A taste of the city

Soooo, I am NOT a city person. I don't know all the best places, and I don't like all the business!

A few times though, God has shown me real beauty to the city- like in that photo above.

I want to share on the incredible team of medical professionals and servents I was able to be a part of last week in Guatemala city.

Another organization, Global Health Outreach, gathers medical professionals from across the states, and holds medical missions trips all around the world. I've enjoyed serving with their Guatemala teams for a few years now, but this team stood apart!

Monday I had the treat to join the Optomology crew! These were volunteers with reading glasses, so nothing special right?

Wrong!! I never knew how much fun it was working in the glasses area of a medical clinic!

Everyone who came in knew what to expect, and everyone walked away with the answer they had hoped for! In medical clinics, this is rare! Instead of hearing the hard stories, and sharing together the sadness that the team cannot fix this pain, in the eyeglasses business, you still share and pray together over the hardships of live, but everyone walkes away with the solution they had hoped for.

It was so encouraing!!

That might also have been the crew I got to work with too!

Tuesday was also pretty memorable.

One of the things I love most aobut ministry in Guatmela is home visits; the intimacy of sharing someones home and sharing their life. It is also one of the harder things.

 I was pulled from glasses and joined too late to visit the family whose extensive wound care led to half the group waiting outside-- hence the need for a second translator.

I love this team who ministrerd to a young man whose life was nearly ended and forever altered by a bullet.

They were able to conenct the local pastor who can help the church engage and support this young wife in her care of her husband.

Next the pastor led us to the community who live under one of the massive bridgees crossing mountians in Guatemala City. The climb down was very steep and felt like more like mountian visits that I know than anything in the city.

Some 300 families live here, although it's a squatter community filled by those who have no other options.

The pastor showed us the site of their church- the open area at the base of the bridges great pilers.

On Thursday, another of our teams hosted a mini clinic right here where the church meets!

We also visited the memorial the neighbors had built for the 18 people who were swept away when the river last May.

The river had been dammed by the dumping from two municipalities above when strong rains fianlly burst throught blockage with such force as to wipe out 8 homes.

As we learned about the community, we met a friend! Don Julio had seen us the day before to get glasses!

He really took his role as photographer very seriously!

Wednesday I was excited to teach community health, one of my passions, with another nurse. But God had other plans as a bus showed up with students needing to be seen!

I was pulled to set up a small extra triage for one of the Doctors who set up camp in our eyeglasses room.

Did I say "our"? I guess I feel attached to optomitry!

 It's always fun to use medical skills in clinics- And I wasn't the only one haing fun, check out this little guy!!!

Thursday I got to pull out the nursing skills again in tirage- always a rapid moving and breaks, I finally got to see the rest of the clinic and how God was touching hearts!

Do you think they kept me in seperate clinic spaces on purpose?

I promise I showered!

Friday was a special treat and I got to join the pharmacy ladies!

There is so much to learn there, and I greatly enjoyed the organization.

Clean up and inventory was a task though!

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This week was very impactful to me.

How could it not be??

How often do we get that oppertunity to step out of our own worlds and into a new setting, while still using the passion and gifts God gave us?

During this week, we saw hundreds of patients, and listened to all of them!  We prayed for all who allowed us to, and around 40 people were saved!

And here is the cool part!

On our team, God brought about deep healing through the openess of beautiful testimonies.

Someone would share something vulnerable and what God did thorugh it, and the next person would share how that story had impacted them. 

The next person would then share how they would not have normally shared something, but the previous person's openess led them to feel safe enough, and God would use their story to impact the next!

I believe that God did his work of healing in our medical team as much as in the lives of the patients we saw.

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For me, it started when a young pharmacist I've come to really love shared her wonder at all the knowledge gathered in one room, and how she wanted to learn form them. 

One of the doctors sitting nearby corrected the implied lesser value felt by stating how much they ad to learn from her as well. 

She was every bit as impactful as every provider, caregiver, and servent int he room, young or old.

Folks.

This spoke to my heart. 

I often feel less than, even while in my world.  I felt like I had been out of the hospital so long that I had little to contribute and couldn’t even remember much of hospital medical termonology.

God corrected me a little while observing that conversation.

He has given me knowledge and expertise to contribute.  I too belonged in that room and he had prepared me for such a work.

When I am demeaning toward myself, I am also doubting the work God has done in me. 

This does not honor him. 

Though I don’t want to be overly confident, it would also be wrong to blow off what God has done in building me into this role. 

He worked awfully hard for me to Ignore the value of what he has created.

I think on some level we all do this. 

Don’t make light of who Gos has build you to be.  Don’t constantly tear yourself down as worthless when he is the one who placed the worth. 

He has made us worthy.

I am very grateful for this week and the healing God has brought to me in several areas.  What a thing he does when we think we are going to serve others. 

God is so good!