Every Day an Adventure

Friday was Heidi's birthday. Matt had cooked for her and had a surprise present. Isaac had a surprise, too. His was a screaming wake-up every two hours starting at 10pm. Every time, it took an hour or more to get him back to sleep. So we "woke up" on Saturday morning pretty stunned and really sleepy.

When Matt stumbled into the kitchen to get some caffeine for us, there was another surprise. The Fickers' F-350 was parked in our driveway. We checked to see if anyone was in it, perhaps having slept there instead of waking us up, and needed a ride to Canilla. Nope. Empty.

So we arrived in Canilla to find that the Scaggs family had arrived as expected, but they were a little more tired than we had anticipated. That's because they had had a 10 hour trip from Guatemala City. BOTH vehicles they were in had broken down!

So what do you do when you're broken down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and it's about to get dark? You call Martin. He came out and towed the Ford back to our house since it had a bunch of construction material in it. Aaron and Joe drove out to get the crew in two other vehicles and everyone eventually got home.

Anyway, clinic was good on Saturday. Mostly routine - and we had lots of help. Malachi has learned some Spanish in his last two weeks of class and was an even bigger help than last time. Plus, Felicia Scaggs is about to start medical school and was helping out, too.

Saturday afternoon we continued our tradition of playing beach volleyball. Except that since the rainy season has now started, it's a little soggier than before. Oh well, it's still fun!

It turns out that Malachi is also a worship leader, so we had a chance to do some worship on Saturday night, too. It's nice to be able to do that since we're always working during church and never get to go.

David Ficker is in the US right now with Craig, getting ready to drive a truck down through Mexico with a load of goodies. With any luck, we'll see them this coming weekend. Please keep them in your prayers. The trip through Mexico can be pretty stressful and this is David's first time "flying solo".

Today was clinic in San Andres. We had a false start when the keys in Leslie's 4Runner turned out to be the keys for her clinic in Chiminicijuan instead of San Andres, but Aaron made a high-speed run on a dirt bike and got them going.

Heidi got a chance to continue to evangelize to two families she's been working on (with the help of her translator and her translator's father) for a few months now. She also got to take a possible bullet fragment out of a guy's chest. She had to carve into the "H" in the patient's "Hollywood Gangster" tattoo - also a first. The piece was small enough and shallow enough that it really could have been anything, but the bullet fragment story seemed believable enough...

She also got to work on a big swollen bruise about the size of a baseball on a woman's stomach. It seems she was on the receiving end of her husband's bad temper a week or so ago.

Leslie and Malachi got to work on a woman who fancies herself a "natural medicine" specialist. Apparently, natural medicines don't work too well on diabetes because her blood sugar maxed out the machine we have. She was feeling pretty bad and they started her on an IV. A few minutes later, when Leslie stepped into Heidi's room, Heidi asked how the patient was doing. Leslie indicated that she was feeling well enough to be giving her own (unsolicited) consults... Yeesh.

Anyway, the first picture is a little deceiving. It looks like the mouse we found in the pharmacy is about to have a pretty bad day. Yes, but not what you think. Leslie asked Matt to "handle" the little visitor she found. Matt grabbed one of the kittens and tried to put it to work. Turns out the kitten is afraid of mice - at least living ones. Once we had addressed the mouse in an alternate fashion, the kitten was pretty intrigued with the remains. Go figure.

Next is a shot of Aaron and Joe trying to catch some of the Tilapia in their backyard pond to transplant them to the pond at the airport. Now that the rainy season is here, the airport pond will keep water in it a little better and the backyard pond is getting a little overcrowded.

The next two pics are why we insisted on a Toyota. The roads are now pretty muddy and it's SO nice to have lots of power, a good four wheel drive system, and relatively new tires. Some of the other vehicles on the road struggled a little more than we did.

Tomorrow is our monthly clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina. Malachi will go with us and help as long as he can before he has to head back to Xela. Matt will also get a chance to take a look at what work has been done since we were out there last to kick off the construction on the new church. Roy's group, Savior's Sons, will be down in July and we're hoping to have the foundation wall complete so they can start laying block at that time.