First week at Roca Blanca

Culture Shock!
As we left Acapulco’s Diamante area, a sleepy area down the beach from a city we have always tried to avoid, we drove through the jungle that surrounds the road to Oaxaca. I remember thinking, “I don’t feel excited as I usually do.” As I reflected on the thought that the lush landscape seemed commonplace, like I had just left it, I realized that the adventure of living in a foreign culture and place had lost its novelty. The thrill was gone.

Then another thought whispered into my mind, “now you are doing it for Me alone.” And I felt God’s pleasure.

The welcome we receive when we come back to the base each year blesses us. We have made so many friends. We have a family group which is the clinic staff and a few others.
We arrived on Thanksgiving Day, but didn’t celebrate until the next day when everyone was available. It was a wonderful feast; we even had roast turkey this year. Here you see our "adopted" Angie and Berna.

Later that night after our feast I realized that the exhaustion that I had attributed to two day s of driving was actually the onset of illness. Our room is in a house right off the base where the prepa students are housed. Right now we have no air-conditioning, and we are still trying to make our home. In the hot room I crawled under the sheet to relieve my chills.

When I woke the next morning missionary life was not fun, it didn’t even feel tolerable. The smells of a Mexican village (burning trash and plastic, faint sewage smell coming up from the shower drain), and the noise of living among at least 15 teenage boys, could be difficult at best of times, but suddenly I realized I was experiencing the dreaded Culture Shock.

One of the boys turned his sound system up to supersonic levels and I ran outside and walked to the clinic, revolted by the smells all the way. The heat increased the misery of my sick stomach. I found our friends Angie and Berna, and I think I started to cry as I complained piteously of my plight. I finally made myself a bed on the floor of the air-conditioned clinic office. And I slept.

The next day I rested in the quiet clinic on the quiet base. And I read my Bible, and as I read my strength returned. I went downstairs to check on a young pregnant patient’s I.V. And I began to feel at home again.

Monday found us back into our routine of staff meeting, and clinic patients for me, and internet stock market for Eddie. The Lord brought me Luis Alfredo who survived a car accident Saturday night. His face was swollen to almost twice its size, his head was wrapped, and his wounds were stitched. As I unwrapped his bandages and dressed his wounds I found myself singing softly to him. I have changed his bandages everyday this week. Yesterday he said, “Gracias a Dios que me dío Liana para cuidarme”(thank God that He gave me Leeann to care for me.)

Eddie’s and my main jobs here at Roca Blanca revolve around the clinic outreaches to the unreached areas where we travel with teams. Tomorrow a team arrives and Sunday we will take them up to El Mosco,Yucuya’a and Pueblo Viejo in the Ixtayutla region.

Preparation for the first outreach means inventorying the pharmacy we carry and buying the meds, making the formulary sheets and packing the truck. We also organize all the other clinic supplies for any possible need we may have up in the mountains. I have many lists that I have developed over the last few years.

This outreach will be without Laura, our clinic director, so Eddie will be handling the funds and logistics. He also takes charge of setting up the clinic and making sure everything flows as smoothly as possible. He has taken vitals, weighed patients and done triage. He makes sure his staff get breaks and stay hydrated.

I added a picture here of Grace and Hani, they are daughters of Diego and Betty, a nurse who works the base clinic. Our granddaughters Grace and Sarah are almost the same ages. I have always called Grace and Hani “las princessas”. Just like Grace and Sarah they have all the Disney Princess movies, and the Barbie princess movies. But of course they don’t have the dresses or shoes.

Well, it is time to go to bed. Eddie and I made the medication purchase today, Friday, and tomorrow morning early we will go to Rio Grande and buy the food for the outreach. We plan to leave early; I still have much to do to make sure everything we need is packed! We leave for El Mosco on Sunday morning.

Oh by the way....we do have a fan, and the evenings, even days, are cooling off. Berna talked to the boys, and they are trying to be quieter. Last night we lent them a movie and their wasn't a peep out of them before we went to sleep. We cover our shower drain and Eddie uses Irish Spring body wash, so the smells aren't nearly so bad. We are getting furniture, piece by piece, and may soon have a place to hang our clothes. And as usual, my health is best when I am here in God's will, even my plantar fasciitis is barely felt.

Most of all, God is with us in a very real way. The cross of Jesus Christ is before us and His love compels us to serve, and to be joyful!

Love to you all, Eddie and Leeann

P.S. I am not sure whether it will work or not, but if it does there should be a video here of a clinic we held last year at Yucu ya'a, so you can see what we are doing!