RescueNet

To Oregon and Back

RescueNet is a disaster relief training program - With the purpose of teaching you how to meet a crisis with the love of God through; First aid/CPR, Search & Rescue, Fire Suppression, Disaster Counseling, Disaster Child Care, and Refugee Reception. They then take what you have learned and place you in multiple scenarios to see how you will respond with the tools you have been taught. To finish off we had a written test and a final scenario that took us 3.5 hours to finish - finding and removing 12 people from a 3 storey building following an earthquake.

As with finances for healthcare the world over, a large amount is used to benefit a small amount of the population - often in a disaster 10% of the people affected actually receive assistance while 90% are left to fend for themselves. Even more horrifying is that peadophiles were the first people to enter Indonesia following the Tsunami in 2004 and that Aid workers have been known to sexually abuse women and children

RescueNet is currently building up teams to be able to show Gods love in possibly the worst day of a persons life. The founder of RescueNet completed the IPHC here in Guatemala (with our current director as his leader). Rescue Net not only has this training, but also already responds to disasters all over the world including Pakistan (earthquake), Iraq (War) Honduras (Hurricane) among others.

Here are some pictures of our last 3 weeks. The participants

Practice getting about in small spaces, entering under the deck we had to find a 'missing person' and radio in.




Learning about assessing a victim.

We are really glad we had the opportunity to complete this training and are looking for avenues to continue learning more about this area of work. I don't have any photos yet of the scenarios but I will put some up when they get sent.

Our next project

So we have been thinking about doing some training with RescueNet (another ministry of YWAM) which is taking place in Oregon from May 3-18. Initially we had just applied so Jerald would be able to go but after being apart for the majority of 6 weeks during the healthcare school outreach we thought it might be something we could do together.

Jerald has been visiting the Red Cross in Coban (close to where we were for clinic on outreach) to complete a first aid course as part of the pre-requisites.

Anyway yesterday we found out we had been accepted - we also found out that Jeralds current visa is not specific enough to allow him to enter the US for this training. So the week prior to May 3rd we are planning to travel to Nicaragua to apply for the correct visa - this does not allow too much time to get an appointment at the embassy but we are not able to leave any earlier.

We are really looking foward to taking part in this training, so hopefully everything will fall into place.

WORLD FAMOUS

The Buzzy Bee, world famous right here in Guatemala!

The real Latino football experience

This is a small game between two regions in Guatemala - not even on a full size soccer field.

well first of all I had to make Jerald a hat since he doesn't like the sun and he had graciously given me his hat so I wouldn't get burnt.

Just the usual amount of security which apparantly is necessary if the away team wins or if the refs make a bad call which causes the away team to win or if the away team just outplays the home team.

Upset home supporters throwing rocks and threatening the referees

The home team capitan came out after about 30 minutes to placate his supporters - eventually most went away although some stayed to throw rocks at them when the refs eventually made a run for thier exit.

My most favourite part of my job

Is getting to find out what happened to patients who have passed through our previous clinics. I wrote during my last post that we had returned to Pacux (we had our first clinic there in 2005) - I put up some photos of one of the families we had seen previously (some twins that were a little delayed in their develpment) the day after the last post we returned to our clinic in Pacux and a little girl - Blanca (about 3 1/2 years old) came through. We had seen her three years ago when she was only a few months old and had recently travelled to the city to undergo surgery to correct a bilateral cleft lip.




However when the time of the surgery arrived they informed the mother surgery could not go ahead as she had a chest infection and this needed to be cleared up. I am unsure why the hospital did not prescribe or provide the antibiotics. Anyway when she passed through we were able to give her some antibiotics and it was so wonderful to be able to find out that she did eventually undergo surgery succesfully.




This clinic (3 years later) she returned with her mother with a foreign object up her nose, but other than that healthy and very well behaved.