Well, the first blog post of the week is usually a “Meet the
Team” post where I let everyone know who I am travelling with… but this week is
a little different. I flew down by
myself this week and my team is essentially joining me down here from in-country! I was certainly a little bummed when I had no
one stepping up and able to come down this time, but as usual, God has
provided. Now I’m as excited about the
team as any recently… “God is good, and God is sovereign” will be somewhat of a
theme here in case you are a new reader to this blog!
Anyway, I’m headed up to Chichi in a nice bus now that God
also provided, this time through reaching out on facebook to some of the other
local missionaries and hitching a ride with a team coming up (from Michigan and
North Carolina, no less!) to work with Manos de Jesus and Pray America. They’ve been great travel buddies and it was
really nice to get to meet some of their long-term missionaries that I had not
come in to contact with yet.
Tonight I will get to meet Drs. Jared and Melissa Cardwell,
another one of the couples who are down here with Docs for Hope. Some of you remember they are the amazing
physicians that have agreed to staff the hospital now BEING BUILT out in Canillá
(because God is good, and God is sovereign!) full-time for the foreseeable
future. All of the docs in their group
are Family Practice-trained but very surgically minded and trained also. They have an 18-month old son, David, who I
can’t wait to meet either. I love how
kids are becoming a more regular part of these trips lately!
Please pray for their family as they are just recovering
from a recent and seemingly quite nasty stomach flu, and pray that this week
would go smoothly as far as their travels and our medical care. I’m not sure where they are with Spanish,
either, so some supernatural language lessons wouldn’t be a bad request.
We are also hoping to be joined by Dra. Lindsey, a
Guatemalan-trained physician that has been working with Agape in Action for the
last several years since her graduation from Medical School. She and her husband Paul are such bright
lights in this country and the ministry!
She started working with Jim and Kathleen Street now many years ago as a
bilingual secretary, and became interested in the medical side of the
practice. She put herself through
Pharmacy training without even mentioning it to Jim and Kathleen, and then
Nursing school as well! When she and Paul then decided they wanted to
go on to Medical School, Agape and Jim and Kathleen personally helped them with
some scholarship money in hopes that they would serve in the capacity they are
in now with Agape.
God is good, God is sovereign—and God provides.
Lindsey’s infectious smile and love of learning all things
in women’s health care and medicine will be such a joy this week, and her
English skills are amazing (although she would never admit it). I’m hoping I’ll get to see that fun look on
her face again this week that Sarah Gore and I caused several years ago when we
handed her a scalpel and guided her through a surgery for the first time! Oh, how I WILL miss formally teaching
medicine…
But God is good, and will provide. Please pray that we never forget to give
thanks for His grace and His goodness as we work a likely quite tough
week. We will try to post some pictures
of faces to put with names tomorrow, but for now there’s just me crashed out on
the bus here since I left the house shortly after 1 am local time to start
travelling. Tonight’s sleep will be
sweet, friends…
