Festival Victoria 2007

Festival Victoria 2007
Well, it is over. The several thousand people that attended Festival Victoria have returned to their homes. The tents are still standing, but the cars are all gone. Manuel has a group of workers raking up the trash.

Rossy dispensing meds

Medical Campaign
This was Eddie and my second Festival experience. All in all this clinic was a lot calmer and better organized than last year's. We had a better tent facility than before and the weather was a bit cooler. Our staff consisted of doctors, medical students, nurses, our clinic staff and at least 10 volunteers.

Newly married Paulina in Reception

A campaign of this size involves a system and ours seemed to work pretty well. We used sheets to cordon off consulting rooms for the doctors and I provided them with a formulary of the medications we had available to prescribe. We also had a treatment area for injections and I.V.s . We kept the reception area about 30 feet from the clinic area to reduce the number people pressing around the pharmacy work area.

Betty and Neli labeling meds

The reception volunteers got names, weight and blood pressures (and the temperatures of children) on paper (ficha), and placed the fichas in a centrally located plastic bag. The doctors came and got the fichas and called the patients and when the consult was complete brought the prescription to a box and directed the patient to spiritual care. The pharmacy workers took prescriptions out of the box, filled them and waited until the patients were prayed for, then gave instructions on taking the meds. We had placed the all medications in card-board boxes organized by classifications. We saw over 350 patients in 2 1/2 days.

Dr. Baltazar General Surgeon from Oaxaca City

Dra. Antonieta

Drs Enver and Baltazar. Med students Elijah and Edgar. May I note that these were a really great team to work with!


The coolest part of the campaign for me, besides some really needy patients we saw, was working with the Mexican medical students. It was gratifying to see the medical doctors work together with the students. Somehow I was the person the students came to with questions about the meds. That was satisfying for me, I love working with the pharmacy and try to understand the actions, usages and precautions that accompany each product in my pharmacy. How I would love a job like this in the states….except it would have to be a job that let me come and go every 6 months (thank you Mira Vista!)

Dra. Dulce colaborating with Med student Jesse over patient diagnosis and care.

We closed the clinic around 5:00 o’clock. But the evening brought numerous cases of sick children, one acute abdomen (which turned our to be an ovarian cyst), and one young dancer with a very high fever (104° F). I was dressed up for the evening service but ended up changing into scrubs so that I could help put the young dancer into the shower to cool her down.

Yeseret and her parents. She came in during the evening with otitis media. She shares a birthday with our granddaughter Sarah, so I had to take her picture!

Celebration Worship!
The best part of Festival for me is the evening worship. The churches I attend in the United States worship differently. As our son Josh often says, we all have different styles and expressions that we are comfortable with. I am comfortable with the vibrant Mexican celebration style worship. I usually don’t dance too much, and it isn’t easy for me to jump up and down like they do, but I love it!

I love to be in the midst of people celebrating the glory, and the power of the Lord that has set them free from the bondage of sin and idolatry. You have to be here, walk the streets, see the children, understand the violence and hopeless to understand. Not that I doubt the same hopeless exists in the United States, but we have many diversions that help us ignore our plight.






To see the expression on the face of a young woman who realizes how she is loved by God, or a young man who is growing in his understanding of WHO God is, brings great wonder and joy to my heart. It takes me back almost 40 years when I began to make the same discoveries.

I loved watching a short Chatino woman dressed in her colorful blouse and bright yellow skirt with her long graying braid bouncing behind her as she dances, a kind of trotting dance, with her arms raised high over her head.

Amuzgo woman and grandchild

Chatino women

One day all tribes and people will gather at the Throne!
The Festival opens with a recognition of the many tribes and nations that are called to worship God. Last year flags from each indigenous group were carried by representatives of the group, and then someone in white carrying a banner proclaiming Jesus' name, he wore a crown and gold colored belt and rode in on a white horse. The horse was magnificent as he pranced proudly before the crowd. it was fantastic!

