We had a dinner at our apartment for the nurses who came in from out of town. It gave them a chance to get to know each other better. The nurses from the Cobán mission stayed with us, the rest with other senior missionaries. In the morning we piled into cars and went to the area office for the meeting.
A junior nurse who was at the last conference conducted the meeting. Sharon Smith, Patsy and other senior missionaries did a lot of work behind the scenes to make it happen. The nurses were able to learn about insurance issues, how the nurses in the other missions are handling the volume of calls they receive and the AMAs answered questions about common medical problems that they encounter such as stomach issues, parasites and back and knee problems. Afterward the AMAs and wives treated them to a catered lunch. Given that they get a lot of tortillas, rice, and beans in the field, it was the least we could do. It was an excellent conference.
After the meeting, we took two pairs of hermanas to their respective bus terminals during Friday rush hour. Probably drove 20 miles, but it took us 4 hours. Kind of like being on the 405 in LA in the afternoon.
After we described our visit to the Safe Passage school to the other senior missionaries there was considerable interest in attending. We lined up a visit for a Friday, but Elder Christofferson came on a visit and gave a talk at the MTC that morning to which we were invited. Before the talk, he shook all the missionaries hands. He was very friendly and asked us what our assignment was. Later we called the Safe Passage folks and rescheduled for March 1.
We were alarmed to hear that Patsy's mom slipped on ice on the way to a play with daughter Melanie and broke the neck of her humerus. They were able to plate it, but she's in a lot of pain and off to rehab for a little while. We were glad Janet and Melanie were there to help her through a rough time. Being far away gives us a feeling of helplessness when emergencies happen.
Friday night the senior missionaries have a movie night. It is only 5 miles away from our apartment but unfortunately during rush hour. We either stay late at the area office which is close, eat dinner and go over, or if we've gone home, leave the apartment at about 4:15, then when we've passed the traffic bottleneck, eat at a fast food or sitdown place, depending on how long the drive took. Last Friday it took us 1.5 hours to get past the traffic bottleneck. We stopped at a fast food place, but were still late. We watched an old Disney film Third Man on the Mountain. A little racy, at the end when the girlfriend kisses the hero right on the cheek.
The kids in our rural branch don't have access to many books, so Patsy, the former school teacher, came up with the idea of a lending library. We found a used book store and ended up buying about 60 books of various degrees of difficulty. We put a card in them, after church, the kids swarm out. They pick a book, write their name on the card and can take the book home to read. When they return it, they get to choose another. Right now we have all the books out. Some of the mutual age kids even checked books out, and a couple of moms picked some. In the town we are in, there isn't a library, even at the school. Patsy is determined to stimulate the kids' intellect.
Librarian Patsy trying to collect an overdue book fine from the girl in the pink skirt
Note the age range of the library patrons
A hermana from the branch invited us over for lunch last week and served a seafood soup that included fish, crab, shrimp, octopus and some little snail things. The latter are eaten, sort of, by sucking them out of their shells. It didn't work well for me, but the rest of the soup was great. The crabs were small and she admitted that the crabs and snail things were for flavor and not really to eat.
The crab was mostly for decoration. No king crab legs here.
The other morning we were awakened about 6:30 by a mariachi band playing in front of the apartment next to us. Although marimba is the typical music of Guatemala and mariachi of Mexico, it is common for someone to hire a mariachi band to play for birthdays. In order to catch the lucky person before work or school, they come really early and wake up the whole neighborhood, the guitars are kind of soothing, but the trumpets woke me right up.
We took Elder and Hermana Kinghorn, the mental health advisors, and Hermana Olson, the CCM nurse to two hospitals and delivered 85 baby kits. They enjoyed the outing. On Sunday we dropped off 100 baby kits and 50 mother hygiene kits to Hermana Petrie, a member volunteer at the Cuilapa hospital. She fed us a great lunch afterward.
Poster at the maternity ward at the Chimaltenango
hospital encouraging breast feeding.
The caption says "Nursing is the umbilical cord that keeps us united:
it is the love and the blood which flows from our very being
This time of year there is a tree that has beautiful orange flowers. They are mostly scattered in among other trees, but sometimes we see a whole bunch of them together.
Last week the color was even better. The best view of them is in a valley seen going down a hill, but there's not a shoulder on the highway, so we can't pull over and get the photo.
We are excited that two families that we minister to are taking the temple prep classes. We told them we are leaving in June, and that we would love to go through the temple with them and see them get sealed.
On an average day I will get 15 or 20 calls, texts and emails about missionary health problems. Many are fairly routine, but sometimes we have interesting or challenging cases. An elder who has had ankle trouble on and off during his mission was trying to get to a visit. They couldn't find a way around a wall, so they jumped 6 feet down from it. Guess who is having ankle trouble again. One sister entered the CCM for her three weeks of training and said her ankle was hurting and could she have a wheel chair. We rested her for a week then asked her to climb stairs and walk briskly between classes. She couldn't. We explained that if she couldn't walk between classes and up a couple of flights of stairs, she wouldn't be walk 5 or 10 miles a day in her mission, and reluctantly sent her home to recover. There aren't any missions in Central America where the missionaries have cars.
We understand that parents, especially moms are worried about their missionary's health and well being. We try to get them to understand that Heavenly Father loaned them their missionary for a while, but wants to borrow him back for a couple of years. He has a whole mechanism of mission nurses, sometimes mission doctors and an area medical advisor to take care of them. If you have a missionary out, we want you to pray for them and encourage them, but understand that they have access to the best medical care available in their mission. The care in small towns is sometimes marginal, but the big cities in Central America have care comparable to or better than a medium sized community hospital in the US. If anything serious is going on in the boondocks, we bring them in to the big city hospitals.
We had an English temple session last week that we filled with senior missionaries. I am still a little awkward getting thru the veil in Spanish, so I thought I'd have an easy passage. Then the veil worker only spoke Spanish. It's ok, they help me with the hard parts.
Some of our cute primary kids.
