I got word recently that the core of the team that went to Guatemala in January, 2008, was re-assembling for another trip to Central America – this time to Honduras, last week in January 2009. Absolutely I want to go. I imagine it will be the same focus as our trip to Guatemala – rendezvous with local folks in order to set up day clinics to provide basic medical care to people who otherwise have none. It will be a worthy endeavor.

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… and it was!

(added after returning from Honduras Jan 30, 2009)

John Hall

E. coli: escherichia coli – a gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, non-sporulating bacterium commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. E. coli comes in many different strains, most of which are harmless, and actually benefit the host.

But to most of us nowadays, hearing “E. coli” strikes a chord of fear, reminding us of massive recalls of hamburger, spinach and so on, and the sickness and death that go along with such contaminations. These are the bad E. coli strains, that cause the great majority of gastrointestinal infections – i.e. food poisoning.

Guatemala is a fertile breeding ground for bad E. coli.

Editor’s Note: In an ideal world, every post on any given blog would be a stand alone wonder of writing and communication.  Seldom is that the case.  Yet when a new reader comes to a blog, it’s often intimidating to scroll all the way to the very beginning (WAY DOWN THERE!) and sort through months worth of posts.  Thus, now and then I’m going to repost some of the messages that are foundational to this blog.  Enjoy )

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I knew nothing much about Guatemala. Central America. Nice climate. Mayan Empire. Sugar cane, mangoes and coffee beans for Starbucks. A huge supplier of child adoptions for American families. Probably could find it on the map without much looking.

This all changed two weeks ago when I actually went there. My life changed then, too. But before I tell you that story, I need to back up into 2007 …

… to a time when my dear friend Cathey told me all about her trip a year earlier. I know she has a huge, caring heart – and especially for children, and she’d hooked up her skills as a pharmacist with a team of medical folks, all of whom spent a week in rural Guatemala providing free medical and dental care to people who typically have none. She told me what a big impact that trip had on her life. She showed me pictures. Then out of the blue she challenged me to go on the next trip.

This news just in this afternoon: Adam Jones has departed his Admissions Department position at Belmont University, and is now enrolled in the Worship Arts program at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY.

And don’t think all we readers didn’t notice how you waited until James was already committed to med school, before making your jump to seminary. No way he could copycat you this time, right?!

Kidding aside, Adam, rich blessings to you in this endeavor!

Adam teasing thirsty Guatemalan woman

As long as we’re talking about characters (see my post below entitled The Simpsons) – especially animated characters – we should not leave out talking about Adam and James Jones. OK, first of all, go figure why two of the funniest people on Earth are individually working in a) a college Admissions Department; and b) the health care industry. Neither of which is funny in the least.

James and Adam Jones

Adam and James were part of our medical mission team. The more I got to know them, the more I found myself wondering just why they weren’t writing for Saturday Night Live. They might as well have been, because they knew nearly every line of nearly every show from memory. All one of them had to do was drop a line, and the other chimed in the next, and off they would go – doing the whole script, and without ever cracking up – which they left to all those whole were listening. But without a doubt their impromptu, original one-liners and comic dialogs were just as good as anything SNL has ever done!

Well that worked nicely. And if I thought I was attached to that piece of furniture (formerly known as John’s Hoosier Cabinet), whole ripples went through my being this morning when I was helping friends move, and happened to be stacking some things in my garage.

There sat The Simpsons!

Yes, this was the theater display to promote The Simpsons Movie last year. I like the satire that The Simpsons give on our society. So it’s only natural that this life sized version ended up in my living room. A conversation piece to say the least!  But then they started taking up too much room and eventually were relegated to the garage

The Simpsons Right At Home

You’ll recall I came back from Guatemala with this notion that I had too much “stuff” in my life (see my post below entitled “Selling Stuff”).

“Stuff” can mean a lot of different things in our language. That word can refer to physical objects, social behaviors, attitudes and opinions, and on and on. Going to Guatemala earlier this year as part of a medical mission team certainly stirred my life in a way that made me aware of lots of different kinds of “stuff” that needed sorting out, rearranging, and in some cases, getting rid of.

