Almost a week already?

Holy cow! It's already been nearly a week since our last post. Sorry about that. We have perfectly good excuses, though. Like we said last time, it's amazing how fast time is flying right now and how many things we still have to do before we go.

Since we last posted, Matt drove out to Nueva Santa Catarina to help the builders get started on digging the foundation for a new church there. Our regular readers know how badly they are in need of a new church. Roy Simmons and his group, Savior's Sons, are helping with money, materials, time and labor. They're paying for the foundation to be dug and poured (hopefully before they come down in a few weeks) and will start laying block when they get here at that time. We just needed a bit of a North American perspective on exactly where everything should be placed.

Later that same afternoon, Heidi went down to the hospital to do a follow-up clinic for all of the surgical patients that the Women's Team operated on a few weeks ago. All but one were doing extremely well and that one just needed a wee bit of extra attention and now she's doing extremely well. All of the surgeries seem to have been successful, there were just a few routine post-op issues. No big deal. Everyone was very thankful for their surgeries and Heidi even ended up with a couple of gifts from grateful patients.

The next day (Wednesday), Matt went down to the church he's been recording at and spent 8 1/2 solid hours behind the console. No break for lunch or anything - which is a pretty big deal if you know Matt! But at the end of it all, we thought we had everything we needed on tape to finish the project. We knew that Matt was going to have to record a few things himself (and the list has grown a bit on review), but for the most part, recording was done. On further review, though, it appears that we may need one more day of lead vocal work. Pretty routine stuff - the lead vocal is the most important track and the one we're the pickiest about - so nothing unexpected from Matt's end, but the singer may be a bit surprised! As soon as we have an open day, we'll try to arrange that.

Thursday, Heidi was in clinic at ASESLI and Matt was with the builders here at the house. Isaac was, of course, assisting Matt. Mostly waving to the workers while Matt was talking. ASELSI has a new Physician's Assistant named Cathy. She and Heidi have been working together the last few weeks with Heidi teaching some prenatal care items, especially ultrasound techniques, which Cathy is doing a great job of picking up. Also, our translator, Cecy, is still in nursing school and doing great!

Friday was Heidi's OB/GYN clinic at the Hospital Buen Samaritano. She's scheduling a few more patients for surgery, hopefully in about a week and a half.

Saturday was our clinic in Canilla with Leslie and Katie. This week's clinic was a little weird. They basically thought they were done at 11am or so. That's weird because they don't usually finish until 1 or 2pm. But they looked outside and there were no more patients. So they came in to get started making lunch. Naturally, a dozen or so more patients came straggling in later, but it's weird to think you're done so early!

Today was clinic in San Andres. Heidi's first patient was a woman she's been witnessing to for a few months now. The woman attends a Catholic church here but has not accepted Christ. She has been saying that she wants to but that her daughter doesn't want her to. On the health side, she has a heart condition that we really can't treat but she doesn't really have access to anyone who can (the closest cardiologist is in Guatemala City and she can't even afford the trip, let alone the treatment. Plus, even if we paid for everything, she almost certainly wouldn't go.) So the best thing we can do for her is get her prepared for her meeting with her creator.

Our translators' dad is a wonderful evangelist (and K'iche speaker) and he has been very diligent and patient in working with this woman - praying with her and reading her scriptures - but she is still reluctant to commit. All we can do is keep praying for her and with her and hope that God changes her heart - both literally and figuratively!

Heidi's second patient was a prenatal patient about four or five months along who said that she stopped feeling her baby move a little while back. Unfortunately, there's a good reason for that. So some counseling was in order for her.

It can make for a very long day when you have nearly 100 patients to see and the first two are very time consuming, but that's the biz, as they say.

Also, today, a woman brought her baby in with a very severe case of spina bifida. Given the extremely poor level of care here in Guatemala for babies with spina bifida, there is quite a bit of internal debate about what to even do for her. Leslie has had experiences with spina bifida babies here who have been operated on, just to fight and eventually succumb to infection (the baby's behind is pretty close to a wide open spinal column - get it?)

Meanwhile, Isaac found out what it's like to be an 11-month-old missionary. Sometimes the job of serving others is less than glamorous. We had to make a run from Canilla to Chichicastenango (about two hours, about half of it off road - always fun during the rainy season), then another 30 minutes to Quiche, grab a quick bite to eat, then an hour and half, also off road, out to San Andres to get Mommy from clinic, then an hour and a half home. So Isaac spent 5 1/2 hours in his carseat today. He fussed for about 10 minutes, total, during that whole time. What a little trooper!!!

Anyway, in one town we came into, we were intending to make a shortcut that would trip about 30 minutes off our trip. We bumped into Geronimo, one of Martin's helpers, who moonlights as a Tuk-tuk driver (three-wheeled taxi). Geronimo asked where we were headed. We told him and he got this concerned look on his face. He said that the road ahead was pretty bad. We've driven on worse, and we've got this awesome Toyota that's one of the best off-road vehicles in the country. He said, yeah, the road's bad that way, too, but what he was more concerned about were the number of people he'd talked to so far in the day who had been robbed on that road. It was market day in Chiche and there was a band of robbers just hanging out on that road (which is pretty narrow with cliffs on either side - nowhere to run) waiting for people with money to come through.

So we skipped the shortcut on Geronimo's advice, probably missing out on an opportunity for a cool story and a great blog entry. But sometimes the point of life is to miss out on good stories. So instead of an exciting testimony of how we fended off a band of machete wielding robbers using only a Pooh-bear and a can of Diet Pepsi, you're stuck with what you just read. Sorry.

Tomorrow we drive two hours off-road back out to Nueva Santa Catarina, hold what's sure to be a VERY long clinic (the last time we were there the weather was so bad we only had a handful of patients), then drive two hours home, unpack, repack, then drive two trucks to Guatemala City. We have a few doctors' appointments on Tuesday, we need to visit Dr. Hoak, we need to visit a patient in the hospital in Guatemala City, we have some shopping to do, and then we'll pick up a friend from the airport on Wednesday. We'll leave the Mazda in airport parking for Russell, Bethany, and Tye, who are coming in on Thursday to prepare for the team from The Woodlands United Methodist Church, which arrives on Saturday.

Two pics. One of the road we drove on today. Another of Isaac being cute.