Hope on the Horizon

What a year it has been for all of us.

I apologize for my absence, more on that in a moment. Let me give a very brief rundown of what The Saultons have been up to this past year!

+Covid hit in March 2020 causing a complete shutdown in Guatemala. Air travel, buses, and cars were forbidden to travel, meaning thousands of men and families were put out of work right in the middle of harvest season. Families who lived on a meager $2/day now lived on nothing. Malnutrition and poverty skyrocketed. For us, we worked hard to fill in needs around the ministry. Whitney worked 24 hour shifts every 2-3 days and on her off days, Bryan would fill in cooking at the senior center. John just bobbled around completely clueless of the havoc around him. Babies, man. 🙂

+After a few months of serving very long, difficult hours (24 hour shifts in full PPE in the 100 degree heat while in your first trimester of pregnancy is no joke), we were fortunate enough to get one one of the very rare flights being offered out of Guatemala at that time. “We’ll ride it out for a couple more weeks and then it’ll be over” or so we thought.

+On July 8, 2020 my best friend Jazmyn welcomed her beautiful daughter Kira into this world. Her birth was complicated by postpartum hemorrhage, a very sick newborn with a scary diagnosis, then an alarming health complication meaning Jazmyn needed to be admitted to the hospital without Kira. Being here in the states meant we were able to step in and help her husband Jordan care for baby Kira and their 2 year old son Zuri. God was so gracious and He truly answered all of our prayers in that season! Many tears were shed, but God was so good to all of us.

+On September 28th, Guatemala re-opened their borders, allowing air travel again. We booked return tickets for our family of three, excited to return home and give birth to Flori in Guatemala. Just 2 days before leaving, we discovered Flori was no longer growing due to placental insufficiency. Carrying the pregnancy much longer meant risking Flori’s life.

+October 12, 2020 we welcomed our precious Florence Jane into our arms. Tiny, but healthy, our 4.5 lb Flori was discharged after only 3 days in the hospital.

+Early November, back-to-back hurricanes hit Eastern Guatemala devastating rural communities, roads, and completely washing out a village at the base of Hope of Life’s campus.

+In December, my sweet buddy Yolanda passed away. She was a patient of mine that I have known for over 8 years! She is already deeply missed.

+We enjoyed Christmas and the new year with our family and babies. We missed out on seeing so many people because of pandemic + preemie baby + flu and rsv season… Please feel our love, hug, and presence despite our absence! I also dealt with some pretty brutal postpartum anxiety + depression. Listen, if you are dealing with the same, Jesus is wonderful BUT SO IS ZOLOFT. Through medication, Pink Stork mood support supplements, and pressing into The Lord I think I am finally better. Could that be hope I see on the horizon?!

+In a season of waiting for Flori’s passport, my precious Granddaddy passed away. He had just celebrated 70 years of marriage to my loving Grandmother. His health had been declining, but it was unexpected. However, he didn’t suffer and we were still in the states and able to see him and take him a prime rib dinner just one week prior. For all of those things, I am forever grateful and able to see God’s goodness even in the midst of our sadness.

+The end of February and the beginning of March were crazy! We finally received Flori’s passport, we were able to book airline tickets, and receive both of our Covid vaccines. Finally, some breakthrough in this past year that has felt suffocating and dark!

Which leads me to say… WE ARE HEADING BACK TO GUATEMALA ON WEDNESDAY!

I know the transition will be hard but we are still excited to get back. Our hearts are so invested in the work God is doing in rural Guatemala! The price to pay for having our hearts in two places is that it is hard to leave, but it is also hard to stay. Although it hasn’t always been comfortable or what we expected, we have also enjoyed this slow season of being in the states. We already so deeply miss our family– John and Flori will especially miss their cousins and grandparents!

Talking about what we do sometimes feels so weird. I never want the focus to be on us. I never want the focus to be “Oh, poor Guatemala… Thank God YOU were there to help THEM.” No, the glory is not ours to enjoy. The praise goes to God alone. We just goes where He has sent us. In the same vein, because we have so many amazing financial supporters and people who carry us in their prayers, I do feel responsible to let you all know about all of the exciting projects we have supported over the past several months. Through your generosity, we have been able to regularly supply a village of 100+ families with food bags every month. We have been able to minister to mothers and families who were once patients of mine, and helped coordinate medical care through Guatemalan missionaries who travel into the regions where we work.

We look forward to keeping you posted on when we get back home to Guatemala. We’ve been gone far too long and have so much work ahead of us. We are ready to get these hands dirty again.

Until then– stay healthy, stay masked…

And know that you are loved.
-Whitney

It’s pretty impossible to reduce our time here to just a few pictures, but here are just a handful of the literal hundreds that have been taken!

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