We Need Water!

Yes, this just looks like a 5 gallon jug of water. But it's not. It's one of 3 jugs that Will and I brought up from one of the new springs that we have way down below the property. I mean 'wayyyyyyyyyy down' the property. We hiked in carrying the 3 empty jugs and hiked vertical to get them out. My neck and shoulder are sore from lugging them back to the ATV as we precariously drove them back up the windy terrain to the house. We ran out of water 3 days ago after a LOUD thunder and lightening storm. One of the lines broke and so we are all on a water ration. A water ration......ha, ha, ha. How ironic when we have 5 new springs gushing out of the mountain. I get nervous watching it thinking that it's all going to gush permanently out of the property and we will have to go to our neighbor below and ask him to borrow some back. I was half-tempted to bring a bar of soap and do a little shower under one of those gushers. Now, I'm wishing I had. Josh and Allison, the medical students and future P.A.'s are pictured above. They have joined us for a month, helping us out here with the children and volunteering with Dr. Tun at the clinic in San Lucas. Last night, Josh heard the rain begin and so he left the dinner table and ran to take a quick shower outside while the rain was pouring in torrents. Unfortunately, it stopped after 5 minutes or so but not before he got the rest of the shampoo out of his hair. We are all going to do dreadlocks here pretty soon. Thank goodness for baseball caps. Water is such a precious commodity. Here or anywhere, and you don't know how much you need it until you can't get ahold of it readily. We've had to jump into the pool for our bath.....nice.

First Day of My Summer Vacation...

The weather has let up and it's incredible! Beautiful blue morning skies, lots of sun, even a gentle breeze now and then. Oh, how I miss it through all this monsoon weather. I just sit on the steps near the patio and stare straight into the sun with my cup of coffee. Very satisfying. Here I am with our grandson Ryan who came to visit us for 3 1/2 weeks! We are swimming in our very loooonnnnng cistern! I wish you could see the beautiful wildflowers that we planted nearby ~ gorgeous. Lots of color, and a great place to have some quiet time. It's embarrasing that my grandson is in his shorts and I'm swimming in my wetsuit, but I'm a chicken when it comes to cold water. We just simply fill it and add some anti-algae stuff and walla! A pool....Ryan really enjoyed his time with us. Riding on the ATV with his 'papa', swimming with his 'nana', learning some spanish with Diego, our spanish teacher, jumping on the trampoline. We hope to have him here every summer if mom and dad will let him go :) The chapel is to the side, as you can see. It is really coming along. Will and I walked through it this evening, marveling at how much bigger it looks with the wooden frames for the windows and the doorframes in now. Our work team has done a great job with the walls, lots of stone actually that fell off the volcano during Tropical Storm Agatha. Will and the workers gathered it and found that it really looks great on the back chapel walls. You can't imagine the hard work for the men to hammer that rock into workable pieces and then put it together like a puzzle on the wall. We're so grateful to them. They are a good work team.

The picture above our the little 'pequenos' class, Will, Ryan, and Diego is on the right in the back. We have 'adopted' Diego. He has now been with us a little over a year. Over a year and we're still at it. We are now in a tense called "subjuntive". It's phrases like "I hope that, I suggest that, I wish that, I believe that...." on and on and on and on. I should be pretty fluent by the time they wheel me into the old folks home. Diego comes to our house on Tuesday afternoons and tutors the group of kids that sleep over. Then Wednesday morning, Will drives the kids to school (while I sip my well-deserved cup of coffee) and then we're off to clinic (the 3 of us). When we come back, we have our little kids afternoon school time. It's nuts here, absolutely nuts. But I love them. Now I know their names and all there funny little ways. They love coming here to do nothing but play. They have a lot of room for that. On Thursday, Will and I are back to class to conjugate, conjugate, conjugate. In the afternoon we have the bigger kids. Diego and I are co-teaching that class. He is enjoying it. He is in the discerning stage of whether or not he wants to be a priest. I told him this is a good way to see if he can 'shepherd'. On Fridays, we have the little ones back for their Bible class. I am so much more comfortable with my spanish now. I still have to read the stories but I don't struggle with pronunciation as much and I can just talk to them without all the notes.

