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!

Los Niños del Yalu

The adorable faces of Yalu. These kids are just too cute so I'll let them speak for themselves...

Let the fun begin!

    As mentioned in our last post, the past month or so has been full of meetings, program planning, stratergizing (theres a George-ism for ya), and basically working on the 'boring' behind-the-scenes stuff that makes an organization run. Since Barb and Gerry came we've been focusing on getting them acclimated and ready to take over the show when we leave in July. Although that type of work is never officially over we are happy to be moving to more of the fun stuff in the ministry! We had a great debrief of sorts with Barb and Gerry last Thursday where they basically encouraged us to put away the computers and work on what is most important in our last two months...the relationships. They have a lot of experience with this having been missionaries in the Congo before coming to Guatemala. The gist of their very wise advice was that yes processes are important but its the people and the moments together that you will remember long-term.
    So as our first order of fun business, we decided a dance party would be the most appropriate - of course! We mentioned a while ago that we have started tutoring a group of about 10 junior high students who are in their first year of school in the big city. This is a huge transition as the schools in Yalu SUCK! The kids have really struggled but praise the Lord we are starting to see improvements little by little - especially in the ones that faithfully come to the tutor group. As an incentive to get all of them to come, all three days we are there we started taking attendance. Unfortunately teenagers are too smart for their own good and they decided that putting a little white dot on an attendance sheet wasn't good enough for them. In a moment of weakness it might have slipped out that I would make them cookies if they all had perfect attendance for one week - whoops! Well it finally happened this last friday and to celebrate we had a little dance party. At first the kids weren't so into it but as you guys know...its hard to sit still once Gregg starts dancing.

The kids had a great time once they got over the initial fear of having to compete with Gregg's dancing! Plus there will be homemade chocolate chip cookies tomorrow, so really, everybody wins.

Lovely lice

One of the many enjoyable things we get to do while working for Mano Con Mano is hosting teams from the US. Last week a team from South Carolina came down and helped build additional rooms and desks for the local public school. Later on in the week we stole a few of the team members to have a 'spa' day with 50 of the kids. We deloused their hair, painted their fingernails (even some of the boys!), applied lotion to their very dry skin, and basically just loved on them. Kids don't get touched or talked to by adults very often in Mayan society so its pretty special just to have physical contact with them. You would think that they would hate the hair washing part but they actually loved it. Probably because none of the home have running water so 'showers' and few and far between. It is days like these that make all the data entry, being unable to communicate anything in Spanish, and 'what is wrong with this country' days worthwhile!

If you didn't already know that we deloused kids last week, then you need to 'like' Mano Con Mano Health Reach on facebook!! Do it now! Please, and thank you :)

MCM Newsletter spoiler

Here is a small article that will be in our upcoming (not exactly sure when) Mano Con Mano Newsletter:

Education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. According to UNICEF, educating children helps reduce poverty and promote gender equality. It also helps lower child mortality rates, promote concern for the environment, and much more. That is why this year, Mano Con Mano is putting a specific emphasis on education. We are doing this in two main areas. The first is with a ‘homework club’ that meets at Nim Jay three days per week after our feeding program. Teachers who attend our partner church, Los Olivios, are coming to Yalu to help kids from kindergarten to sixth grade do their homework, teach new concepts, do projects and crafts, and play games. This is allowing kids to not only advance their learning but also have fun in a safe and clean environment. Secondly, we are focusing on education by providing scholarships. This year Mano Con Mano gave out 20 scholarships to students in Junior High and Career school, which is our equivalent of high school but the student have to pick a specific career (ie secretary, engineering, teacher, etc). In Yalu, school only goes to sixth grade so these scholarship students have to travel thirty minutes each way on the public bus to neighboring larger pueblos. Due to a lack of desk or adequate light in their one-room homes, these students are also meeting at Nim Jay in the afternoons to do homework.  By meeting there they can also have access to the internet, our resident doctor, and each other when they have questions. The future is definitely looking bright. Thank you for your support and prayers that make health, nutrition, and education possible for the children of Yalu!

