Mazatlan Day 7

Well we did it! Another trip to Mazatlan in the books. I woke up not feeling well today, slept through breakfast but did make it out to clinic with no stops to use the restroom! I loaded up on two bananas and the first dose of traveler´s diarrhea antibiotic and I was ready to go. We were out at Villa Union today which is the place we went to church on Sunday. It was another good day but slower than usual. We saw about 58 patients. The weather was nice and cloudy and cool. God has really blessed Bill and I this trip. We were really concerned about being the only two providers and having terribly busy days with hot hot weather to drain us further. The days have been a nice pace and the weather has been cloudy. We have had only two really hot sunny days (one that I chose to run during). It has been nice to know that we can do it with two providers and I think God brought us the people who needed to see us. We only really felt overwhelmed once on Thursday at Madero. Today´s medical highlight was that I got to lance this boil from a kid´s face with no anesthestic. He took it like a champ but my already queasy stomach was not quite so ready for all that pus.

We bought a walmart plastic tote and decided to leave a lot of our supplies down here instead of lugging them back every time. They are being kept locked up in the office and should really help our luggage allowance for the upcoming trips. I did find out at continential.com that they will only charge for the extra bag any ticket bought after May 8th so hopefully we will not have to pay extra tomorrow.

One sad note, we had to say goodbye to Big Blackie today. Big Blackie is a huge heavy rolling suitcase who has been with me since at least 2000. It was a hand me down from my folks. We have seen the world together, me and Big Blackie. He still has a tag on him from the cruise I went on in 2001. And he has my official YL area director name tag from 2000. Big Blackie has three of his four corners covered in duct tape and he is really dirty but he still rolls like a champ and has made 7 trips to and from Mexico, 28 days of clinic in the colonias being dragged through the dust and dirt. Big Blackie has not has pulls for his zippers for about 5 years. He has these plastic tabs my dad put on him. Big Blackie´s main zipper broke this trip and only one zipper will close the bag and that one does not go all the way around. There is no way Big Blackie could make it home having to be opened by security. I am afraid he will not get closed again. And though you cannot put a price tag on a faithful companion like Big Blackie, I am not spending $25 (if we get charged) to bring him home almost empty because he is too big to fit in another suitcase and too fat and squat for any suitcase to fit in him. So Big Blackie was emptied for the last time today. I took off my favorited name tags. I rubbed some dirt off his handle and gave him a kiss. Sleep well, Big Blackie, in the place were used and abused and discarded suitcases go. We were great together. You will be missed and I love you almost as much as any other inantimate object that I have named. (I took some farewell pictures and will post them when I get back)

Wanted for our next trip: a slightly used big roller suitcase who could never replace Big Blackie but will be loved, used, rolled through the dirt, loaded to 49.5 lbs, tossed on and off airplanes and given a proper name. He will join Big Blue, Gigante (who is bigger than Big Blackie but newer to the fleet) and Duct (a smaller version of gigante who had duct tape to close a huge hole in him last trip but Bill did surgery with a giant needle and some twine I think and now he is free of duct tape but retains the title). How could I not mention our faithful duffle? Purple Cow. Bill hates purple cow because he does not pull that well, but he is giant and bright and hard to miss on the turnstyle at baggage claim.

Prayer requests:
safe air travel tomorrow and ease at customs coming home
safe driving home from Minneapolis with no major road closing due to flooding
for Iowa City as the floods just get worse.

Mazatlan Day 6

No access to a computer yesterday to get any blogging down. Yesterday was a full day of church and it was great. We first went to the English Service at the main Vineyard down here which was a good time to worship and hear a teaching in our language. We ate a quick breakfast and then sat in the back for the worship part of the Spanish Service. They have amazing worship. 7-8 girls up front who dance and play the tamborine and the band just rocks. The highlight is, as always, Jorge plays this worship song to the tune of La Bamba along with the sweet guitar rift. It needs to be heard to be believed. I always really love worshiping in Spanish because though I do not know all the words I feel really connected to God.

We had a few hours off during which I took a run in the hot mid day sun. This sounds ridiculous and trust me it was. I was so tired and hot when I got back. I forgot to wear sunscreen and thought I would run fast enough not to get burned :-) but that did not happen. I ran really slow actually, the slowest 3 miles in a long time but about 2 minutes into my run I realized survival was the goal.

At about 3:30 we left to go to one of the local colonia churches for their Sunday evening service. None of the local neighborhood churhces have service on Sunday morning because all the leaders are at the main church so they have them on Sunday night. We drove to Villa Union where we will do clinic tomorrow. A retired American couple who work down here most of the year picked us up and we were on our way. We stopped several times to pick up young teenagers who help with the kids program out there. Villa Union is actually a separate town outside the city and is about a 45 minute drive. Our friends, Kyle and Ellen who are full time church planters down here, run the Sunday night service and we met them out there not before having to go through a military check point looking for drugs. Bill and I had a moment of panic because all our meds were in the back of the van and I did not have our paperwork with us but we just got waved through. We helped clean up church and set up. This church has multiple pigeons living in it so you can imagine what the floor looks like. Angie and Jaime, our best Spanish speakers, took to the streets around the church with flyers inviting folks to the clinic on Tuesday. There were about 10 people at the service and probably 15 kids who had a lesson upstairs. We worshipped and then sat in a circle where Kyle gave a lesson about the healing about the leper. At the end we were standing in that circle and Kyle asked anyone who wanted prayer to take a step in. 4 of the Mexicans took a step forward and we had a good prayer time. Our team was very touched by the service and though it took some of our "free" time away, it was an experience we will not forget. We stopped and had not-bad-by-our-standards pizza on the way home. Then we all piled in the van, dropped each kid off at their house and finally made it back to our hotel at about 8:30.