John's Hoosier Cabinet

The most frequent question asked me about my medical mission trip to Guatemala is: “What did you do there, John?” And for folks who don’t know me, that question takes various other forms, like: “Oh, are you a doctor?” or “Are you a pastor?” or “How’d you manage to sneak into a trip to Central America with a bunch of brilliant medical people?!”

Good questions – especially since I didn’t have a clue myself what I might be doing when I signed up for this trip. I just knew the Spirit had said “Go!”, so I went. Of course, being the adventurous type, I fantasized myself in grass huts, sun beating down, sweat pouring from my brow, dust stirring beneath my feet as I lovingly cleaned wounds, held snotty nose children and sympathetically pulled rotten teeth. Parts of this picture were absolutely accurate. Me as Dr. Livingston was not.

Yes, it’s been too long since my last post. Much has been happening in my life, Guatemala never far from my thoughts or talk with friends. Responding to the invitation to help start classes in English, and eventually an entire school in Guazacapan, pulls me. I am trying to consider all possibilities without boundaries. I’ll read you a poem at the end of this post, that sums up the adventure of not knowing what the future holds.

Procrastination has been an issue, too. Not an excuse, but rather a habit that can quickly form when I have a lot going on in my life. But then I got an unlooked for reminder yesterday when a wonderful person from England included this sentence in an email to me:

” … after reading your ‘guatemala’ blog, I found it even more difficult to know what to say. I don’t think words could ever be adequate to convey the impact! …sometimes a warm hand of another can make a difference, even it it’s small. Yet it’s of worth, if one chooses to listen and accept“

This is the reason I can’t stop writing, because there is a hope I can make a difference by telling the story of the people of Guatemala, and my own story of how just eight days with these people changed my life forever.

Just this morning I met Kathryn Ford, a sweet-spirited customer service representative for a credit card company. When we were through with all the payment business, I felt very strongly that I should tell Kathryn about this blog. I don’t why. I’ve just learned to trust that intuition thing. But who knows – maybe it will change Kathryn’s life…

Click on “Read More” if you would like to hear that poem I promised you:

You’ve heard me say several times in this blog that efforts like our short term medical mission, are just bandaids for much bigger problems the Guatemalan people face. Long term solutions will come when the people have the right resources to work with. I’m sure you’ve heard the old “teach a man to fish” proverb.

Of the several key resources I could list, education is at the top. Whether it’s how to keep farm fields from eroding, how to fix a mother board, or how to purify drinking water, a person has to have a way to learn. That’s true anywhere in the world for that matter.

Being able to speak English is one of the most valuable pieces of education a Guatemalan can have. Why would this be true in a Spanish speaking country? The same reason it’s true practically anywhere in the world nowadays. English has become the universal language. The vast majority of information is most readily available in English. In tourism, industry, commerce, English is the common denominator. So any Guatemalan who is bilingual is much more employable there.

It’s a simple enough formula:
English = opportunity = employment = breaking of poverty cycle

The church our team worked closely with in Guazacapan in southern Guatemala has a vision for helping their city. Part of this vision is to offer classes to help citizens learn English. It’s a worthy endeavor.

I am praying about how to support their vision. Financially is a nobrainer. But I’m also considering going back to Guatemala to help set up this “school”, and to help teach.

Sounds like a big adventure to me. And as you know, my philosophy of life is that the older a person gets, the bigger their adventures should be!

Here’s a challenge for you: stop right now for a minute, and dream about how you could help these people realize their vision.

Remember the formula …

As many times as I’ve tried to express what I’m about to try expressing once again, I’m still looking for just the right way to say it. I think what makes it challenging is that after most of a lifetime of living pretty much in the same culture, I had what turned out to be a very narrow definition of “normal”. Or put another way, the American upwardly mobile, get-more-stuff lifestyle is not a universal reality. Thus, my title for this blog, by the way.

In the brief time I was in Guatemala back in late January, 2008, I saw a new reality. And somehow it felt more real than what I’d up to that time known as reality. The other day I was trying to describe this to a friend, and suddenly it hit. What I saw in Guatemala wasn’t a “new” reality, it was, well, real reality. The way I’ve lived in this country, in this culture, isn’t reality. It’s more like a facade, a shadow, a game.

