I thought he looked familiar...

On the left: Alvaro Colom; President of Guatemala

On the right: Osama Bin Laden

*drawn by one of our 7th grade scholarship kids

How to have a 'Ripe' baby

Last week I had the opportunity to watch our MCM Doctor in action. Dr. Efrain is definitely a God-send for our ministry as he is highly educated, guatemalan, and he speaks the local Mayan dialect of Yalu - Kaqchikel. Occasionally, the local public school in Yalu invites him to come and speak to the students about health related topics. Last week the topic of the day was pregnancy.
The talk started off as you would expect - general anatomy,  how an egg gets 'fertilized', and the stages of fetus growth. But then, it got awesome. You see, one of the biggest issues in the village is that women, or I suppose girls is more appropriate, get married and start having kids super young, ie 14-16 years old. This is a problem because 1) most of the girls are still developing themselves, 2) the majority are already malnourished which means malnourished babies, 3) gives them A LOT of time to have A LOT of babies, 4) means the majority won't finish their schooling.

In order to prevent mainly girls from falling into this cycle, the doctor compared the human body to a piece of fruit. Imagine picking a peach before it's ripe. Try to take a bite and the peach will be small, hard, and bitter. Now compare that to having a child before your body is 'ripe'. Well, according to the good Doctor, your baby will also be small, hard, and bitter. The best part of this already awesome talk was that the recommended age for being 'ripe' is 25 for women and 30 for men! Of course this is a total lie from a scientific perspective but if it keeps girls from having babies at 14, I'm all for it!

Transforming

From this:

 To this:

and finally...THIS!

Welcome back handsome husband. I missed you.

Time Flies

Now that we are getting down to the end time seems to be in hyper speed. This last week Joel, Amber, Colin, and Beth came to visit from St. Louis and boy was it fun! We had a great time hanging out, showing them a little of what life is like here in Guate, and laughing A LOT! We can't believe they have already come and gone. We miss them already :(
Some highlights - Antigua exploring, volcano hiking, beach daying, zip-lining, game playing, helping out in Yalu, and eating, eating, and more eating of course!

Amber and Beth with the booby fountain

Sabe Rico

Santa Ana ruins

Helping out in the kitchen

Beach buddies

Best.Produce.Ever.

Mallow roasting - volcano style

Laughing as usual

Goodbye dinner at Hectors

Thank you so much Beth/Colin and Amber/Joel for visiting! We love you guys :)

Now starts the final countdown...3 1/2 weeks and counting! Yikes!