We've had two special birthdays this past month, little 3 yr. old Mishel who is now 4, and her brother Rudy who just turned 1 yr. They are the little family who lives with us. Their mother is Veronica.

Now ofcourse, the tropical depression that we had recently. Because I cannot figure how to get these pictures in some kind of reasonable order, the storm pictures show up first. I knew we were in trouble when the rain continuously poured day and night. Normally, we have sun in the morning and at around 1 or 2 p.m. the clouds begin to pour over the mountains towards the lake and we get the afternoon dump. This time, we have MORE landslides all over the main highway and every road on the way to our home. We lost some big pine trees on the outside of our large gate, but the picture above is of the mudslide that was about 25 feet below the chapel, ran down the hill, across the neighbors avocado farm and continued over to the other side of a road that leads to the town below us. He said he had a river of mud through his property. The sink holes in various places along the roads are frightening. They don't have official transportation workers here in the mountains and so local villagers will try to paint some rocks white and mark where the sinkholes are....if we're lucky. Or they lay some branches around it. Coming back from the city was like some kind of crazy expedition. One part of the canyon was one continous flow of mud. Fortunately, we were in the Suburu....I love that SUV wantabe. The other picture is a chicken bus that didn't quite make it through the landslide and all the mud. And the one with Ryan our grandson standing on the park bench is actually a brand new park put in at Santiago Atitlan. The lake has come up 10 feet because of the rain and so it flooded it and the kids were swimming where normally people would be sitting or eating. Anyway, this is 'our summer vacation' though it's winter here. But hopefully not for long. Like I said the last two days have been heaven.......

Character Lessons

Hard day this week. A couple of weeks ago when the kids were here for the sleep-over our phone disappeared then re-appeared when the kids returned. There is only one of the kids that is permitted in our house and so that and the guilty look that followed let us know that we had to have another talk with them. So, with the heart of a mother, I reminded them that taking things that didn't belong to them was wrong. One had been caught stuffing something into his hoodie before and so we had a group talk then. The kids come from one cul-de-sac and are all related to one another. So many cover up what the others are doing. I hate being the police. After that long talk the very next day one of the little ones also tried to stuff a toy into his pants and had his sister help him to cover it with his jacket, unfortunately for him I was right there when it happened. So with two of their relatives caught stealing they were asked to leave. This is the part of being a mom that is difficult for me. I had a heavy heart last night and recognize that this is all part of teaching them about love and respect. I have even tried to head off the stealing by giving them toys before I put the rest out so they have something to take home and play with. I understand that they don't have much so the temptation is always present. It was pretty interesting to see their faces when I was going over the ten commandments and we got to the 'do not rob' commandment. Eyes were darting here and there. It was so obvious that the missing phone was part of their non-verbal communication. But I have grown to love this family. They are the least in this neighborhood. Some of their parents are known thieves. So we have challenges. But I'm reminded of God's long-suffering love when it comes to my own growth or the growth of my own family........

"Eat Your Vegetables!!"

Malnutrition is a huge problem here, especially in the rural areas of Guatemala. But it' now pretty personal to me because of the children that attend my classes. One of the little girls was bleeding when she went to the bathroom. We took her to the hospital, and I thank God that there was a visiting pediatrician. She told me that this little girl's intestines were impacted with waste (or poopoo as we would call it...) She now had fissures from the internally tearing. She was not eating enough fiber in her diet. The father said that she 'refused' to eat vegetables and fruit and because she hardly ate anything (wonder why....) when she wanted a snack she got chips or other junk food. Also, she doesn't drink enough water but her father did say that she drank 2 or 3 glasses of cola daily. This is also a common problem here. Many suffer from headaches and when I ask them how many glasses of water they drink daily the answer lets me know that dehydration is also a problem. Especially since we live up in the mountains. We thought for awhile that the people here are short in stature because of their genes but one of the main reasons is that they are malnourished. More protein and fresh fruits and vegatables are needed but they have come to love what has been imported for the most part into their country: chips and pop. And it cost the same for a small bag of chips as for a piece of fruit, but they want the chips. Some of the children that attend here have rotten teeth due to the pop and sugar. So we now give the kids more fruit and less cookies. But I think I will begin to be more inventive with their snacks. I heard you can actually substitute beans for the oil in some cookies or brownies. Sounds weird....If anyone out there has a good nutritious recipes for kid's snacks, drop me an email, okay??