The other day in one of my posts here, I was comparing the medical care commonly available in America to that in Guatemala. In Guatemala, diarrhea (caused by any number of intestinal disorders) is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5. In fact it’s the third leading cause of death across the entire population of this country – most of the intestinal bugs coming from polluted water supplies.

I asked if you could imagine your infant or toddler dying in your arms from the ravages of diarrhea? Of course not, not in this country. Not when we could make an appointment with the pediatrician or zip right over to the 24 hour walk-in clinic. Those services aren’t available to most Guatemalans.

Yet just a couple of days after saying this, I answered a frantic knock on the front door, to find my neighbor’s partially clad 8 year old son, his face full of fear, stammering that his baby sister had quit breathing and was turning blue!

OK, here’s the story of my life in a couple of paragraphs. You might find it interesting, you might not – but there is a point to telling you.

Before I was a Writer, I was a Businessman. I must have been pretty good at it, because a few years ago I had come to a point where I didn’t need to do it any longer, and chose to simplify my life by moving out to the farm just to enjoy the family.

But I quickly found out that having everything paid for, only simplifies one’s life in certain ways. It’s still stuff, and you since you own it, you feel this obligation to use it. In fact if you have enough stuff it’s practically a full time job just maintaining it. And that’s before you even get to the really important stuff, like relationships.

If you’ve been reading most of my posts (and I certainly hope you have!), you’ve heard me mention more than once about the architecture of Guatemala. Well maybe architecture is too big a word here, maybe building style and building materials would be more like it.

You’ve heard concrete blocks and corrugated tin a whole bunch of times already. You’ve also heard me describe these structures as “run down”, “basic”, “substandard”, and even “abandoned”. All obviously from my uniquely American point of view. You even learned that some of these “abandoned” buildings were actually public school buildings.

I come from a family of builders, and I am one, too. And I like challenges. Guatemala then was just my kind of place!

Recently I’ve received some feedback from a couple of the many readers of our blog, that my writing seems rather short and incomplete.

What? more mysteries of cyberspace?! After a tad bit of research I have discovered the source of their concern.

Thus, here is a 101 of Blogs especially for my lo-tech (though just as wonderful) friends.

BLOG = “web log”, very much like a journal, except on the internet rather than on paper

POST = one topic, one day’s thoughts, again like a journal entry

READ MORE = look right below here. See the two words “Read More”? (probably in kind of a rust color on your screen) Put your cursor arrow right on top of those two words and left click your mouse.

My apologies for going so long without a new blog post. I have been wonderfully distracted as my children begin their Spring Break from school.

I have been miserably distracted by a minor gastrointestinal infection (I know it excites you medical types when I talk like that). I also have been slowed down just a bit with torn back muscles and dislocated ribs – the direct result of allowing a testosterone fueled teenager to roam free in my home. My doctor’s prescription: a tether and a cattle prod. Use as needed.

So I’m back in the saddle and ready for the rest of Spring Break. All of which makes me think again of our trip to Guatemala just a few weeks ago. I know, I know – but in my brain the dots don’t have to connect in a straight line

Just a couple of paragraphs from now, you’re going to read about a little Guatemalan girl who was brought to our medical team one evening, severely sick. The doctors examined her and then she was transported to the nearest hospital, where she died.

But before I let you read the rest of that story, I need to tell you about my personal dilemma surrounding miracles.

I’ve always felt a thrill run through my being when I read in the Bible of Jesus restoring sight, commanding demons, healing deafness, feeding huge crowds from a handbasket, changing water into wine, curing leprosy, paralysis and every other disease.

Don’t you feel this, too? This sense of overwhelming supernatural awe?

“It’s good enough, Doug!”

Libby knew from much experience what it was like to be the left brain of the creative process she and her husband shared. He, always in the middle of the action; she the unnoticed bookends keeping things in place.

So here they were, in Guatemala, working like two hamsters on the same wheel – except they actually were getting somewhere – and making a lot of people happy along the way. Doug and Libby Eaton (with the very clever ‘garden of eaton’ email addy), from Nashville, Tennessee. And were they ever a great team.

We got to Guatemala on a Friday. On Sunday evening we went to a church service at Pastor Edgar’s ‘El Shaddai’ church.

