Medical Team Strategy

We’ve had several meetings this past week to plan out our ongoing medical ministry. We’re working with the Director of Health in town to contact villages that have no medical care and set up two days a week to go visit and provide basic health care. Ideally, we would like to find people in the villages who have diseases such as diabetes and return once a month to do blood sugar checks, diet teaching, etc. We feel this will give us a more measurable goal and a chance to impact individual lives, rather than just do blitz clinics every once in a while. Diabetes runs rampant in Mexico, and often times is undetected or very uncontrolled. It was not uncommon for us to have people with a fasting blood sugar in the 400s or higher at the clinics this summer. Many of the more isolated villages don’t have any doctors present, nor do nurses come and visit, as they do in some of the villages closer to town. By us going and visiting the villages, this will allow us to provide a much needed service to the communities, as well as hopefully open doors for the Gospel to enter.

We still plan to do large scale outreaches several times a year when doctors come down from the States, but this plan will be more of our day-to-day ministry. The team will consist of us, Rhonda (RN), Joni (RN), and JoLynne (NP) for now, then will scale back to just us and Rhonda in April. We would also love to take some local believers along with us, whom we can train to check blood sugars and do the teaching, so that they could continue doing visits even after we leave someday.

Mole, Mole, Mole

No, that’s not the little animal that ruins people’s yards- it’s the sauce put on meat at any big event in Mexico. Last week was the going away party for Grant and Jenn, and in typical Mexican fashion, we had mole negro (black mole). I was in charge of getting all the ingredients for the 17 lbs. of sauce (that’s only counting the chilies).

So here’s the recipe: (Don’t try this at home!!!)

17 lbs. chilies anchos

2 lbs. chilies huajillos

9 lbs. sesame seeds

9 lbs. pumpkin seeds

9 lbs. peanuts

9 lbs. raisins

9 lbs. almonds

9 lbs. apples

2 lbs. garlic

22 lbs. onion

35 lbs. banana

13 lbs. chocolate

3.5 lbs. chorizo sausage

4 gallons oil

Garlic, cinnamon, oregano, cloves, salt, and pepper to taste

It took an entire day to fry and finely grind all of the ingredients then stir them together in a huge pot over an open fire to make a thick paste. The day of the party we boiled the chicken and added the broth as well to make the sauce. It was a lot of work, but it was delicious!

Cooking over a fire is the most common way for women to cook in Mexico and the ONLY acceptable way to make mole!

A lesson on finding people in Mexico

The last two days, Rhonda and I (Sarah) went on a ‘treasure hunt’ looking for a couple people from the clinic this summer to follow up with. Of the five names, only one had an address with an actual house number. The others had either the neighborhood and street names, or just the neighborhood. So we set out, determined to find at least one of the women. We decided to start easy- the one that had a number. Unfortunately, having the house number does not guarantee that all the houses along the street have numbers on them. We followed the advice of our leader and got as close as we could, then just started asking people. We asked for #39 in a salon (#33) and the lady pointed us up the hill. As we crossed the street, we came across #31. It seemed to us that we were going in the wrong direction. We asked in a tortilla shop and none of them seemed to even know what their address there was. So, we took an educated guess and went back past the salon and down the hill. As we got closer, we asked a few more people for the woman by name and were able to locate the house. A young girl answered the door and said the woman was her aunt, but she was at work and wouldn’t be home until after 6. At least we found the house!

Feeling a little encouraged, we tried the next name on our list. This time it wasn’t quite as easy. We found the neighborhood and street fairly quickly and felt pretty hopeful as there were only about a dozen houses on the street. The address didn’t have a number, so we went to the houses without numbers first. At the first one, a small girl answered and when we asked for Maria, looked perplexed and said there was no Maria there. We went two doors down and a middle-aged teacher answered the door. She ended up being our teacher for the next hour as she went from house to house asking for Maria. Everyone would stop and think for a moment then say, “Who could that be?” We were ready to give up and assume she had just been renting on the street and now had moved out. However, our teacher wasn’t as easily dissuaded. From house, to store, to another house, getting farther and farther from the street we had named, she led us along asking everyone who knows anyone where this house may be. Finally she said, “Last stop.” The woman there didn’t know Maria, but knew a family with her last name. We went there and the man said his wife’s last name was what we were looking for, but her name wasn’t Maria. However, she had gone to the ‘clinic of the foreigners’ this summer, so maybe it was her. We went back the next day, but she still wasn’t home. Her daughter also thought that her mom had gone to the clinic, so we’re hoping soon to find Maria.