This year the flags were carried in by dancers in different national and indigenous groups’ costumes. The flags were rolled up as the dancers lined up across the stage. And as each one by one began to unfurl their flag, a figure dressed in black kneeling on the ground in front of them began to struggle with the dancer grasping the flag to prevent it from being displayed, pulling the flag back toward the ground.

Needless to say, there was music playing, loud and vibrant. A young woman came dancing powerfully, as if in battle, pointing at the dark figure, rebuking it. As she danced in front of each flag it was eventually released by the adversary and displayed in a most triumphant manner. So graphic was this display, it was breathtaking! I am sorry it was too dark to get a picture.

Cutting open my coconut

Those of you who have attended Bible camps, or missionary camps may have some idea of the county-fair type atmosphere that we have been living the last couple days. There has been food to buy, and t-shirts and CD’s. I bought myself a coconut, which I smothered in lime and chili and salt.

Unlike in the states the campers sleep out of doors under big tarps put out for them, on the ground. This year there were more tents than last, and I think a saw a bus converted into a motor home in the parking lot.

Chatino family

Such a variety of peoples! Different languages and styles of clothing were seen all over. The Mixteco from El Mosco were here, they are probably the most simple living group of those attending Also the Amuzgos came, with their beautifully woven dresses. The Chatino women either wear very brightly colored blouses and skirts, or simple dresses adorned by aprons.

Hey, I have gone on too long. I so wish that you could experience the sights and sounds of Festival Victoria.

If by any chance you would like to experience it, let us know. You are welcome to come and help us by counting pills or taking blood pressures next year!

Seriously!

Eddie and Leeann

A Reminder of the Purpose of Christmas

Chatino family at the clinic during surgical campaign last year

What can the powerless do?
It was an interesting adventure driving through the mountains from the coast to Oaxaca City, and then to Puebla. Wednesday morning we headed out, Dan and Angelica and their baby Jacob in their Explorer, and us carrying the big items in our Toyota pickup. It was a long, winding, road to Oaxaca City made tolerable by anti-nausea drugs and dry toast, and made enjoyable by the lush jungle and sermons on CD of the book of Romans by our old pastor Bruce.

Two hours into the 7-hour trip the cars in front of us stopped. What first appeared to be construction work turned out to be something very different! Eddie and Dan got out and walked up the road to discover that a large group of Chatino men had barricaded the road with cars, a pile of dirt and a discarded refrigerator. They came back with the news that the protestors were waiting for government authorities to arrive to negotiate with them.

A sheet of paper explained their demands. The people of San Juan Lachao had in the previous year been promised that the dirt road to their village would be paved, that they would be given a Central Salud, and subsidies to buy farm equipment. We were told that $13,000,000 pesos had been allocated for the projects, but now the money had “disappeared.”

After 4 hours we were told, “Hurry, hurry! get in your cars, they are going to let 30 cars pass through!” Fortunately many cars had turned around and returned to Puerto Escondido so we made it through. As we passed the protesters, I looked at their faces. They were solemn as we passed; I raised the back of my open hand to them, which is a Mexican gesture for “thank you”. Some nodded and made small smiles. I told Eddie I wished I could take a picture, he said, “don’t.” Sorry I don't have pictures.

All through those 4 hours of waiting, wondering if we too should turn around, we found ourselves relaxed, calm….and in sympathy with the people who had changed out travel schedule. I thought, “What can the powerless do?” Year after year, decade after decade, corruption and fraud handicap even the educated, modern Mexican. How much harder for the mountain people, the indigenous, the bottom rung of the ladder in Mexican society, those who are just trying to live and raise their family. As we waited we prayed, not just that the road would open up and that we could be on our way, but also that justice would be done.

Precaution Pilgrims in Progress!

Struggling in the darkness
We encountered the barricade at the turnoff for the town called Juquila. If you lived in Oaxaca you would be very familiar with the Virgin of Juquila. You see pilgrims all over Puerto Escondido and on the coastal highway from Acapulco to Huatulco (they are in the cars and buses displaying a picture of a statue adorned with flowers, usually gladiolus, on the front of the vehicle.)