I’ll tell you more in another post about Pastor Edgar and the many wonderful people from this church that helped us with our clinics, and who became fast friends. Suffice it to say, that some of mi amigos from this group threatened to kidnap me just long enough that I would miss my flight back to the USA. What a splendid compliment! Had more than half a notion to let them. I wonder how many of my American friends, who I’ve known for years, would think of doing that?

So we walk into this building, or structure – I’m not sure what exactly to call it. But it was pretty typical for Guatemala.

Telling people I’m a writer usually brings on waves of curiosity. In part I think because it’s an unusual craft, and folks wonder if they’ve read something I’ve written, and if somebody can really make a living writing – in which case they might just try it themselves. And that’s because we all were born to communicate with others. It’s an essential for forming relationships, which we were programmed by God to crave.

 

So people ask me about what I’ve written, and yada yada . The questions are usually the same, so I guess if I was smart I’d put the answers on cards and just hand them out to save my breath. But then, I like communicating, so it’s only natural to answers their questions, and then to ask a few of my own, since I like learning about others.

The Hopkinsville Connection Continued

 

Isn’t it wonderful in life when somebody who at first you hardly noticed turns out to be like a best friend who feels like you’ve never not known them. Herman Turner is one of those to me. He’s a rare man in that when he loves you, he says so. He’s a straightshooter, too. That’s my southern lingo for somebody who says what he thinks, doesn’t beat around the bush, and let’s the chips fall where they may. Makes life a simple take it or leave it proposition.

 

The Guatemalan people were not the only ones who smiled and laughed. There was a lot of that sort of thing coming from our witty, intelligent, happy team members, too. And not everything we experienced on our trip was difficult or dirty or tragic. That would be giving an unfair portrait of beautiful Guatemala, as well as of our experience.

 

One of the most memorable, and humorous (at least in retrospect) episodes – and there were many! – came on our last night in the country.

 

Our clinic days were over. We’d done all we could do. The medicines were gone, the team exhausted. So as a treat, we caravaned to the lovely Guatemalan city of Antiqua. As European and cosmopolitan as Guazacapán was rural, Antiqua simply oozed 17^th century Spanish architecture and influence. More on Antiqua in a later post, but suffice it to say, the team touched down about midday looking, and probably acting, like a bunch of tourists. We were ready for some fun.

 

 

The Hopkinsville Connection

Sounds like the title of a movie, doesn’t it. Maybe a great cloak and dagger story; or could be a touchie feelie about small town high school sports. But the real story is much better than either.

 

The real story is about a group of real people who went out into the real world and made a real difference in the lives of over 2000 people in less than a week. As I got to know these people, I came to realize that they had already been making a difference in the lives of others before they ever went to Guatemala; and that they will continue to make a difference now that they’re back home.

 

I wasn’t planning on it. Certainly could stand to. Didn’t have a sponsorship with Jenny Craig or Subway, though that might be a good way to finance future trips. I wasn’t on any kind of fast, though I definitely was moving fast!

 

And maybe that’s the answer. I was simply more active while on our medical missions trip to Guatemala. Having our meals and team meetings on a covered, lighted basketball court sure made it convenient to shoot hoops day and night, too. And we had a pick up game in town with some of the locals one hot afternoon, which I’ll tell you about in another post.

 

 

Then there was the warm weather. Nice. Oh you did not hear me complaining about the heat. After leaving minus-whatever back in Tennessee, I was celebrating the sweat. Sweet sweat. Sometimes it was so humid, I felt like I was a fairy prince floating through the air in some enchanted kingdom. Nice.

 

 

I’ve done a little research on Guatemala. It’s volcanic in nature – one or two active ones going right now, if you’d like to hike up and watch the lava flow.

 

Very agricultural – bananas, pineapple, mangoes, coffee, sugar cane, tobacco and most anything else that likes rich soil and warm temperatures. Guatemala is one of the world’s greatest sources of jade – some 35 different shades of jade in fact. Antiqua is loaded with shops that sell some of the most incredible jade pieces you can imagine.

 

And of course, we’re all familiar with the legends of the Mayan Empire and the vast riches of gold and silver and jewels that caused the Spaniards who touched down there to kill, enslave and eventually destroy the Mayan culture in order to justify their lust.

