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