As we drove this winding road to Oaxaca we passed bicycle after bicycle with riders wearing t-shirts identifying themselves as pilgrims to the shrine at Juquila. Then after we passed the barricade we saw more. It got darker and darker. We began to pass bicycles in the dark some with blinking lights, other not. Up and down the mountainous roads, mile after strenuous mile on the narrow dangerous road they pushed on, in the dark.

I began thinking “Why?” What were they trying to achieve. What were they trying to earn? Although I knew the answer, face to face with the reality, the danger and the difficulty of the task, it scarcely seemed believable.

Our hosts family, Pastor Jorge and Margloria are at the right

When we finally arrived in Oaxaca Pastor Jorge and his wife Margloria met us. After a night’s rest and hot shower our hosts fed us a wonderful Oaxacan breakfast of Mexican hot chocolate, pan dulce and tlayudas.

As we talked with our hosts I had to return to what I had seen of the pilgrims of Juquila. I have lived and traveled in Mexico for a long time and am familiar with the people’s devotion to their local idols, but somehow the toll that that devotion extracts from their lives had never impressed me quite so deeply as the bicyclists struggling in the darkness.

When I told our host what we had seen, Margloria agreed that the pilgrims were trying to earn points to gain heaven. She then said, “It is all out of ignorance!” She maintained that they didn’t know any other way. Pastor Jorge gave examples of how when people hear the good news of the gospel they rejoice that a better way has been provided through faith in Jesus Christ.

Dan explained to me later that several years ago Margloria’s family had had a terrible car accident on the same road we had traveled. The family was either en route, or returning from a pilgrimage to Juquila. Margloria’s first husband had been killed, her daughter Jossana badly injured. Dr. Angelica had had the opportunity to care for Margloria in her depression after her husband’s death, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with her.

As a history teacher Margloria explained to us that the worship of the idols go back for centuries long before the Spanish brought Catholicism to the new world. She affirmed that Catholic identity had been applied to the ancient deities and the devotion had gone on as before. This is called syncretism. All the way back home, every time we passed a shrine to either Our Lady of Soledad, or Our Lady of Guadalupe, I saw that these were not Catholic expressions, but something much older.

Dan and Angelica's little miracle, Jacob Daniel

image of Oaxaca City

After delivering Dan and Angelica's things in Puebla, we got up early and enjoyed a nice afternoon in one of our favorite cities, Oaxaca. The trip back to the coast was amazing. We traveled along the ridge of the moutains and enjoyed the most dramatic views of small houses hugging the mountainsides, and little villages clinging to the sides of mountains across steep valleys.

Tacos, literally on the side of the road!

Is it really Christmas?
Tomorrow is Noche Buena, or as we call it in the U.S., Christmas Eve. (Noche Buena is also the flower we know as poinsettia, which grows as large shrubs everywhere in Mexico where we have visited.) We will be picking up the medications that we will distribute to patients at Festival, and then going home with Berna and Angie to celebrate in San Jose de Progreso, as we did last year.

Christmas Day we have meetings scheduled for 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. as we prepare for Festival Victoria. Somewhere in between I will have to make sure all my supplies are ready. The following morning we will set up the clinic outside under tents and start seeing patients.

We have been listening to a little Christmas music; right now it is Bing Crosby. I have some lights up in our room, and a wreath up on our door…and a tiny Christmas tree about 8 inches tall. I think I will make some tea and we can eat some cookies our daughter-in-law sent with us when we left Washington.

You can imagine that it is difficult to be away from our children at Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and Easter (and Sarah and Grace’s birthdays). I have already shed a few tears, and will likely shed more tomorrow or Christmas Day, but…

People like Eddie and I who have so much to be thankful for: wonderful children who are faithful to our God, precious grandchildren, friends whom we love, and who love us dearly, really should not begrudge God of anything. It has been our determination to spend our live on things that last forever. That is what we taught our children, and now WE get to live it!

Those of you that have your family around you enjoy them and be grateful. Recognize that the baby in the manger was the Eternal God, the First and the Last, and the One who gave His life as the price for our sin….and who gave us the right to call God our Father.