 

 

Here are some more interesting facts:

 

* 60% of Guatemalan citizens live in poverty. And believe me when I tell you that poverty in Guatemala is nothing like poverty in the USA. Those 6 out of 10 Guatemalans would be quite happy to live in poverty as it’s defined in America.

* The leading cause of death in children under 5 years old is diarrhea – caused chiefly by water supplies polluted with fecal matter.

 

Guatemalan laundry day……washing in polluted water.

“No such thing!” would be my first response – other than that we all had breakfast at 7:30 and loaded into the vans around 8:00. But once we hit the site for the clinic, there was no telling what might happen. It was all business until there were no more people lined up. The very last clinic day ended not because there were no more people lined up, but because we had run out of medicines (and food and, and …) I’d even run out of candy and crayons and stickers, putting a serious damper on the entertainment end of things!

 

 

I wish I could tell you more about all that the nurses and doctors did – all the different ailments and conditions they diagnosed and treated. But they were seeing so many people – about 2500 in just five clinic days, so you can do the math. At best I got to escort people to the door of Clinic 1 or Clinic 3, or afterwards point them to the farmacia or the dentista. But I never got to stay. Clinics were the domain of doctors like Laine Murphey from Eugene, Oregon, Beth Ann Sastre from Vanderbilt Hospital …

… or Jorge Ponce, who’d come over from Honduras with missionary Darrell Dankin, himself hailing from the glorious city of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, the very place where Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone and Abraham Lincoln had all stayed at the Holiday Inn at one time or another.

(Notice: for some readers, this post may seem to contain notions that are counter-cultural, or even judgmental. That is certainly not my intention. All I can say is: if the shoe fits, wear it )

 

 

I just got back from Valentine’s Day parties at my kids’ school. I’m a room dad for my 1^st grader’s class, so I happily went early to help set up for their VD party. I spread vinyl tablecloths and helped scatter the heart-shaped candies and smiled as the mothers tolerated my intrusion into their God-ordained territory. If they only knew that I, too, had actually sat in the parking lot, crying, after delivering this child to his first day of kindergarten. I have a special place in my heart for parents who are involved in their children’s lives.

 

 

I’m not sure the kids know what Valentine’s Day is really all about – but parties are fun, especially with pizza and sweet treats and soda and games – so kids like parties. That’s pretty much universal – USA or Guatemala.

Five guys I’d never met, and me, jammed into a room about 9×18. Later it would be seven as we added one more on the floor. But we had an air conditioner (once it got cranked up), 120 electricity and running water (though “hot was not an available option) – which is more than most of the houses on the street could boast.

The “street” being a rough and bumpy dirt and gravel path, slightly wider than a car.

I learned to know which neighbor we were passing, by the unique smells of particular outhouses, chickens, pigs, etc.

 

Guatemala was a land of new aromas to me – the food, the streets, the people.

 

 

 

Here I am a professional writer, yet words failed me as the flight touched down in Nashville, marking the end of our trip to Guatemala. My emotions were so strong that I could hardly speak “goodbye” to my new friends. Sure we were all exhausted, and it was 1:30 in the morning – but it was something much deeper that bonded my heart to these people. It was just that kind of experience, and they were just that kind of people – rich in spirit, genuine, giving, rare. It had been an honor serving with them; and I was sad the time was over so soon.

 

Thinking back to just eight days earlier when on a frigid Tennessee winter morning, the team had rendezvoused in a church parking lot, before cramming into a shuttle van to take us to the Nashville airport. I only knew one person from the whole group, and had only met a couple of others. There was no distance though – already we were beginning to share a common bond, a common goal. It felt more like friends who I just hadn’t seen for a while.

I knew nothing much about Guatemala. Central America. Nice climate. Mayan Empire. Sugar cane, mangoes and coffee beans for Starbucks. A huge supplier of child adoptions for American families. Probably could find it on the map without much looking.

This all changed two weeks ago when I actually went there. My life changed then, too. But before I tell you that story, I need to back up into 2007 …

… to a time when my dear friend Cathey told me all about her trip a year earlier. I know she has a huge, caring heart – and especially for children, and she’d hooked up her skills as a pharmacist with a team of medical folks, all of whom spent a week in rural Guatemala providing free medical and dental care to people who typically have none. She told me what a big impact that trip had on her life. She showed me pictures. Then out of the blue she challenged me to go on the next trip.