We have yet to look for the other three women.

Lesson learned: Ask, ask, ask, and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Photo tour of our month in the States

Here's a brief look at what the last 4 weeks looked like for us as we traveled from our home in Mexico to Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and finally California. It has been a great time of visiting friends and family and making new friends as well. Hopefully you'll be able to take the tour at a much slower pace than we did!

Enjoy!

Roadtrip!!! Off to Illinois to visit Kurt and Nellie!

We love you, Grandma!

Sarah's first trip to Pella, Iowa. Love the Dutch letters!

Life on the farm with Uncle Daniel, Aunt Mary, and Max!

A trip to Indiana is never complete without a bonfire at the Saunders'

Ready to tackle Tower Hill?

We missed you Rachel!

Nick's first tea at Rachel's

Nice pinky

Happy birthday, Lance!

And Brooke, too!

The master chef... great guacamole...and apron

Fiesta at the Lewis's

Chillin' on the sailboat

Which flavor will you choose?

Visit from Karen!

Last week, our dear friend, Karen, visited us, so we decided to take advantage of the warm California weather and Nick's Dad's sailboat and go sailing. It quickly became an adventure when the boat ramp's thick layer of scum caused the van to slide backward instead of drive forward. Marius waded through the green water to unhook the boat trailer, hoping that would lighten the load enough for the van to pull out. Nope. So Nick was stuck in the van with his foot on the brake (the e-brake wouldn't hold it in place either) while his Mom called AAA to come tow him out. We were glad when they arrived before the van ended up in the bottom of the lake! The sailing was great, however, and we left with some fun memories.

Keep your foot on the brake, Nick!

Thanks AAA!

Marius is quite the little sailor!

That night, we ended Karen's visit with a trip to Brock's, a famous homemade ice cream parlor, an essential part of any visit to YC! Happy Birthday, Karen!

Graduation

June is graduation time, and this year Sarah had the honor of being asked to accompany Belen (Gerardo and Susana's youngest daughter) at her kindergarten graduation. First they have a cultural presentation where all of the kids dress in costumes and perform traditional Mexican dances. There's also a flag ceremony, several speeches, then the actual graduation ceremony. Here's a few pictures of the festivities:

Of course no celebration is complete without cake!

A look into the spirit of religion here

"Susana's mother-in-law is a believer!"

"Really?!? We didn't know that."

"Yes, she has been coming to our church."

(conversation with a local church-goer)

A few days later...

"Susana, we didn't know that your mother-in-law was going to church?!?"

"She was for a couple months, but then she got mad that the woman who was taking her wouldn't spend all day every Sunday with her, so she stopped going. She still believes in witchcraft. Not too long ago she payed a man 7000 pesos ($650)-(you can imagine how much that is to an elderly woman whose livelihood is tending her sheep)- to come and do a 'spiritual cleansing.' He didn't even bring his own egg to rub over her; she came over to borrow one from us! A few months before, she also payed someone 4000 pesos for a similar type of cleansing. She's convinced that a curse has been put upon her."

(conversation between us and Susana)

This is an all-too-familiar story here. People equate being a Christian with attending a particular church. It has been a challenge for us as we look for ways to explain what being a true follower of Jesus is. People want to know what 'religion' we are a part of, and we frequently hear that people are not interested in changing their religion. We're not here to convert people to a new religion; we're here to see peoples lives come under submission to Jesus Christ. This 'spirit of religion' didn't start here with the Mexican people; Jesus himself came up against it often in his ministry, as did his apostles. We are praying that this spirit of religion will be broken and that we can accurately portray the Good News of Jesus Christ to the people of this region.