Our group has gotten into playing Dominos here at night. The first night we played I beat Bill on the last play of the last hand. We are playing a game Jaime taught us called Chicken Train but I think it is similar to Mexican Train. Bill and I bought two cheap sets of dominos yesterday so all 6 of us can play. Last night Bill edged out Shonna by two points in another hotly contested match.

Today was our day off and all I really did was sleep. Woke up at 11:15, ate lunch, went back for a nap at 2 pm and just woke up at almost 5. Most of us are feeling a bit under the weather. Two of us are taking cipro for traveler´s diarrhea so we needed the good rest.

Prayer requests:
continued and renewed health for all of us especially jeremy and angie who are the most ill of our group currently
a good last day tomorrow in clinic
ease of ´closing up shop´ here which means an inventory of our meds, what to leave and what to take home in terms of our medical supplies
that we can consolidate our luggage to one bag a person for the way home to save money
iowa city is having extreme flooding and it looks to get only worse

thanks to everyone who has been faitful in prayer

Mazatlan Day 4

Today we were at Valles which is the most established local church. Every saturday morning every local church has a ´feeding center´ where the kids come for a hot meal, sunday school type lesson with songs. We helped out today serving food at the Valles feeding center until about 11:30 and then we set up the clinic. This is traditionally our slowest clinic and today we only saw 33 people which was kind of a dissapointment. We were really tired out so the pace felt good but I just wished we could have seen more people. We are all practicing and learning more spanish and making lots of funny mistakes in the process. Here are some of our favorites with the word we meant to say in ( ):

Your blood pressure is a lot cheaper (better) today
I am going to take your temperature in your eye (ear) do not worry, it will not hurt
Do not worry, no one likes you (it) --in reference to poking a finger for a blood sugar
This cream is for your baby´s red ass (rash)
I need to check the sugar in your sangria (instead of sangre which is blood in spanish)

Update from yesterday´s blog- that birthday party got cancelled and rescheduled due to that threat but there was no violence in Madero last night

Prayer requests:
good refreshment and relaxation for our day at church tomorrow (we will attend 3 services) and for our day off on monday
fun time with our team together during our free time

Mazatlan Day 3

I am still having trouble downloading pictures so I guess all those will have to wait until I get back. Today was another great day. We woke up to a pure gift from God- it was cloudy and rained a bit... priceless weather! We headed out to Madero. This is something I did not post about yesterday because I know my mom reads this and she would worry. Madero being the "tolerant" zone has its share of violence which seems to be getting worse. Apparently some man just got out of prison for murder and there is going to be a 15th birthday party (quinceria - spelling??) there tonight which is a huge deal in this culture at a house right next to the church. There has been an apparent rumor flowing loud enough for the pastor to hear that someone is going to be shot at that party as revenge. I do not know if someone was planning to shoot that guy or someone in his family. Dave, the pastor there who comes with us everyday, thought that there would not be any problem because we would leave earlier than the party would start but he wanted to make us aware. We talked about it as a team and realized God is in this with us and His will will be done. We had a good prayer time this morning praying not only for our safety but for the families and innocent people who live in this type of situation everyday. We get to leave it and go "back" to our lives and they do not. Bottom line is that nothing happened, not even one thing fishy or scary. We saw 87 patients today and it went really smoothly. Bill and I got testy with each other about "who was doing more work?" because we are the only two people seeing patients. We resolved and I think I have to bite the bullet and saw today the answer was him but I am still nonetheless exhausted.

We have one more day in clinic tomorrow before we have Sunday for church and Monday for our day off. Tomorrow will be a modified clinic day seeing patients only from about 1-4 as there will be a meal and service for the kids at Valles in the morning that we will help out with.

Prayer requests:
renewal of energy to give it one more day before we have some good rest
for our patience with each other and for our tongues not to be sharp and for grace with each other to be overflowing
for that party in Madero tonight that no one would get shot and that girl could celebrate her 15th birthday like a princess

Mazatlan Day 2

We had a great day at clinic. I am going to get kicked off the computer in about 2 minutes. I am trying to get pictures to load but I do not think I will have much luck. We saw about 60 patients and it was a nice flow that did not seem to busy. Jeremy and Shonna arrived safely and had not troubles at customs. Another big praise. We are very hot and tired and dirty but happy. Probably 1/2 of the patients we saw were repeats from the last few times and some people had been seen 3 times already which is really what we are striving to do is to have continunity of care.

