My one trip to El Mosco

Skagit Valley Dahlias

To recap...or you could just look below at my last blog....but quickly, Last February while I was in Oaxaca I felt that the Lord was directing me to finally go back to school to earn my BSN. I am now in my first semester at Liberty University Online, and am having a ball studying Philosophy 104 Christian Worldview, and Theology 104 Introduction to Christian Thought. I have never had the privilege of studying at a faith-based school before, although I have been fortunate to have Christian instructors in not only nursing, but recently in Statistics and Chemistry.

But I must reiterate, I am having a ball, or should I say, I am being revived studying in a systematic manner the truths of our faith. Certainly I have had much of what I am studying preached and taught to me over the last 40 years, but never all at once in such a scholarly fashion.


So even though it has been my goal to tell you about my time in Oaxaca, studying has kept me busy! I am also working part time at Mira Vista Care Center as a nurse. At the same time we are still working at getting our business Riverclay Studio off the ground. And besides babysitting grandchildren and church activities, our daughter and her family is here visiting from Mexico where they serve as missionaries.

Our granddaughter Elisabeth's 13th birthday

Kai in the Alps Candy store just outside Leavenworth WA

Mama Faith and Kai feeding the horses at Stonewater Ranch, Plain WA

Grandson Isaiah, their friend Daniel, and Kai

...Back to Oaxaca
In the two months I was in Oaxaca this year we had medical missionary students from Elim Bible Institute in Lima, New York. You can learn about their studies if you just scroll down to my previous blogs. Since much of our focus was on educating this amazing young women of God we only made one trip to El Mosco. But it was memorable.

La Regíon de Ixtayutla
For me it was a little difficult, partly because I was in pain most of the time, and also because as far as I knew, it would a long time before I visited these mountains again.

The trip up to El Mosco is long and bumpy. A little less long and a little less bumpy than it used to be. Many kilometers of washed out road has been replaced by paving and more than one river we used to ford is covered by bridges. Still, most of the sights are the same, the donkeys and campesinos hauling wood, the same lunch stop at San Jose de las Flores, and the same climb up through the pine forest down into the dry region of Ixtayutla. Every time I look down onto the familiar road and little cluster of hills where I know that our clinic is hidden I always say, "honey! I'm home!"

the entrance to El Mosco

The same faces greeted us, the children are bigger and now we have real showers and doors on the bathrooms (still using sheets for the showers). Lobo, my favorite Mexican dog, wasn't there to greet us this year. I had expected him to die years ago, so finally he did.

The particulars of the trip blur a little, as it has been many months, but somethings are recorded by photos. And then some things I could not photograph but will never forget.

Yucuya'a
Maybe three or four years ago, I remember Laura starting to cry as she described how one mother said that she and her children had only had tortillas and salt to eat for a month. Now it was my turn to cry.

Susan unpacking the mobile clinic in Yucuya'a

Lorena, Saul, Angela, Leti and Sheila setting up the pharmacy

The last two years Saul and his nursing student sister, Lorena, have been covering the pharmacy and I have been interpreting for the doctors. This is hard, not just because interpreting through three languages is grueling work, but you hear things you would rather not know.

you start with a very large tarp, some rope...

...add lots of sheets and clothespins and chairs, and you have 3 consulting rooms
and a waiting area

Family after family came into our makeshift consultorios (consulting rooms), and the mothers said the same things. "The children have no appetite." "They eat a little tortilla and they get sick." "Yes, their father is in the home. He goes out to the fields, but he doesn't find anything."

After several hours working we needed to eat. We were faint from hunger and worn out. But as we went into the dark little adobe where people were waiting for prayer, we had to turn our backs to the hungry people. Not only did we not have enough to share with the over one hundred people that had shown up, their stomachs would not have been able to tolerate our tuna salad sandwiches.

I stood there, hungry, tired and overwhelmed with my back to them and I just broke down. I have never seen such hunger or such need.