Merry Christmas

Love Eddie and Leeann

Mountain Ambulance and Muchas Bodas

Maricela and Pastora Carmela

Mixtexo Missionaries to Ixtayutla Region

Mountain construction and Medical transport

December 2nd we took a team from New Jersey and Springfield, Illinois up to El Mosco and Pueblo Viejo to do some construction work, and hold clinics. Mixteco missionaries, Carmela and Maricela have had a church in Pueblo Viejo for a couple years. The church building is a simple block structure, with a room in the back that they live in. Now they are expanding to start a Bible school and the next step is bathrooms!

Deep in the mountains you work from scratch, and that means that the work team sifted sand, mixed cement, and made the bricks that will soon be the walls of the bathrooms and showers. They also dug the foundations and drain field with pikes and shovels. From what I observed the ground was very hard…and of course, it was very hot.

The remarkable event for the medical team was finding a 15-year-old expectant mother and her husband in Pueblo Viejo. It appeared that she was in advanced labor as her membranes had ruptured, and her legs were covered with blood. Eddie, Hermano Primo his Mixteco interpreter and guide, and Sean, a nurse, brought her to the El Mosco Clinic where Dr. Eder and our clinic team were working. Eder determined that she was not yet dilated and that she should go to the Central Salud (public health center) in Ixtayutla. So off they all went, plus another nurse Bethany.

In two hours they were all back with the news that the Central Salud said she needed to go to the hospital in Jamiltepec, 4 hours back down the mountain. So Bethany started an I.V. and Sean hung some fluids and the young mother was given I.V. ampicillin ….and off they went again. Apparently it was a wild ride, but they got her and her husband to the hospital safely. On their return trip to El Mosco, Andres, the Bible school student who accompanied Eddie along with the nurses, led two young hitchhikers to the Lord. They got back to El Mosco at 3 A.M! (Narrow mountain road in the dark!)

Temporada de las Bodas (wedding season)

So far there have been four weddings at Roca Blanca since we arrived. Mexican weddings involve both the civil ceremony and the religious ceremony, called a boda. And the boda is always a big deal! There is much Mexican tradition, usually a pretty long sermon, lots of music and much food!

December 15th Dr. Eder married the very sweet and lovely Paulina who we got to know well last year. Eddie and I were invited to join the bride and her family at her house and join in the procession to the religious ceremony. We probably walked nearly a mile through a couple neighborhoods preceded by a large brass band, and of course fireworks.

It was a wonderful event. Paulina was so beautiful in her traditional Oaxacan huipil, hand woven in white and embroidered with calla lilies. There was much music, a traditional Chatino wedding dance, barbacoa de res and of course tres leches wedding cake! It was a memorable celebration.

Festival Victoria
We have been busy at Roca Blanca preparing for Festival Victoria, a large 3-day celebration of faith and fellowship held annually during the Christmas holidays.

During the celebration we have doctors and dentists who come to provide free care to the 3,000 to 4,000 people who come. Most of the attendees are from the 70 or so churches that have been planted by Roca Blanca graduates, They are Mixteco, Chatino, Zapotec, Amuzgo, and other indigenous groups, as well Mexicans, and us gringos.

I finished my pharmacy order on Tuesday, and then Eddie and I set out to help our dear missionary coworkers, Dr. Angelica and Dan, move their household from Puerto Escondido to San Mateo, Puebla.

Our trip to Pueble and Oaxaca City was a bit of an adventure so I am putting it on another blog.

He is worthy

Have you read "the Hiding Place" by Corrie TenBoom? She tells of telling her father that she didn't know if she would ever be able to lay her life down for Jesus....her father told her that Jesus would give her the ability if ever the time would come. She was one of the few of her family that did not actually die for Jesus, she lived valiantly for Him instead.

I always remember that thought....could I die for Him? sometimes living for Him is more of a sacrifice.....
it is hard being without my family around me, and I have to die to them
He is worthy

Leeann