It's a Great Place to Visit, But I Wouldn't Want to Get Sick There

Starting in January, Project Ulpan will have a full-time doctor living in the Valley, bringing medical care to the 7,500 people there closer than they have ever had it.  Turns out that last weekend I had the honor of being the doctor's first patient.  But first, a little backstory:

Ginger and the boys left last week to head back to Nashville for Christmas.  My plan was to hang around for about another 10 days to finish up some water things and help out with several meetings and trainings we had going in the Valley.  My error here was actually making a plan in the first place (see my extensive research on this topic filed under: PLANS, nothing here goes according to).  The day Ginger and the boys left, I did what any healthy man would do - I drove to visit some nuns.  And it only took 6 hours - a speed record for a nun run.  These amazing women have run a health promotion and training program in southwestern Guatemala for about 40 years, and it was very impressive.  In truth, I was along because Kris and DeeDee and Christian were my ride back to the Valley.  So, the 4 of us and the new doctor went to visit to see what we could learn.  The road was crowded and bumpy and full of sugarcane trucks because it's harvest time right now.  Also, there were a few stops where we were searched to make sure we didn't have fruit or other things that might infest the crops there (I didn't mind that necessarily - it makes sense, but I wish that governments put as much effort into addressing the trafficking of humans as they do the trafficking of fruit flies).

Throughout the visit, it became clear to everyone that I didn't know very much about medicine (more on that later), but thankfully I was able to work in some of my best nun jokes ("dressing as a nun is easy once you get into the habit", "you must think we're as fun as a barrel full of monks", "I assume you're Cardinals fans", and so on).  They actually weren't Cardinals fans, though, but they really liked the Detroit Tigers from the 1960's and were pleasantly surprised to talk with someone who could recount Denny McClain's amazing 1968 season and how Al Kaline is one of the most underrated players ever.  They also said that they are working in one community in particular where they have a desperate need for water, and it looks like next spring we are going to "trade" some water work for some medicines and health promotion work.  It's always interesting to me how things get intertwined for the good.

And, along the way, it occurred to me that I wasn't eating or drinking much at all.  By the time we returned to Guatemala City, I was feeling pretty rotten and really just wanted to sleep.  I looked up my symptoms on WebMD and it said definitively that I had a kidney infection.  That is probably not fun anywhere, but in the mountains of Guatemala it's especially un-fun.  The combination of bouncing along the "roads", the drizzle, the cold (it's surprisingly cold right now), the real discomfort in my back and side, and the fact that whenever I went to the bathroom it sounded like I was sending a Morse code message made it pretty miserable.  Thankfully, of the past 144 hours in the Valley, I slept about 120 of those hours.  One of the few clear decisions I made was to move my flight back from next week to today.  Feeling better and sitting here in the airport gave me some time to reflect on another event that occurred around me in the last few days.

One (evening?) Kris came in to where I was sleeping and said "Sorry, but this guy's got a broken arm and this is the best place to help him".  I really don't remember much else from that time, but the story was that he had fallen and had a severe break that needed immediate medical attention, but before getting him to he hospital for setting / surgery he needed to have the break immobilized.  Kris (who could probably use a nap by this time as well) was able to put to use some wilderness training and apply a splint.  The family was distraught.  He was a new father and needed to support the family.  Bear in mind that this sort of injury is often a death sentence in places like this, and even in the best case scenario he wouldn't be able to work for several months, if ever again, and most of the people here live day to day.

The next day, a group of friends and family came and asked Kris if he could take them to the hospital to visit their friend, who by this time had been informed that he needed treatment costing 1,500 Quetzales (which he didn't have) or they would need to amputate his arm.  More of the story came to light as well - that the man had in fact been intoxicated and got into a fight with his father-in-law over the fact that he'd been unkind to his wife and threats were made and punches thrown and just a general sad situation on the family front.  I really don't know any more than that, but I suspect that the story, like all stories, goes back several years and possibly generations.  I guess we have the option to pay attention to the sweet story of a family rallying around a loved one who is hurt and we have the option to pay attention to the story of a man who made some exceptionally poor choices in exceptionally trying circumstances.  Or, we could pay attention to both stories, for they are part of a larger story.  The Ulpan

So here I am - we're about to board the plane.  I get to come and go.  I get sick and can make a few calls and change a plane reservation and a few hours later be finishing up a drink and typing away on a computer.  Another man my age gets sick and faces selling all his property or losing his arm.  However, even given his grievous mistakes he's made with his family, he is currently surrounded by his family.  That's what I want to be as well.  Thank you, God, for a kidney infection because it pushed me to do what I should've done in the first place: stay with my family who is that light in my life.

On Babies

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" John 1:14

People have lots of babies in the valley.  Our family of five is considered a slightly small family compared to many in Guatemala.  Over the past few months, DeeDee and I have been helping with a baseline study of the valley.  Questionnaires are filled out by a random sampling of families in each village on basic health and education.  Questions are asked such as "When do you wash your hands?" and "What do you do when you wash your hands?" (ie: Do you use soap).  Among the questions are also "How many times have you given birth?" and "How many of these children are living?".  These questions are the hard questions to enter into the computer at times.  Some families have six children and all are living.  Others are more difficult.  There are women who have given birth four times and none are living. When asked "Who helped you give birth?", most women answer that the local mid-wife or their mother helped.  One particular woman, however, answered that no one helped her give birth to her children.  As a woman who has given birth, this is difficult for me to understand.

