Life and times in Guatemala

Life in Guatemala has pretty much been a hodgepodge of medicine + ministry + family.   We're really in a remarkable growth phase right now, see hundreds of patients in the outpatient clinics each week interspersed with the occasional emergency patient, birth, and veterinary issue.  Our prayer for this month is that we would grow in the Lord and grow together as a family.  True to form, I feel the good Lord has proven himself faithful.  

We've had a couple opportunities to give the boys and our house helper driving lessons - which pretty much means the boys drive up and down the air strip.   Henry and Pete are pretty good at it.  I'm sure they will be reaching the pedals before we know it.

A couple of weeks ago, one of our friends' cattle cut it's Achille's tendon - or whatever that thing is called in such a creature.  For better or worse, we managed to sew it up and put a pretty stout cast on it.  Many thanks to everybody who kept it from kicking me in the head.  Also, a quick apology to our friends who more likely than not would rather not be pictured in this blog post- sorry.  The cow had no complaints about the publicity.

We're really blessed with wonderful nursing staff.  Much like in my clinic back home, they have become friends and valued partners in the medical mission work here.  

At a very deep level, we are grateful for the downtime between clinics here.  It is a rare opportunity to get bored (and therefore creative), build stuff, and just be together as a family.  We've been so thankful for our visitors - both sets of grandparents have come as well as some very kind people associated with a generous foundation that helps to support the work here.

We've also had the rare opportunity for our kids to join in the work with us.  They get grossed out some times, but overall we hope it's a beautiful opportunity to "bring your kid to work" and introduce them to compassion, dealing with people, medicine, prayer, through it all. 

"And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

-Jesus

(Mark 8:36)