Clinic

Today we rode up into the mountains.  The place is full of hairpin turns and steep drop offs.  I'm told that before the roads were improved, the missionary family here used to ride horses and four wheelers up to the clinic.  The horseback ride is 4 hours up the mountain and 4 hours back. I'm sure nobody's backside was too happy after a ride like that.  Transportation here is difficult and sometimes small aircraft use is the only decent way into some of the 90 or so small villages that dot the mountains surrounding our valley.  Thankfully Adonai International Ministries (AIM) with whom we are partnering has a flight ministry, which has been used to airlift very sick people to the capital city and to get health clinics set up in these remote locations.

In clinic today, we saw mostly garden variety stuff, with the occasional curve ball mixed in.  We provided prenatal care for 30 or so women.  Ultrasounds are done with generator power (though solar would be better if there are any potential donors out there!)  AIM sees 250-300 people weekly in the clinic setting and does prenatal care for 400-450 women per month according to their records.  AIM also runs a nutrition program to provide much needed food supplementation to at risk and underweight infants and small children (if you'd like information on child sponsorship, let me know) Most women deliver their babies at home with lay midwives here.  I anticipate we'll see the complicated and operative deliveries once the hospital is up and running.  The closest c section is currently over two hours away.

Though the missionaries here have spent a considerable amount of time developing relationships, those relationships are fragile.  We must be careful to act with the greatest degree of respect, modesty, and compassion.  An ill timed photograph can start a riot.  Rumors sometimes abound in small, disconnected villages.  People occasionally will believe that we have come to

take their gold or to fatten and eat their children.  Vicious, backward seeming rumors like this make us scratch our heads a bit.  But, these rumors have kept people away from our clinics for months at a time.

Why work so hard for those who cannot pay you?  Why face such rejection by those you have stuck your neck out for?  You can see why villagers look for an underhanded or malicious motive.  The only motive here is Jesus, and that those who come for care might know him.  Really, clinic is a great picture of what God has done for me.  I was separated from God, but he went to the greatest lengths possible to come after me.   The price he paid on the cross for my pride, brokeness, and selfishness I can never pay him back.  I have nothing he needs from me in return.  So why did he come?  Because He loves me, like the old song says.  And so the missionaries here love the people in Jesus' name.

Below is the start of a health science school. It used to be a brothel. Literally, this building was historically used to objectify and defile women. Two South African missionaries just moved here from a very remote and hostile part of Guatemala. They were literally asked to build a nursing school and (hopefully) a medical school in Canillá by an Christian leader of a large university. These missionaries are impacting the educational system here in big ways. This request for a health sciences school from the government occurred completely independently of the Fickers desire to build a hospital here. Canillá really is a remote and insignificant town. There is currently no education beyond sixth grade available around here beyond a basic teaching degree. for every 1 available teaching position, there are 400 applicants. If a hospital, nursing school, and medical school pop up here, this will be nothing less than an act of God, making something beautiful out of that which was once a brothel.

This is Henry and his new friend, Freddie!  

Matt 25:34-40

McQuillens in Canillá

This week has been a huge blessing to our family.  We took off from the Kansas City area last Saturday, just over a week ago.  Many thanks to my father-in-law, Mark, for getting up well before the crack of dawn in order to get us to the airport by 4:30 for our 6 AM flight.  We are grateful that the kids traveled well the entire trip (all of 6 hours of flight time - a major improvement over the previous transatlantic voyages), including the four seater flight from Guatemala City out to the valley where Canillá is located.   Many thanks to Joseph Ficker for a safe take off, flight, and landing (times two). See below.  The plane made two trips to get our whole family out to the mission station/clinic.  

During the first week, we've really focused on developing relationships with the family of missionaries that have been here for the last 15 years.  They are a delightful and extremely gifted group that moved here after experiencing an obvious call from the Lord to come to Guatemala specifically to build a hospital many years ago.  The couple has a large family, including 2 little ones that are a little older than Abbi.  She's really enjoying her time with her new friends here.  Together the three of them are gathering eggs, doing science projects, running around barefoot, eating copious amounts of oranges, and enjoying a wide array of animals (horses, chickens, dogs, tadpoles, etc.).  Henry mainly plays with the dogs.

