Delayed update de Jeraldcito y Tinita.

?Como les va?



Well I thought I would send out an update, since I have been particularly slack in that area up until today, my excuses are: firstly there wasn’t anything exciting enough to write home about apart from that we began the school and I was involved with general organization of the 9 students and teaching some classes.

However in the 4th week of the school we came upon dental week which is always very interesting both the theory week where students practice injecting each other and then outreach week where we run a clinic and practice on the locals. We spent 2 days in Chicholom - a very very cold village up in the mountains – we had to wrap blankets around the patients to stop them shivering and we all had multiple layers of clothing on 24 hrs a day, the rest of the week we spent in San Miguel.

Following dental week we had one more week back in the classroom then this week just gone we teamed up with Dr Jacobo from the city to run a medical clinic about 30 min from where we live. So the last few weeks my excuse for not writing is that I have been busy with packing and restocking both the dental and pharmacy supplies and the general extra organization that is required to take 17 people out to a remote village to run a clinic, oh along with the Thanskgiving dinner for 40 guests on Thursday the 23rd.

Two really encouraging things for myself have been, during our dental week we were joined by Milton (the oldest son of a local man we work with here) and Jeremias (a nurse we worked with during the last school outreach) for both the lecture and outreach phase, so now they are able to take those skills and use them for educating people about oral hygiene and perform cleanings in the communities where they live on a more regular basis, it was so encouraging to see Rabinal Achi people in our classroom because that is the aim of the school to educate those in the spanish speaking community for whom the opportunities to learn at a tertiary level is not easily attainable.

Secondly during our medical outreach week with Dr Jacobo a team visited from the States to install a water purification plant – this is exciting for me because 3 years ago when I visited Los Encuentros for my outreach this village had the plan or vision to build a school (the government would not assist as there was a school in the neighbouring village however it was not large enough as the community had since extended) and a pure water source. So over the past 3 years the community has sourced the finances and put in the hard work to build the school and with the professional contacts of Dr Jacobo have now assisted with installing a water purification system (solar powered!!) in thier village. It is very encouraging and humbling as well to see God’s faithfulness. This village is part of the CHE (community health envangelism) programme that we run along with Dr Jacobo.

So the last 3-4 weeks have been particularly busy for myself and the next 2 at least will be really busy for Jerald because tonight up to 15 youth will arrive to start the SST (in English Summer of service and training in Spanish Salvos a tomar accion or ‘Saved to serve and take action’) it is in non ’YWAM’ a two week camp made up of 1 week of lectures on topics such as – The fatherheart of God, Motives of the heart, Idols etc. Followed by 1 week of outreach serving the community and local churches in practical ways and street evangelism through dances and dramas. They are planning to go further north to Coban to complete the outreach so he will be away for 1 week. Along with that I have been keeping Jerald busy with constructing furniture for our room, we already have the block and plank of wood shelves taken from the example of the Bull’s and the Powells, I also have a very solid good looking coffee table that Jerald built with a little of my assistance a few weeks ago and yesterday we started making a chest to go at the end of the bed so I can finally have some storage – it is looking a bit bigger then I expected but I think we will paint it black since that has a slimming effect. Either way I don’t think it will be finished until at least after the SST.

So apart from that Christmas is coming up in the healthcare school we will be running clinics just before and just after the students go on their vacation, I need to leave the country to renew my visa in that time also we will likely either go to Belize (which borders Guatemala - close but a bit more expensive) or Nicaragua (further away - 18hrs - but cheaper to stay).

So I hope you are all well and wish you a spectacular Christmas/New Years period.

Que tengan un buen dia!!