Prayer requests for tomorrow:
that we have another successful clinic at Madero with lots of repeat patients (Madero is the tolerant zone for drugs/prostitution etc in the city and can be a really dark place)
that we would feel well rested in the morning

Mazatlan Day 1

So we made it here safely. All of our luggage arrived and we all got green lights at customs. Thank you Jesus. We had a nice trip to St Paul last night, got a few hours of sleep and had a good timing at the airport this morning. We thought we were going to have to pay $100 for our extra 4 bags of luggage but somehow it turned up on the computer that we only owed $50 for the 4 of us so that was a huge blessing. No one even looked twice that Jamie´s passport said she was 78 years old. Our connection in Phoenix was really quick but Bill and I had enough time to get our favorite egg sandwiches.. you know you have flown a certain route too many times when you know where all your favorite food is along the way.

We are staying at a new different hotel which is much nicer than the one we usually stay at (which was plenty nice) so we feel spoiled. However, I feel out of sorts because at the old place I know how everything works from the safe in the room to where to get pool towels etc. I guess I am never too old to learn. :-). I am also uncaffienated, exhausted and hypoglycemic which isn´t helping me adapt well to new surroundings.

The internet place here is only open until 6 pm so my hopes to blog everyday may be in vain because I will miss the window of open internet. I´ll see if I can find another computer.

The highlight of the day was on our first take off. I forgot Jaime had never flown before and she had this amazing open mouth, wide open eye grin/laugh when we started going fast for takeoff and when we got off the ground. I should have snapped a picture because it was worth a million words.

Prayer requests -
our first full day tomorrow we´ll be having clinic at Urias, that it all goes smoothly with set up and flow of patients
that we can get all our meds sorted and labeled tonight and get some sleep too
for jeremy and shonna, the last of our team, who will be flying in on the exact same route we took today
for my attitude to not be too bossy, irritated because i´m hot and tired and to feel free to enjoy the time here and not be too stressed that it all has to be done the way i want

Hopefully i´ll be able to post tomorrow. this place has wireless internet but i can´t seem to get mine to work...dad, anyone- any suggestions?

thanks to my faithful friends for following along and being in this with me.

The Other Mazatlan

Here is a video I just found about the church we are partnering with and some scenes from what we'll be seeing this week. The narrator is Fred Collum, the man who with his wife and family started the ministry.

Mazatlan Day -1

I am going to try to keep my blog updated with pictures if possible on our trip to Mexico with pictures as well for all of my faithful :-)

Well we are leaving in 4.5 hours and I just finished packing the luggage. I still have to tackle our carryons. We had not one thing packed until about 11 am this morning. Bill left a good part of his 'to do' list to last night which made me crazy and overly irritated because he has known he had to do these things since we arrived home from Mexico in January. That irritation coupled with a terrible 12 hour shift at work which did for the first time bring me to tears made for a long day. I had to have a moment in the bathroom crying but recovered well and I don't think anyone was the wiser of my breakdown. Oh yeah and he bought the wrong test strips for our glucometer but turns out they don't make the strips for our glucometer anymore so at like midnight he ran to Walgreens to buy a new glucometer for the strips he bought the other day.

He did get all his stuff done, got a few hours of sleep and because we traded our small Honda for our pastors suburban we only have one car to drive today which is not a crisis except I had to drive him to work spoiling my sleep in plans. We had a biblical deluge of rain today so now we have standing water in the basement which I cannot deal with. I did my monthly weigh in at weight watchers so now I can eat all the cheese I want in Mexico and have until July to burn it off. But seeing as how the weather report from Mazaltan is "hot, humid, upper 90s, no chance of rain or a cloud for 4 months" I may just sweat it off.

In the midst of packing Gabby calls from her last day of junior high, 'could you pick me up please please please? I just cleaned out my locker and I can't walk home'. So off to Regina I head and it is unclear how big her locker actually is because she had a huge garbage bag of what I can only imagine is crap she has been looking for since August. She was grateful and it was good to see her however briefly before we left. Nile graduated from 6th grade yesterday, had no school today so he spent the night. We will miss his birthday which he thinks is just another reason why Dad loves Gabby more. ugh! Thanks to all the snow days pushing the last day of school a week later we were really boxed into these dates.

I was planning a long run this afternoon if I got my stuff done but realized I just packed my running shoes etc and I am not opening those suitcases again. So after my last few errands, I plan to put the clothes away that are on the bed and take a nice nap before I have to go retrieve Bill, pack the suburban, pick up the rest of the team and head up to Minneapolis.

Bill just called from work asking about our on the road dinner and now I'm finally getting excited.

Prayer requests for day -1:
safety of travel tonight and tomorrow, on time flights
jaime's passport has a typo and I pray no one notices
green lights at customs so we get all our medicine through
good bonding of our team in the first 24 hours
for me to calm down and realize it all got done and being a ball of stress the last 24 hours has not been productive and just made the ulcer I know I have worse

Thanks for praying! Next blog from hot and steamy Mazatlan.