Rachel just made some amazing spaghetti sauce for our after clinic dinner. Clinic days are always hard on those who stay home because they don't know when we'll all be back to eat! Chiminisijuan was exceptionally hard to get to today. We got stuck once, had to disconnect a trailer once, and swap four-wheelers several times. Duane actually came to help us, take a sick baby back to Canilla (whom he flew to the hospital in Quiche), and then David drove the car back again when we were finished. There were an exceptionally high number of kids with pneumonia today. After Duane took the one family to Quiche there were another three that we advised to go on buses. It's
always hard to see them go, knowing that there's a good chance they won't go to the hospital. One mom borrowed my phone to call her father-in-law because her husband was gone to the coast for work. She went off to the side to call and then just stared off for a minute before walking back with tears on her cheeks. We pray, but never now what they will do.Sunday I had a good laugh with Paulino. He said he was only half-alive, but I assured him his blood pressure was good. As always he had hugs and kisses for all. The girls don't like it, but I don't mind... After he left this week, his daughter-in-law came in with her two girls and told me how much Paulino likes to come and see us (he comes every week). She said we treat him better than his kids and every weekend she asks him how it went at clinic. "They took good care of me," he tells her. It's not very often or even necessary to hear that kind of thing, but it sure made me feel good!
Saturday...I'm backtracking here...there was an 80-year-old lady who came to Leslie and my room at the Canilla clinic. For 80 she was doing really good, but she had a pretty bad ulcer on her ankle. The only treatment is just to bandage it and keep it clean. After explaining to her how to bandage it, I thought the lady seemed rather irritated, and just as Leslie and I finished her consulta she said, "You know, I'm just so angry!" She then began to tell us why. For a good five minutes she told us about how she lives with her kids and relies on them for so much that she needs, but they ignore her, don't take care of her, and she just feels all alone (her husband is no longer alive). She said that she tried a different church because her son-in-law (who is the pastor where she has been for a long time) is just so mean to her at home. The new church was just too hard though because she didn't know anyone. What we saw as irritation was just bottled up sadness that she hasn't been able to express to anyone. "I am a Christian," she would say with tears running down her wrinkly face, "and I just tell God as I'm lying in bed that he is my only hope."
(This is a family from Canilla clinic that we are helping get their daughter in for a cleft palate surgery)So those are just a couple clinic stories from the weekend. Church at Joel's was good on Sunday night too. I think in the last two weeks there have been at least 4 people accept Christ into their lives.
When I've not been at clinic, church, or studying, we've all been working together on the Aztec. Aaron is really close to being ready to paint it. Just a few last rivets need to be picked around and the hangar closed in. We will all be really glad when that airplane is finished. That's all I've got for now. Sometimes it's hard to write about everything that goes on down here, but today I thought a few stories of some of my old people patients was good to convey some of the clinic experience. I used to think that getting older kind of gave you a right to be a little more grouchy, but my friend Rose Gardner said there's never an excuse for it. I'm beginning to agree, as I see several life-experienced patients that are still laughing, crying, and hoping for a bright future. Leslie tells Paulino that he needs to trade his body in for new equipment...One day he'll get it.
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