Week of Women

Well today has finished week 2 of my journey here in Guatemala. A lot of stuff has happened since my last post. The beginning of this week we went to Palencia for our first clinic. Here I worked intake, which I am very comfortable doing since that is the main job I have done in the past. Basically I greet each new patient and ask them about their chief complaint and get their vitals and old records. Because we are trying to see so many people, we have three people working at this station. I talked to the

patients and I enjoyed the help from two wonderful assistants, Paula and Geovanna. They are two students from America Latina (the large Christian school in Guatemala City) who came with a group of their friends to help. They did a fantastic job getting vitals and digging up old records.

I always love working intake because you get to greet every patient that comes through clinic. While I don’t really get a chance to talk to them about Jesus because we are moving so quickly to see patients, these people are coming with a lot of burdens. Just smiling and being a friendly person can be the initial actions of sharing the love of Christ without explicitly saying it. In the beginning, I have a list of the patients for the day and I call out their name in order for them to come to be seen. However, sometimes I call and either it takes awhile for people to come or they simply are not there. It was very funny, because this one woman sat near our table and whenever I would call out a name and nobody responded for awhile, she would say stuff like, “They’re not here!” or “They are not coming” or something like that. Eventually she said it so many times (although she was often right) that I joked with her, “I think you’re just saying that so you can move up in line!” We all laughed and took a picture together where she primped herself beforehand so she would look good with the Gringo canche (“blondie”). She actually reminded me of some of the frequent flyers we had in the ER, since

I’m pretty sure she had quite an extensive history with our clinics.

Nevertheless, in this situation in Guatemala, I am GLAD that we have frequent flyers. Tito has created a relationship with this city through the Christian school in the town and by having clinics there on a more regular basis. It is amazing to see how God is using La Mision’s regular clinics to change the health of this city, both physical and spiritual. I have not been here in two years and I was shocked when I would talk to some patients and they would tell me about how they felt their blood pressure was high when before if I would have asked them about their blood pressure, they would have not even known what I was talking about. One lady said her blood sugar was high and even told me her most recent glucose level! It is incredible to see the importance of health education and how much we take for granted in the states just simply KNOWING about basic health principles (though we may not exactly obey them as we are pulling up to get our Treinta sized Starbucks while manhandling a Big Mac).

A special mission of this group of women from the states was to pray for different groups of people wherever they went. They held a workshop for the teachers of Palencia while we were there. Also while I was there I was able to meet

my new sponsor child, Manuel, and his mother since they were patients in the clinic. While I miss my old sponsor child, it is nice to have met my new one in order to more specifically pray for him and his family. When I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up he said a “forensic doctor” which I’m thinking is something like a medical examiner. How impressive! I don’t think I even know what that was when I was his age!

Everytime I come here I work with students from America Latina Christian private schools. All these kids are so motivated and often end up being the doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. of the country. However, I have never actually learned about or seen the public schools. Apparently, the public schools are incredibly overcrowded, and the children can barely hear what the teachers are saying and the school buildings are incredibly run down. However, this trip was my first time visiting this small Christian school that the women from Reach Beyond Borders have been supporting. It was started back in 1994 by our friend Rosita’s mother, Rosa. The story behind it is absolutely amazing to me.

After Rosita got married and moved out of the house, Rosa was very lonely. These children would come by everyday asking for food, and she didn’t understand why they weren’t in school or where their parents were. They

were from the slums and didn’t have a school to go to. Therefore, Rosa took them in and would feed them on the condition that they took a shower in her home. This developed into her educating them in her home and eventually running a full first grade. So many children came for education that they had to find another place. To make a long story short, after many years, pray

ers, and being kicked out of buildings due to lack of funding for rent, they have now found a new building that hopefully they can stay at. It is truly incredible to hear how this woman’s ministry has blossomed from her living room to a school of 220 kids grades K-6, run solely on faith. These kids don’t even have sponsors in the states like the ones from America Latina! It is run entirely on faith. People donate occasionally from the states through organizations like Reach Beyond Borders and Compassion International, but every month is a step of faith. These children are beautiful and would fold their little hands and bow their little hands as the women from RBB prayed for every classroom.

It has been amazing to me to see how the rest of the world must educate their children--often with muddy cement or dirt floors. Yes our schools could use some work and are often under-funded, but compared to the rest of the world, we should be thankful for what we have. We constantly are striving to be #1 in the world in everything, from our science and math education to our economy. If we are even “slipping” into the #2 spot in the world in anything, we freak out and act as if we are just terrible in whatever and need to completely revamp it before falling behind. Yes, I am grateful for growing up in such an “earthly” successful country and that I will be getting the best medical education in the world. However, I think at times we need to step back and look at what it’s like to be #47 in the world in something, instead of perpetually fretting over being less than #1.

On a different note, Rosita told us a tragic story about one of the students from the school. One night, one of the students who was only around 11 years old was looking for his mother who was drunk. The little boy was wandering around in the slums and taverns looking for her. No one knows how but this precious child was killed and his body was not found until 2 days later. Grieving the child, they held a service for him a week later at an evangelical church. One of the boy’s friends who also went to the school years earlier came to the service but stood outside since he was Catholic and did not feel comfortable coming into an evangelical church. Apparently, this boy was being pressured by the local gang to join them, but he refused. Nevertheless, while waiting outside the funeral, the gang came by and killed him right in front of the church. Rosita told us that after this happened, for the next week the children at the school were dead quiet in shock at what had happened to their peers.

While this is such a tragic story, and I didn’t know how to feel about it, seeing the school that day with the children laughing and playing and getting a Christian education, almost seemed like a river running through a desert. All these children easily could have gone a different path living in the slums--they could have been involved in gangs, addicted to drugs, or probably dead. But God took them from that dark place, placed a fire inside Rosa to protect these innocent children, and continually miraculously keeps that school going. Yes it is a small school and merely a drop in the bucket in relation to the problems in Guatemala City, the country of Guatemala, and the world. But despite Satan’s cruel attempts to tear this world apart, through this school providing quality education grounded in the Bible, God is restoring His creation...one ch

ild at a time.

Tomorrow the RBB women leave and today a new team of high school seniors comes from Tennessee. Tomorrow we leave for the “hot place” to do four days of clinics. I will probably be out of internet contact, thus I am trying to finish a blog post now. Please pray for safety as we travel and increased sweat gland production as we do clinics in 109 degree humid jungle. I LOVE this clinic because we really go out and serve some intensely poor and indigenous people. But overtime through La Mision’s continual ministry there, this part of Guatemala is changing. Please pray for God working through

the lives of these people and through me. God has definitely been working on my heart. I don’t really have a whole lot of time to write about it since we are packing up. But after my experience in the St. Clare ER my heart was somewhat hardened towards patients because of the difficult patient clientele we had there. However, I believe that God is working on softening this somewhat calloused heart towards patients. It is easy here because these people have nothing, but I pray to return to the United States with a renewed passion for serving and loving patients, even if they do manipulate me for narcotics. Dr. Robyn who is down here with me said something interesting, which I hope to integrate into my practice. “I would rather be scammed several times for drugs than miss one person who truly needs my help.”

So my goal for this trip is for peace before med school (which He is giving me more and more) and for getting back the bleeding heart idealism that I used to have before working with the pleasant patients of Lakewood. Thank you so much for your prayers and please keep them coming!

En Cristo,

Justin

PS. I am not complaining at all about my job just FYI. It was a priceless experience that I always will thank God for. And without it, I wouldn’t have gotten to know the awesome staff at St. Clare!