Our First Surgery Week In San Lucas

A medical group from Kansas City came to San Lucas for the first time bringing a container full of medical supplies including anesthesia machines! Oh how good God is to bless us with all that we need to provide surgery to those who need it! And the parish raised the funds to renovate the operating room, I hardly recognized it from when we first arrived here. The medical group was so kind and provided the space, equipment and anesthesiologist for our surgeries. Thank you, everyone of you! We hope to see you in the future :) From what I remembered, they were averaging about 15 surgeries a day! They worked hard and some days were very long. But they blessed those who couldn't have those surgeries otherwise. I have to admit that a bit of melancholy came over me when I first entered the operating room while a surgery was in progress. I perused the mayo stand and back table where 'my instruments' would be and had to really think hard to remember some of the instrument names. But, like riding a bike, it came back. I had the opportunity to assist a local Guatemalan doctor with some general surgery. I was so grateful. I hope with all my heart that I will have more opportunities to scrub, not only with Will, but other surgeons here and from the U.S. I so desire to keep up my skills. Now that we have 2 anesthesia machines, the Guatemalan surgeon from the capital said that he will bring someone to run the machine and I can assist! Answer to prayer.........

Tropical Storm Agatha

Life can change in an instant. Here we are standing with Dr. Tun on the top of what used to be his relative's homes. You can see in the background the top of another home. I wish you could see the landslide. It looks ominous even now. And now that there are no trees holding the soil in place, with the next downpour, it can only get worse. Only a few blocks down an entire family was buried alive with only their 16 yr. old daughter surviving. We are hoping the church can contact her and we can provide a home for her. The next picture above is one of many 'derrumbes' (landslides) in the street to San Lucas where we volunteer. Again, it's not hard to predict the continuing downpour of not only rain but soil that will erode as we begin the rainy season here. One blessing is that the people now have wood to cut. There are trees in the streets for miles. The next picture is a town close to San Lucas. The landscape is horrendous now. It was once a finca, or coffee plantation. That was then. Now it looks like another planet. Only gigantic boulders and rocks which tumbled down from the volcano Toliman with the gushing rainwater and leveled the homes where the workers lived. Veronica lost her grandmother and grandfather in the landslide. This finca is gone forever and the jobs and the homes of their workers. The force of nature can be terrible. The government promises that the people will receive land for rebuilding their homes. And where will that land be?????Next to another mountain? That's the only type of land around here. Who knows if we end up having to construct more buildings for future use. Will and I have already planned in the past to store food for our neighbors should the roads cut us off from getting to the stores. We have been supplying water to the people in Agua Escondida. They lost their pipes in the storm. Infact, three villages close-by have no potable water. Our friend in a town below us said that his hotel is now a refuge for those that lost their homes. And they are cut off from the surrounding areas because of the landslides. So now we are watching and listening to see how we can help others..........

"...It has not yet been revealed what we shall be...." (I John 3;2)

"Our natural inclination is to be so precise-trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next-that we look upon uncertainity as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainity. Consequently, we do not put down roots. Our common sense says, "Well, what if I were in that circumstance?" We cannot presume to see ourselves in any circumstance in which we have never been. Certainity is the mark of a commonsense life-gracious uncertainity is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed by a sign of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we simply become a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God-it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said,"...unless you...become as little children..." (Matthew 18:3) The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next. If our certainity is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainity and expectancy. Jesus said, "...believe also in Me" (John 14:1), not, "Believe certain things about Me." Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in-but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him.".....Osawald Chambers "My Utmost for His Highest"-------