Reading blogs and Facebook messages from people who stayed when I left, I know that at least two trips were made to bring people up to Yucuya'a. To read more about our trip and others after I left check out http://nessblog.com/roca .

As usual, we left Yucuya'a late. I remember the not uncommon anxiety of driving those roads in the dark.

El Mosco
I wonder if I will ever be able to chronicle the changes we have seen in the people and the place of El Mosco. I remember the first church meeting I attended outside, up against the end of the building where we see patients in the day and everyone sleeps at night. Everything used to be so dry, ugly...and the kids we so little, and wild.

Hermana Francisca at worship

Now the baby that was born that week we first visited, Pastor Miguel's youngest, is in school. There is a church building and it is full of Mixtec believers. Pastor Miguel preaches from a portion of a Mixtec Bible that he is helping to translate. And there is an orchard between the clinic and Hermano Primo's house, and sweet smelling orange trees scent the air.

a picture I too on our first visit in 2004

nearly the same view this last February 2010

We saw some of our usual patients. I put aside medications for Rufina and her daughter, like I always did when I was running the pharmacy. I think this was the first time that we didn't have to administer nebulizer treatments to Pastor Miguel and his son.

As I was interpreting for Dr. Dave, we had a woman who was seven months pregnant, very thin, with pain in her lower abdomen. I took her outside to the bathroom to get a urine sample to test for urinary tract infection, and as I looked at the chem-stick I realized that although there didn't seem to be an infection her glucose was at the top of the reading. We checked her blood for glucose and it was over 500 (normal is 70 to 114).

She said she had been to the hospital and they had turned her away. So we wrote a note from Dr. Dave explaining our findings to the doctors at the hospital. Dr. Dave said, "Tell her this, if she wants her baby to live she will have to go to the hospital soon."

Hermano Pablo, Rufina's husband, brought us his brother who had been unable to keep food down for four months. He was skin and bones. He had been to the hospital, given something stomach acid, and sent home. Dr. Dave got a detailed history and it was very clear, there was a blockage that was preventing food from reaching his intestines, most likely cancer. He would certainly die soon if he didn't have surgery. Again we wrote a note to the hospital and told Pablo that his brother had to take the note to the hospital.

I was very sorry that Eddie wasn't there with us, had he been there, he most certainly would have transported these two patients to the hospital. Eddie has made numerous trips to the Jamiltepec hospital 2 hours away. Every time Eddie takes people to the emergency room they are received and they get good care. We think it may be Eddie's presence that convinces them to keep the patients. I hope that Dr. Dave's signature had the same effect.

the man's knee is at the top of this picture, the tumor was below the knee

We had one patient in his 50's who had been to the hospital. He had a large fluid-filled tumor below his knee. When he was at the hospital, they took x-rays and told him he had a tumor, then sent him home. It is likely that he had told the doctors that he would not allow them to amputate his leg, I cannot recall. But I am sure that we told him, that if he wanted to live, he would have to let them take his leg. We talked to Laura about the possibility of finding an orthopedic surgeon at a hospital down the coast.

I never can resist a picture of taking pictures of Dr. Mary Kay with babies

As I recall that last trip, a few things stand out in my mind, that I haven't yet shared. One is that usually at the end of every consults the church people who have let the unbelievers see the doctors first, finally come and see the doctors. There are always the same last prescriptions, and always the same upper respiratory infections and requests for vitamins. And I don't know whether they are always sick, or whether they just need the attention.

But sometimes it gets discouraging, always sick, always parasites. We always people who would soon die if they hadn't gotten to us, who would have died had we not been there. Then I remember, there is much health there, spiritual health. The darkness will never overcome the light that we have been able to bring to these mountains. And Jesus is that light.

Oh, and there was one more thing to tell you, but that will have to wait. I must do justice to that story.

Lupe
12/12/74 - 3/12/10

I do have a prayer request. We are praying about taking a group from our church to Oaxaca in early March. We need direction and if we get a group together, we will need fund-raising ideas.