Medical Clinic

Last week the staff of our base had the chance to help out with a medical clinic in Huehuetenango. It was a wonderful time where we worked alongside pre-med students from Lee University in Tennessee. Our job as YWAM staff was to translate for the doctors. The first day we arrived in a village and began to prepare for the day and each person got their assignments. I was horrified when I got assigned to translate for the dentistry clinic because I have had some of the worst experiences of my life in a dentist chair. I did realize that God was probably laughing up in heaven as I walked to the makeshift dentist office, but I was willing to do whatever He had for me.

I ended up having an amazing time translating for the dental clinic the first day and asked if I could do it for the rest of the week. It was pretty intense at times, but it was so good to help people with toothaches and to also share God's love with them. We saw people of all ages come through the door and I probably saw over 100 teeth pulled- including a few women who got ALL of their top teeth pulled at once.

A story from my time there that I will never forget happened on a Tuesday. We were going to travel to the Cuchumatanes, which is the highest point in Central America, and work with a village. The day started out by me finding a dead (thank goodness it was DEAD) rat in our dinning room where we were staying. Then we were trying to finish up last minute preparations when I went up to the room we were staying in and the door had been shut and locked on accident and no one had a key. We ended up breaking the glass window to get our water bottles and bags out and we headed out the door. We got on the bus we were to take to the village and it started driving us 20 minutes in the wrong direction. By the time we noticed and got turned around we were running late and so we hoped for a quick rest of the trip. So as you can imagine the roads to the highest point in Central America are pretty steep and the buses they use here in Guatemala are old, outdated school buses that they buy in the States and drive down. The bus we were on began to smoke as it huffed and puffed up the hill. The puff of smoke began to grow into a cloud that was coming into the bus through the dashboard. Finally the poor bus driver could not push his beloved bus any longer and it overheated and came to a complete halt in the middle of the road. We all quickly got off so that we might have the chance to breath fresh air again and we waited on the side of the road for another form of transportation.



Little did we know that the only other available form of transportation that the village had to offer us was this...

A cattle truck! We all piled in the back- 9 YWAMers and about 20 pre-med students and headed the last 15 minutes to the village.

One of our patients that day happened to be a little boy who was 4 years old- WARNING: This is going to be a disgusting story...

He had an abscess on one of his front teeth that had eaten away his gum so that the tooth was visible through the gum and at the bottom of the gum like a normal tooth. Now I like to consider myself someone who does not get easily grossed out since I used to teach elementary school and have been thrown up on and peed on but what came next was definitely something that challenged me. The dentist was working on pulling out the tooth and I was close by trying to console the boy. The next thing I knew I felt a sudden squirt on my nose. I looked down and the abscess had popped and the puss inside went right on my nose! I told the dentist who casually asked if it had gotten in my eye, which I replied to with a no and then she proceeded to tell me that it would be just fine then and that our skin is a great protecting agent. "Oh, good!" I thought to myself as I wiped the puss off my nose. We managed to get the tooth out and the poor little guy was a trooper through it all!

I really did feel blessed to be able to work with such a great team of people. I also felt blessed to be able to help people who normally would not be able to receive such medical attention. We had a great time serving in Huehuetenango!!!