We spent our first week here overlapping with our partners and dear friends, the Epperly family (epperlyadventures.blogspot.com).  The week was a wonderful time of fellowship and planning.  It is amazing to see what God is doing for the "least of these" in this rural Guatemalan valley.  I'll try to write more specifically on the dizzying number of circumstances here that just frankly defy statistics - events that can only be explained as evidence of a God who loves the poor and forgotten and has gone to great lengths to express his love to them.

Dr. Kyle Sheets and his daughter Cory from PAPA missions (www.papamissions.org) arrived today.  Dr. Sheets is one of my favorite people.  We've been blessed to work with him and his wonderful family over the last four years during our short stents at Karanda Mission Hospital in Zimbabwe.  We hope to partner with PAPA missions in some capacity for service in Canillá.  Dr. Sheets, the Fickers,  and our family spent some time tonight looking over the architectural plans for the proposed hospital- spread out on the pool table.  We walked the land together where the hospital will sit.

I'm embarrassed to say that I knew next to nothing about Guatemala prior to coming, only that the Lord was making it obvious that we should come here and that He is up to something very special here.  So far, I've compared this hospital project to going to a movie I know nothing about, and being taken by surprise by an amazing plot, lovable characters, and my desire for a sequel.  Canillá is situated in the "poverty belt" of Guatemala, a historic hotbed of racial tension and civil war where the neonatal mortality rate is 55 per 1000 children and maternal death rate is 110 per 100,000 annually.  Women with obstructed labor must be transferred to a hospital hours away if operative delivery is required.  Fifty percent of the children here are malnourished.  It is a perfect place for DOCS for Hope to be part of building a hospital and invest long term.  The folks at Adonai International Ministries love Jesus with all their hearts and are perfect partners for this endeavor.  

Poor access to health care is especially pronounced for the indigenous Mayan-Guatamalan people, who comprise over 40 percent of the population, but have little political voice and experience marked racial discrimination.  90 percent of these people live below the poverty line.  This has only worsened with recent decades of civil war, which left a trail of orphans, broken families, and shattered communities in its wake.  

There is no hospital in Canillá yet, only a clinic which is open two days a week.  Other days of the week, our health care team travels to rural mountain villages in order to deliver health care in rural clinics.  Drs. April and Shea had a great time during last Friday's prenatal clinic.

As you can see, our valley here is surrounded by beautiful mountains.   Below is a view of the property where the hospital will sit, just beyond the big house with the steel roof in the middle of the picture.  We will, of course, give plenty of advanced notice to the pigs, chickens, ducks, and horses that now live on the land prior to beginning construction.

As we hiked back down the rocky hill, from which the above picture was taken, my son (now 2 and a half) went barreling down the hill, which is full of rocky outcroppings and various other head-splitting obstacles and little cliffs.  My daughter enjoyed running around with the other kiddos.  Those of you with kids will attest that boys and girls are different.  Knowing that Henry is a walking head injury, I was constantly yelling at him to stop.  I got tired of yelling "No, Henry!, Stop Henry!"  Instead of telling him what not to do, I started running in front of him, encouraging him to follow me - to jump when I jumped and follow my trail - occasionally taking him by the hand.  Wouldn't you know, he actually started listening to me. Together we sprinted down the rocky death-trap in the most fun and safe way imaginable.  

I hope I can remember the lesson I learned when he is older and navigating the rocky road of the teenage years.  It's easy to tell a child what they should not do.  It is hard, but much better to go before them and demonstrate for them how to live life out in the positive rather than the the negative. I pray for grace to do so in the years ahead.

"Unless the LORD builds the house,

the builders labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

the guards stand watch in vain."

"Children are a heritage from the LORD,

offspring a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior

are children born in one's youth

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."

Psalm 127: 1,3