Even closer to home, our friend and employee in Project Ulpan, Julio, asked for time off about a month ago because he needed to help a friend build a tiny casket for their 8 month-old baby.  Only a few days after, Kevin and my boys witnessed a village digging a grave for another tiny casket.  It is telling and sad that the newborn we visited last week doesn't yet have a name.  Maybe that's just the custom in the valley, but why?  Is it because so many die that names are not given until later?

There was a baby born a little over 2,000 years ago who we celebrate at this time of year.  In the birth of this baby lies all our hopes.  The hope that His light will break through the darkness of babies dying and people hurting.  I find that the Christmas songs that mean the most to me this year are the ones that talk of the hope we have with the birth of Jesus.  One particularly poignant song to me this year is Point of Grace's "Emmanuel".  If you've heard it, the melody is beautiful, but the words are what convict me most (If you've not heard it, find it and listen to it).  The last line of the chorus says, "Emmanuel, be God in us".  Jesus came to be God with us.  But He didn't leave us empty-handed when He returned to His father.  He gave us His spirit, and with it, the ability to continue to be "God with us" to a world lost in darkness.  He paved the way for us by His perfect example and then said, "Now, go be my light to those you find in need".

So, I celebrate Christmas this year with extra spaces in my heart for the people in the Ulpan Valley and with the hope that our presence there will be a light in the darkness for them as their lives have been a light in my darkness.  I celebrate with thankfulness overflowing that God's perfect plan doesn't leave us alone but gives us His presence forevermore.  I celebrate that God is with us.



Dry-erase Boards: A Love Story

The past several years have seen some remarkable improvements in technology, especially in the area of communication.  The fact that I can sit at a computer and talk to people anywhere in the world for free by way of Skype, all from a place that's an hour from the nearest electrical service, is amazing to me.  Think about it - cell phones, iPhones, the internet, satellites, GPS, and countless other devices are all so commonplace that we barely even notice them, except for maybe when watching re-runs of TV shows from the 1990s and notice that most of their issues could have been solved by mobile phones.  None of these inventions, however, can even approach the importance of the dry-erase board and the contributions it has made to humankind.

I know there are some old-fashioned chalkboard apologists out there, and to those people I just have to say that all you are is chalkdust in the wind.  Dry-erase boards use markers that, while not quite as tasty as chalk, come in a wide variety of bright colors as diverse as "green" and "blue", and for extra emphasis when underlining something important, even "red".  Black dry-erase markers are so 2005.   Go to any office building and inspect the dry erase boards in individual offices - that's how you can tell who is the brains of the outfit and who does all the work.  I used to work with a man (and friend) named George Garden, whose marker board was epic.  It was always full of engineering formulas and complicated things like "process and instrumentation diagrams" and other things that looked like the washing instructions you find on the tag of your shirt.  And for any of you who drink water in Brentwood Tennessee, rest assured that the only reason that water ever got to your house was because there was a note on Travis Lankford's dry-erase board to build something or fix something or "ignore what that geeky engineer down the hall just said".

So what, one might ask, does this have to do with mission work in Guatemala?

Our work here has gotten busy enough that we now use a white marker board in our planning and designing so much that even men like George and Travis would be impressed.  Here is a photo I took a couple of days ago after a minutes-long planning session:

Aside from noticing that I don't know how to turn the flash off on my camera, you'll notice there are references on here to water projects in places like:

• Sesalche I, where people don't have water 3 months out of the year because their source goes dry and for whom we are building a reservoir and extra lines to augment their system
• Sesalche II, where the 800 people there obtain water every day from the same location where they wash their clothes and themselves, and where not surprisingly there are high rates of sickness
• Sequixpur, where 400 people drink out of a river when we can get safe water much closer to their houses than the polluted river for about $10 a person.
• Benitzul, where we live and where many people, especially on one end of the village, still have to look for water.
• Don Bosco Setex, where we've designed a new spring box for them that will double their supply and are looking to construct later this month.
• Semesche, where a very simple project can get water to about 200 people.
• Santo Tomas, where someone built part of a system 12 years ago and never taught them how to maintain it, so it hasn't worked since.

It's wonderful and humbling that we are getting so busy with what we are doing.  Water isn't the answer to the problems in these communities, but it's a start.  It really helps, when dealing with the 17 communities here, to accomplish something with water or bridges or other things along those lines, because it seems that they are much more receptive to what we say about health or education.  I think that's maybe the point of Jesus's conversation with Nicodemus - that if people can't trust us with what we do and say about earthly things, they're not very likely to trust anything we say about heavenly things either.  And there's a part of me that truly believes, through some supernatural occurrence, that Jesus used a dry erase board when trying to explain it all to Nicodemus.  Maybe a dry-erase scroll.