greatest part about mission work is that I learn more from it than I teach any of them, I am sure.  Even after two years living here and six years now of quarterly trips (over 20 total!), I learn something new or at least appreciate some of God's graces anew each time I come.  I am so blessed and fortunate to be able to continue having these experiences, and I pray they never end.

Oh-- and the second picture (I lost my train of thought for a second, "shockingly"…) is even more classic Guate clinic-style--

Yep, that's little David with Play-Doh in one hand and a (CLEAN) speculum in the other!! What can we say?  An 18-month old is GOING to be curious about what's in the bucket on the floor, right?

And with that fun thought, I will sign off for the evening-- be sure to check out Docs for Hope when you get a chance at  www.docsforhope.org -- what an amazing work God has done in and through them to turn this hospital in Canillá in to a reality!