Sunday morning

I am home, safe and sound. It is so good to see Lyn! Brice is in Ohio with his sister, so I won't see him until Friday :-(

The last day in Antigua was so wonderful. It felt like I was on holiday! The ancient town is gorgeous and the weather was cool and low humidity. A nice change! :-) I did find out that there is also an Antigua near the Virgin Islands, so in case you think you've heard of Antigua, that may be the one you've heard of. The Antigua I was in was the original capital of Guatemala before being destroyed by an earthquake (in the 1600s, I believe) and eventually moved into the valley, Guatemala City. We shopped and walked in the markets and stayed in a gorgeous, swanky hotel. It was a beautiful ending to an incredible week!

It's good to be home. :-)

Thursday evening

Wow! I haven't been able to get online since Tuesday morning. The internet service here is via satellite so if the weather is bad (cloud cover or rain - both common!) then internet service is intermittent at best and, more likely, non-existent. But I am so thankful that I have it at all, so I will NOT complain! I spent Tuesday working in sterilization instead of going out into the villages to deliver items for ABC. Wednesday was the day I got to go out and it was incredible getting to see the villages up close and personal as well as the homes of some of the families. I was truly humbled to see how these people live and still all smiles...especially the children. I've taken over 100 photos. I can't wait to share them all with you. The families we donated goods to were all so thankful. They hugged each one of us (and there were six!) each time. I don't mean a half way pat on the back, I mean a HUG! It was awesome. The love of God shined out of each precious face. I have made some amazing friends. I have laughed so much this week, my face hurts. We drove to a water fall today - partly on a road you can hardly call a road - and I nearly fell off the back of a pick-up truck. So, today, my two best friends are Laura and Adam who pulled me back in the truck before I fell to the rockbed road. :-) The teenagers here this week have been so uplifting. I am encouraged that Brice will be here in a couple of years uplifting others as well.

I can't wait until tomorrow. We will drive to Antigua (about 2 hours) to shop and stay in a beautiful hotel and eat in a restaurant. One of my new friends, Julie, knows exactly where to take me to buy beads! YEAH!! Two other of my new friends, Laura and Hannah, have spent the last three weeks in Antigua in language school, so they will show me around as well. We need to leave Antigua at 3:30am Saturday morning to get to Guatemala City for our flight out at 6:30. I should be back in Greensboro by 5:30 and then will drive home. It has been an amazing week and I wouldn't give anything in the world for it.

Thank you for your prayers this week. I look forward to catching up with everyone!
sj

Tuesday Morning

Another great day yesterday! They did eleven surgeries ... which means eleven sets of instruments! :-) I am learning more about the names of different surgical instruments and their intended uses. Alfred Anderson (the person who knows everything about the sterilization room) is a farmer from middle Tennessee (Clarksville). He has been teaching me what he knows. There's almost too much information for very much to stick, but I'm working on it. The plastic surgeons performed surgeries on two children with cleft lips/palates and the results were amazing!!! So awesome to see it first hand...

Today I will travel into the villages with two or three others taking contributions to families (toilet paper, food, etc.) in the ABC program. (Check it out on www.healthtalents.org) Last night Rick Harper (the leader of this trip and the director of the HTI office in Searcy, AR) explained about all that HTI does to minister in this country. Amazing!!

Time for breakfast... I hope to post about my travels into the villages this afternoon.

Monday morning

Yesterday went well. After breakfast I learned more about sterlizing instruments and running autoclave machines from Alfred Anderson, a gentleman who has been here several times and is the expert on the Sterilization Room. He's a great teacher! We went to church here in the village of Montellano. Their singing is beautiful. I recognized almost all of the songs (by tune, of course!). Carlos, the director of Clinical Ezell, lead part of the singing and we sang several in English. I was thankful. :-) James, a 17 year old, spent the day with Alfred and me in the sterilization room. We also had help from Adam, Hannah and Laura, all college students. The doctors did seven surgeries yesterday so we weren't all that busy although we worked until 10:00 last night (they didn't start on surgeries until mid-afternoon). Today will be much different, I expect, as they will get started right away this morning on surgeries. I slept GREAT last night (me and my little friend, Tylenol PM)... after not sleeping well at all the night before, it sure felt good. Carlos made some calls last night about my missing bag - but, so far, it hasn't shown up. Oh well. It was just "stuff". :-)

Sunday morning

We're here! It was a loooooooooooong day yesterday, but we're here safe and sound. It poured rain last night so we were unable to get online easily and it was difficult to use the cell phone, so I was unable to contact anyone to let them know I was here. That was hard for me! After arriving in Guatemala City about 12:30pm yesterday, we had a bus ride to the Clinic and it took 4 and a half hours!!! Traffic was horrible getting out of the city and then we went through several bouts of rain, one monsoon, and road construction. The Clinic here is beautiful, our accommodations are really nice, and dinner last night (made by local women) was quite yummy. I will be helping clean and sterilize instruments today. One of my suitcases didn't make it to Guatemala City - it was the one with all the donated medicines, etc., for the clinic, as well as my tennis shoes, my Teva sandals, my toiletry bag :-( , and my Bible!!! Hopefully it will show up. Rick, the trip leader, says he's never completely lost a bag. AND, I realized this morning, it was the bag I was going to fill with all my goodies from shopping in Antigua on Friday! Oh well...

I feel mighty blessed to be here. I appreciate your prayers.
sj

8/3/07 ~ I'm still packing and getting ready to head to Greensboro tonight to fly out of there tomorrow morning. I will meet up with the rest of the team (45 in all) in Houston, and we will fly together to Guatemala City. From there, we will have a two to three hour bus ride to the village of Montellano where Clinica Ezell is located.