It has been a great trip so far.  From Monday through Thursday we have held clinics in four different villages at varying distances from Chichi.  For all of these villages this was the first time a medical clinic had been held there.  The clinic on Tuesday was very remote and the clinic yesterday was held at a church in a city about a two hour drive from Chichicastenango.  All clinics, as always, were hosted by the local church and it is so great to help support the local pastors and their churches in this outreach effort as well as be able to serve Christ and show the Guatemalan people the love of Christ by the members of our clinic team.  The Guatemalans are such beautiful people and so very grateful for the medical care and medications we were able to provide to them.  But they are even more appreciative knowing that these wonderful people from Grace Community Church, with whom Diane and I are most privileged to serve, have given of their time and talents on their spring break to serve Christ in Guatemala.  Each day our clinic team has been outstanding and each team member brings their own God given gifts and talents to serve these people in need in their own unique way.  But I continue to grow in my appreciation of how well our Grace teams not only love and serve the Guatemalans but also how well our team serves each other.  The clinics are so busy and at times a little chaotic but each person on our team is constantly checking in on each other to make sure they are OK, to see if they need anything, and most of all to provide encouragement.  Yesterday we did not bring enough lunches with us and several of our team members were without a lunch.  Then our team began sharing their power bars and granola bars with each other and as soon as one of us got one we were willing to give it up to another who had not had a lunch even if that meant we would go without.  It was really cool to see how much everyone cared about each other.  Linda saw a renal patient yesterday who did his own peritoneal dialysis on himself and only saw his doctor once a month to pick up his dialysis catheters.  He had not had labs checked for a year.  His blood pressure was very high and he had a lot of swelling in both legs.  We were able to call one of our nephrologist colleagues at the hospital at which we work and get a renal consult from him while here in Guatemala and then provide the patient the needed instructions to share with his local physician to help resolve his current problems.  We have identified several patients who need surgery and will work with Matt Capehart to refer them to the Chichi hospital to get the care they need.  I won’t have time to mention everyone who has served in such an outstanding manner at our clinics.  Kathy and Karen have been such awesome nurses in our triage area every day.  They have been so outstanding in the love and caring they have shown to the patients all week and their great nursing skills that has added so much to the quality of care we have provided to our patients.  Karen also brought a number of items with her to Guatemala, including some glasses that her daughter had once used and God had led her to bring those eye glasses to Guatemala.  One young girl checked into clinic with symptoms of difficulty with her vision.  Karen gave the glasses to the girl and she was suddenly able to see clearly and no longer had a need to see a physician as her symptoms had resolved through this one act of kindness.  Linda and Connie have been outstanding as my physician colleagues and the patients, the local churches, and our entire team have been so grateful to have such great physicians serving with us here.  The pharmacy has been led by my beloved wife, Diane, who has served with such great joy and caring and she has truly blessed not just the Guatemalans we have served but everyone of us that has been so grateful for the infectious joy with which she serves.  Amanda and Greg served in the pharmacy at various times this week.  Both are fluent in Spanish and were in their element in being the person providing instructions to the patients in their own language telling them what each medicine was being prescribed for and the correct manner to take their medications.  They served in this capacity with great joy and that was clearly evident to the patients whose lives they touched and all of us as well.  Many other members of our team served in the pharmacy throughout the week, counting pills, filling, and dispensing prescriptions.  This included Kate, Alisa, Cam, Aaron, Mia, Emma, Austin, Doug (back for an encore performance), Claire, Kathy (when not in triage), Connie (when not being a doc), and Tim.  I hope I didn’t leave anyone out and if so will add them on a subsequent entry.  We saw between 116 patients on a day when we had only two docs serving to a high of 147 patients on our busiest day.  Another really cool part of each clinic was the activities for the kids.  Many people from our team were involved in leading and playing with the Guatemalan children.  Abi was outstanding with the kids as were so many other team members.  I can’t write much about what happened as the docs are mostly in their exam rooms seeing patients and only come out occasionally so I missed most of what happened with the kid’s activities.  I will leave it to others to blog about all of the great things that happened.
Ken.