You can check out pictures of our scholarship students and homework club at our MCM Facebook page! You can also 'like' the page to get updates on different projects, happenings, and pictures from Yalu
Isn't technology FUN!?

A slight change from the day to day...

Sorry to interrupt the vacation posts but I HAVE to share an adventure I had today...

I helped deliver a baby!!!

I was just sitting in the office in Yalu, minding my own business, when the Doctor came in and asked if I wanted to come with him to do a house visit. Now, we do house visits for all sorts of illness, usually not very interesting so I didn't think much of it. As we were walking however, he said something about 'trabajo de parto' which directly translates as 'work of labor'. Even though I wasn't 100% sure what that meant I started getting a little nervous. Once we got to the house, I knew immediately I was in for an adventure! 

The woman was probably 20-22 years old, strangely quiet compared to what I've seen of labor in the movies (hehe :)), but laying on the bed and breathing REALLY heavy. The Doctor immediately checked the heartbeat then told me that it was time. At first I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to do anything to help I was so shocked but soon another contraction came and the Doctor was yelling at me to push on her stomach. Push on her stomach! My doctor and nurse friends are going to have to help me out with that one but I'm pretty sure that is not standard delivery protocol in the states! After 30 minutes or so, and with a LOT of prayer, out popped a beautiful baby girl. I'll spare you the gritty details but lets just say it was sufficiently messy enough to make me rethink having a baby anytime soon :) BUT for my friends that are currently pregnant...man was it beautiful. I was practically bawling! 

Sorry for the lack of pictures but I thought that would be a little much :) Maybe if I make this a habit I'll get some in the future!

Yalu and the Future

We're back! The last two weekends we spent out in the village of Yalu having end of the year meetings, planning the upcoming year, feeding 300+ kids, fiesta-ing and more fiesta-ing. 

Los ninos of the head cook(Edwin, Ana, Rosa, Leslie)

Gregg giving out multivitamins

A Mayan woman washing her clothes in the pila

Spaghetti day!

Us with the in-coming Missionaries, Gerry and Barb Norman

Cooking the Christmas Feast:
Fried Chicken and Rice Krispy Treats

Pinata at the kids Christmas party

Check the rest of our Yalu photos here.
Besides having a great time this past week, God also really spoke to Gregg and I about the rest of our time here in Guatemala. Pretty consistently over the last month both of us have been struggling to feel content for multiple reasons including; being away from home, being in language school, thinking about where to volunteer our time, missing friends and family, etc. One of our thoughts was that we just need to start getting more involved doing the work that we came down here for. So, a few weeks ago we decided to make something happen and start volunteering with different organizations where we had been excited about the projects being done in public health and microfinance. Though this seemed like a good idea at the time over the following few weeks we have both just felt that something was "off" about the jobs, we have not been as excited about the opportunities as we had expected. Looking back it is clear that we really just rushed into making commitment because we felt like we needed to hurry up and get to the real reason we are here. 
Once we got out to Yalu however we automatically starting feeling better, like we were supposed to be there. In the various meetings we had we learned that  1. Mano Con Mano is going to partner with a church nearby that wants to do some really amazing things in the community including public health stuff and microfinance!  and 2. The current directors decided to step down starting in January and the incoming directors aren't coming till April after they finish language school in Costa Rica. So, long story short, we decided to commit the majority of our time in Yalu! We are both really excited about the things God is doing there and we think this coming year will bring some really exciting changes in the village that we want to be a part of. Anyways, definitely more on that as we figure out what exactly we will be doing but just wanted to keep y'all in the loop. 
This week we are just going to be hanging out in Antigua, finishing up language school, and trying to get in the Christmas spirit. Tonight we are heading to the Erickson's to watch a Christmas movie so that will definitely help. We also will have more time to update this thing so check back again soon. Merry Christmas and God Bless!